Main: Toilet
Washrooms may be stand alone buildings or installations, or be featured as part of buildings such as railway stations, schools, bars, restaurants, nightclubs or filling stations. Washrooms can also be found on some public transport vehicles, for use by passengers. Washrooms are usually fixed facilities, but can also refer to smaller public portable toilets, or larger public portable washrooms constructed as portable buildings.
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Main: Toilet
Washrooms may be stand alone buildings or installations, or be featured as part of buildings such as railway stations, schools, bars, restaurants, nightclubs or filling stations. Washrooms can also be found on some public transport vehicles, for use by passengers. Washrooms are usually fixed facilities, but can also refer to smaller public portable toilets, or larger public portable washrooms constructed as portable buildings.
Washrooms are commonly separated for gender into male and female facilities, although some can be unisex, particularly the smaller or single occupancy types. Both male and female washrooms may incorporate toilet cubicles, while many male washrooms also feature urinals. Increasingly washrooms incorporate accessible toilets and features to cater for the disabled.
Washrooms may be unattended or feature a janitor (possibly with a separate room), or attendant, provided by the local authority or the owner of the larger building. In many cultures it is customary to tip the attendant, while other washrooms may charge a small fee for entrance, sometimes through use of a coin operated turnstyle. Some venues such as nightclubs may feature a grooming service provided by an attendant in the washroom.
Terminology
Gender and public washrooms
Separation by sex is so characteristic of public toilets that pictograms of a man or a woman are used to indicate where the respective toilets are. These pictograms are sometimes enclosed within standard forms to reinforce this information, with a circle representing a women's toilet and a triangle representing a men's facility. Symbols such as the DOT pictograms have been criticized for perpetuating gender stereotypes; however, there may be no practical alternatives.
Sex-separated public washrooms are a source of difficulty for some people, such as those with children of a different sex, or men caring for babies when only the women's washroom has been fitted with a baby change.
Sex-separated public washrooms are often difficult to negotiate for transgendered or androgynous people, who are often subject to embarrassment, harassment, or even assault or arrest by others offended by the presence of a person they interpret as being of the other gender.
Many existing public washrooms are gender-neutral. Additionally, some public places (such as facilities targeted to the transgendered community, and a few universities and offices) provide individual washrooms that are not gender-specified, specifically in order to respond to the concerns of gender-variant people; but this remains very rare and often controversial. Various courts have ruled on whether transgendered people have the right to use the washroom of their gender of identification.
