"Potty Parity" or, "How People Pick and Choose Equality"

Moronic "potty party" laws have been around for awhile, the latest in New York City: Story in New York Daily News.

Basically, it goes something like this: Women tend to visit restrooms in packs, plus they take longer than men. Therefore, the answer to this problem is not to tell them to go one at a time or hurry up, but to give them twice the number of toilets as men (this is on top of things like locks on all the stalls, while men often get the equivalent of a trought to go in).

Call me crazy, but I'm of the opinion that you can't pick and choose equality. A more fair solution would be to make all of the bathrooms unisex with locks on the stalls -- remember the cry "separate but equal is not equal" -- or have equal-sized men's and women's bathrooms plus a unisex one for whomever wants to use it (this would also solve to problem of which bathroom transexuals and transvestites use).

Frankly, the unisex version would be fairer. For those that worry about privacy -- well, men would probably be pretty proactive if they found a camera peeping at them, up to broken equipment if not broken bones. The difference in safety would be minimal, since as it is those with a screw loose can hide in the women's restroom anyway (and if attacked in a unisex restroom, there's always the chance some burly trucker is going to come through the door to pummel the assailaint).

I think the thing that bothers me most about such proposals is the whole "We want equality here, here, and here, but since we are women we should still keep the privileges here, here, and here" idea. If you are going to make the whole claim of biological necessity, well, men on average die several years earlier than women, but I don't see groups rushing to double the funding for male medical problems to rectify that particular issue.