If you donât get out much, you probably havenât noticed how the separate âmenâ and âwomenâ public bathrooms are being replaced with âunisexâ or âall-genderâ bathrooms. It used to be that men had their own washrooms and women had theirs. That was back when there were only two genders under the sun.
Michael Dunton, chief records clerk of Rhode Islandâs Cranston Police Department, told CNN his department was âhard-pressedâ to find such a case: âWe track our sex offenders very carefully and we havenât seen any instance of sexual predators assaulting in bathrooms.â
The law ostensibly was intended to make bathrooms âsafer,â and was passed in response to local measures that sought to protect gay and transgender people from discrimination.
And women are the only ones who know how to keep a bathroom clean. John Balentine, a former managing editor for Sun Media Group, lives in Windham. Invalid username/password.
On television, not very long ago, there was Ally McBeal. On that show, Calista Flockhart captured the 90s zeitgest by navigating her 20s in a zany Boston law firm with a unisex bathroom, all while wearing high-hemmed business suits and dating Robert Downey, Jr.
The PracticeBoston Legal is a spin-off of the long-running David E. Kelley series The Practice (1997), following the exploits of former Practice character Alan Shore (James Spader) at the legal firm of Crane, Poole, and Schmidt.
Boston LegalBoston Legal is an American legal comedy drama television series created by David E. Kelley and produced in association with 20th Century Fox Television for ABC. The series aired from October 3, 2004 to December 8, 2008. The series starred James Spader, William Shatner and Candice Bergen.
One thing that came from the show is the friendship that developed between Spader and Boston Legal co-star, William Shatner. Just don't expect them to hang out together very often.
Created by David E Kelley, Boston Legal ran for five seasons and was cancelled when it was still running strong. Starring James Spader and William Shatner, Boston Legal combined politics, drama and humour in a unique way.
Boston Legal is one of the best takes on a TV legal drama that I have seen. It manages to mix drama and comedy pretty well for the most part and introduces us to Alan and Denny who are magnetic characters, played to perfection by James Spader and an incredible William Shatner.
HuluCurrently you are able to watch "Boston Legal - Season 1" streaming on Hulu or for free with ads on The Roku Channel, Freevee Amazon Channel.
5Boston Legal / Number of seasons
The debate over transgender rights in America often gets reduced to bathroom talk.
The claim: Sexual predators will take advantage of public accommodations laws and policies covering transgender people to attack women and children in bathrooms.
Claim: Children are too young to know if they are transgender, and supporting a child who identifies as transgender is child abuse.
For attorney Alex Freeburg of Freeburg Law, LLC in Jackson, Wyoming, the first season of âBetter Call Saul,â the spin-off prequel to âBreaking Bad,â perfectly captures one particular aspect of a lawyerâs life: the hustle.
âThe Practiceâ spawned the spin-off series âBoston Legal,â which ran for five seasons on ABC from 2004 to 2008. The producers hired the British writer and barrister John Mortimer, who created the UK legal series âRumpole of the Bailey,â as a consultant for the show, and it paid off.
The trials are obviously dramatized, but the procedure and conduct is more true-to-life than other legal dramas. And there are many more law firms are that are small and struggling to get by, like the one in âThe Practice,â than large white-shoe firms, like the one in âSuits.'â. 4. âBoston Legalâ.
Hollywood often neglects accuracy in favor of excitement and tension. Any attorney will tell you that while appearing in court might have thrilling moments, theyâre likely to be few and far between. In the real world, thereâs a lot of waiting around, mountains of paperwork and more than a few boring bits.
In fact, âMy Cousin Vinnyâ is considered to be so accurate in depicting American jurisprudence that itâs shown in law schools as an instructional video. Because Vinny needs so much guidance, other characters have to explain basic legal concepts to him that would be glossed over in other films.
Several cities now have gender-neutral bathroom provisions, including San Francisco, Philadelphia, Seattle and West Hollywood, California. These typically involve relabeling single-occupancy bathrooms as places for any human person. Colleges and universities are also making gender-neutral bathrooms more available.
Public, stall-based ladiesâ and menâs bathrooms are essentially a gross disaster that make all of us dread having to pee and some of us fear for our safety. First, thereâs little privacy. Most stall doors donât reach to the floor or the ceiling. There are gaping holes next to the doors, too. Youâre lucky if you land a toilet seat free ...
Nardella himself first became interested in gender-neutral bathrooms after a 9-year-old boy was murdered nearly 20 years ago in a menâs room in Oceanside, California. The boyâs aunt didnât want to accompany him into the menâs room or bring him into the ladiesâ room.
Colleges and universities are also making gender-neutral bathrooms more available. The White House even installed a gender-neutral bathroom stall last year. Earlier this month, the Cooper Union in New York City took it one step further, and removed gender designations from all of its bathrooms.
In a unisex bathroom, gone are the urinals, meaning everyone uses the same toilet. Everyone. Men, women, transgenders and children. In this new communal situation, women suffer. For starters, men donât put the seat down, and itâs not because they forget.
And we all know that is men. There are certain physical forces at work in why menâs bathrooms are less clean, but weâll avoid the specific talk of that since this is a family newspaper. Beyond that, menâs bathrooms typically incorporate urinals and toilets; women only use toilets.
No man wants to touch a toilet seat, so the accepted practice â in a menâs bathroom â is to leave it up both for cleanlinessâ sake and for convenience. Women, however, leave the toilet seat down. They have no reason to raise the seat. When I clean menâs toilets, I leave the seat up.
Suffice it to say, women are much cleaner and tidier than men. When the two genders, plus the aforementioned transgender individuals, use the same bathroom, the cleanliness level reverts to the least tidy among the genders. And we all know that is men.
Everyone should be able to use the bathroom that they feel comfortable in and which they feel matches who they are. If a transgender woman feels more comfortable in the womenâs bathroom, then they have the right to use it.
Unisex bathrooms eliminate the need for transgender people to justify themselves for going into their gender identity bathrooms. We believe that no one should be singled out for something so simple and unimportant as going to the bathroom.
Employers should always have the safety and comfort of their employees at the forefront of their minds. They have a duty to make sure that every employee feels secure in their workplace without the threat of harassment.
Changing the layout of the workplace can be difficult and require a lot of paperwork, but it is essential that every employee feels equal to one another. Employers cannot single out one employee and refuse their request or tell them to use the opposite bathroom of their gender identity.
Yes, there is nothing wrong with an employee voicing their concerns about gendered bathrooms to their employees. If the employer is trans-friendly, they will hopefully adopt more pro-trans policies right away.
To sum up, there are no laws on whether men can use a womanâs bathroom or not. People are free to use the bathroom that they identify with, whether that be male or female. In fact, people who have a problem with this are more likely to be breaking the law on account of discrimination.