To the casual observer, modern society must seem a wonderland of harmony and equality. Flip through any college brochure and it’s plain to see: hearing-impaired white women love studying in parks with paraplegic Asian homosexuals while, nearby, black men in varsity jackets toss around the ol’ pigskin with Indian hermaphrodites.
And it’s not just in brochures. Everyday life is teeming with shiny, happy examples of this brotherly spirit. I couldn’t count on fifty hands the times I’ve seen a black man and a white man skipping along without a care in the world before pausing to refresh themselves at a mutual drinking fountain. Typically, the white man will stoop to take a drink, and as he starts to lap at the steady, cool stream of water, his black friend will push the button down all the way, splashing his gullible compatriot with a chilly jet of surprise. They then share a laugh and engage in an elaborate handshake that the white man is obviously unfamiliar with. Everyone knows that black people are cunning and hip, while white people are uptight and out of touch1, but these differences only serve to make us ideal partners in police movies, and more importantly, friends.
1 Source: the “comedy” of D.L. Hughley
However, underneath this shimmering surface lies a dark undercurrent. Our past successes in integrating and harmonizing the human race have failed to so much as budge this deeply rooted axis of prejudice, a facet so fully ingrained in our daily lives that most people don’t give it a second thought. It is the last bastion of segregation. I am, of course, referring to…..gender-specific bathrooms.
Pangs of societal guilt reverberate through me every time I embark on a bathroom excursion with nine of my best girrrlllsssss. Clutching our knock-off Prada bags, we laugh and gossip all the way to the back of the club, before we’re forced to part ways, as I enter my elitist “Men Only” bathroom.
To divide bathrooms by gender may seem natural, but what’s next? It is nearly unfathomable now, but will we one day see bathrooms for “Blacks Only?” What about “Well-Endowed Men Only?” That may seem absurd and redundant, but where do you draw the line? That’s why I’m demanding that the line be erased altogether.
The notion that women are inferior because they cannot pee standing up is accurate, but maddeningly insensitive. I am allowed to fight alongside a woman for the freedom of no one in particular, yet it is wrong for us to drop some bombs into peaceful waters, together, when we return from battle? I can freely consume alcohol, yet I am a criminal for wanting to become intoxicated by the after-dinner stench of a woman? I reserve the right to carry a handgun, yet I am denied the right to fire off a round into a porcelain bulls-eye with a woman at my side? The entire concept reeks of hypocrisy and is speckled with corn.
There is only one way for change to be brought about: a grassroots campaign to unite men and women under a unified, unisexual symbol. Do whatever is necessary to get the word out. Women, piss in the men’s urinals. Men, piss on the women’s walls where the urinals should be. Everyone, join the Facebook group. End segregation once and for all.
Integrate