by Kerry Dougherty
Of all the cockamamie ideas cooked up at City Hall in Virginia Beach, this may win an award.
A fat, legal award. But that’ll come later.
Right now the city is bursting with pride over its new, $650,000 5-stall unisex restroom at 20th Street.
Because let’s be honest, there’s nothing women like more than using the potty with nothing to separate them from the men doing their smelly business in the next stall but a thin metal wall.
It’ll be a haven for perverts too, because clueless parents often send their unaccompanied kids into public restrooms. Pedophiles will love the convenience of peeking through cracks at naked children.
The long washing trough is a lovely touch. So is the attendant stationed on a metal folding chair outside.
Best of all, it’s only going to cost taxpayers half a million a year to maintain!
Unisex toilets are a terrible, risky concept. It’s one thing when a restaurant with single stalls and locks on the doors makes its bathrooms accessible to both sexes. It’s quite another to force females to use toilets adjacent to men.
The Everybody’s-Welcome Johns will be open from 6 a.m. to midnight. Remember, this is 20th Street AT THE OCEANFRONT. The heart of the Resort Strip’s hairball sanctuary. Drunk girls, gang members. What a lovely cocktail.
It may be an old-school idea, but some of us believe women and girls need safe all-female spaces. To allow men in close proximity to females and children who are changing their clothes or using the bathroom is absolutely reckless.
This breathless hurry to break down barriers between the sexes that’s happening coast to coast is asking for trouble and providing an attractive nuisance for predators.
Look, the oceanfront needs more restrooms for the comfort of tourists. More showers and foot washing stations too. But unisex bathrooms are a dangerous concept and the first woman, drunk girl – or, God help us, child – assaulted in the 20th Street unisex-free-for-all is going to lawyer up and close the place down.
Rethink this, Virginia Beach. Before someone gets hurt.
Republished with permission from Kerry: Unemployed and Unedited.
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