Or alternatively maybe if they aren’t incontinent, they can wait politely outside the door while you take your time, and they can watch a stream of able-bodied people wandering by to use whatever facility they are able to, and feel like the good second-class citizens they are. I presume you think they should thank you for the beneficence of allowing these special privilege toilets to exist at all!

And last, this talk of the handicapped “shitting” themselves is just offensive. Anyone who cannot wait a few minutes for a restroom stall, handicapped or not, knows full well that they should take preventative measures for situations where they may not be able to immediately use a facility.

Will the real Kathryn please stand up.

Forgive me for not using the most up-to-date politically correct term for people with disabilities. However, not that it matters, but your inference to the conclusion that I know no disabled people is a false one. I don’t think I should parade my friends in front of you to gain permission for my use language. I thought we were having a discussion about norms and rights, but apparently you were holding a secret test of who is least biased based on vocabulary usage. Forgive me my innocent mistake.

If a commenter apepared in a thread and referred to adults under 4ft 6ins as “midgets”, I’d lay money s/he was having little or no interaction with sufferers of dwarfism. If you use a term like “handicapped” and use it as often as you do, I’d say it’s a sure-fire bet you don’t have anything approaching an intimate relationship with anyone disabled. They’d have set you straight by now if you did. I think you’re disabled friends must live in Aaron’s equally mythical non-busy environments in which standard restrooms are curiously unavailable and where he uses the reserved facilities often.

Kathryn, you marked your arrival saying “Brownie, get a hold of yourself” and announced that you’d read the entire thread. You went on to question in the same comment something which was provably false, as anyone who had indeed read the entire thread could have told you. Pardon me, but your slip is showing.

As for “attacking character”, I’m afraid that when commenters proudly announce “I used disabled bathrooms all the time…if it is free I see no reason why one ought not to use it”, then their character becomes an issue. I have no compunction about this. That said, as Aaron has distanced himself from this original claim, so have I refrained from attacking his character.

I’ve contributed more keystrokes to this thread than anyone else. If you want to pretend that they’ve all been expended attacking character and “straw men”, avoiding what you would regard as the issues, I can’t stop you. I have no need to stop you. I’ll put my faith in the literacy of other readers, whether they share my views or otherwise.

My final word: there are exceptional circumstances where use of any facility is perfectly justified. Outside this, able-bodied people using specialist facilities is unadulterated selfishness. Shame on you.

Forgive me for not using the most up-to-date politically correct term for people with disabilities. However, not that it matters, but your inference to the conclusion that I know no disabled people is a false one. I don’t think I should parade my friends in front of you to gain permission for my use language. I thought we were having a discussion about norms and rights, but apparently you were holding a secret test of who is least biased based on vocabulary usage. Forgive me my innocent mistake.

I think the character of people with such attitudes deserves attacking.

Oh, I’m sorry. I thought we were supposed to be having a reasonable debate about issues. I didn’t know that this was a free for all on the character of people we disagree with. Now that I understand the nature of your accepted debating tactics, Brownie, I’ll politely remove myself from the discussion.

I will say, before I leave, that people who use attack tactics such as yours (though you feel justified) are generally more closed-minded than the people who they attack for oversight of p.c. protocol. If this were not true, the discussion here would have ended 25 hours ago with both you and aaron realizing that you are generally decent people who care about those less able-bodied than themselves, but feel that there are different results you believe that this status warrants.

No more, no less. Your insistence that the people you are debating are bigoted and have serious character flaws has led you to attack straw men and become vitriolic towards people interested in having genuine conversations about these issues.

It’s a shame.

I tihnk you need to re-read the thread, or at least help out Aaron with these mythical, non-busy environments where standard facilities are not ‘right there’.

Aaron, my primary interlocutor these past 30 hours, admits to using these facilities often, so we are clearly not talking about exceptional circumstances where he and people like him are caught out in public with no access to standard facilities. If you are referring to these exceptional circumstances, then fine, but please don’t tell me what is and isn’t the substance of the debate I have been having.

And if the disabled have to take preventative measures, why don’t the able-bodied start looking for a bathroom just before they get to the point where they’re about to piss themselves and therefore have to make use of reserved facilities?

Oh, and any chance you stop with the “handicapped” business? It’s soooooooo 80s.

Actually, “nappies” were exactly what I was politely referring to. If you are incontinent and you cannot wait for a short time for the restroom, then you know this fact about yourself (most likely) and will, like a responsible adult, have taken measures, like adult diapers, to ensure that you do not soil yourself. I am saying that this is what a responsible person does when faced with a medical condition such as this. Additionally, I do not think that incontinence is an issue which warrants the use of a handicapped stall. They are designed, not to be immediately available, like some people are implying, but to be large enough to accommodate wheelchairs, etc.

Also, no one has yet responded to my argument that the situations in which one is justified in using a handicapped stall are ones in which no one (even a handicapped person) has a right to expect an immediately available restroom. Additionally, there are other norms one might think apply to allow the handicapped to move to the front of the line in these circumstances.

The handicapped have requirements which the able-bodied do not, and as a result they have been accommodated for and should be allowed to use these accommodations first when they need to. But there’s no good reason that has been offered (short of the equations of handicapped and incontinence) as to why they should have an immediately available restroom at all times.

none of the toilet Nazis on this thread is arguing that people should pee into their pants whilst standing alongside an empty reserved facility. We’re talking about habitual use which, to my mind, is completely unjustified.

No, we are talking about norms and how there should not be a norm requiring able bodied people to use only non-handicapped facilities if there are none others available. It has been stated over and over again, despite you pretending it hasn’t, that no one is claiming that the able bodied should use handicapped facilities when there are others readily available.

I have seen spectacular queues for the ladies’ restrooms, however, but none of the toilet Nazis on this thread is arguing that people should pee into their pants whilst standing alongside an empty reserved facility. We’re talking about habitual use which, to my mind, is completely unjustified.

Which one of my claims about what you’ve said is false:

You don’t use reserved facilities at airports.

You don’t use them in busy places.

You don’t use them when the other option is ‘right there’.

You use them “often”.

I’ve already asked you to provide some examples of the specfiic situations where you find yourself – often – using disabled facilities, and which adhere to the qualifications about when you do and don’t use them. You haven’t given any, just a lot of blather about there being no queues, only when it’s free (gee, a marvelous concession that one), etc.. Why so coy?

Whe you’re sitting in a cafe and suddenly think to yourself, I need to pee, do you stop at the first restroom you come to, regardless of its status, so long as it is free, so long as there is no queue, so long as the cafe isn’t busy? Your definition of when you would use such facilities suggests you would.

Look, I don’t care much for your views, Aaron, but I’m really not in the business of making things up. I am judging you on the words you have chosen to justify your behaviour. You say you “often” use these facilities. I travel extensively with my work and have done for 15 years and and I can count on one hand the number times of I’ve had to use reserved facilities (yes, it does happen). There’s simply no excuse for it. You may go through life behaving as you do and never inconvenience anyone, but you have no right to create even the possibility of inconvenience for those least able to afford it purely to avoid any – even the most trivial – yourself.

Empirically false where I am from.

Go on then, humour me. What percentage of able-bodied people in your locale are using disabled facilities, if my claim that a vast majority would not is “empirically false”?

The person I know with these disabilities has a carer who obtains maps of toilet facilities online. They have to plan ahead for disabled toilets wherever they go. Regularly in shopping centres, cinemas, libraries they find disabled toilets (and parking spots) in use. In cinemas we have to ask able-bodied people to vacate the chair next to the wheelchair spot. Even though in some of these instances (getting out of the lift, moving from the wheelchair spot) the request is easily made and always granted, it isn’t nice that someone (the disabled person) has to be constantly forced to remind the world that they are “special”. And in the case of disabled parks and toilets, this inconvenience can be quite catastrophic (many people cannot even get out of a car unless it is in the disabled park, for example).

Disability and incontinence are different things, SG. Most of the disabled are not incontinent and I strongly suspect most of the incontinent (at any given time) are not disabled.

Now, suppose I’m not disabled, but airline food gave me diarrhea. Can I break the taboo or you want me to wait in line like everybody else?

Is that what you get from reading my comments or is it from imagining someone you can take out your frustration on.

“How many times is the other option somehwere else?”

Often, not everybody lives at the center of the universe like you. Get some perspective.

“Do you know why you tend not to see lines of disabled people queuing for the bathroom? Because the vast majority of the many times more populous able-bodied community do not use these facilities.”

Empirically false where I am from.