A recent blog posting by Ted Trautman on Slate, “Sex-segregated restrooms: an outdated relic of Victorian paternalism,” praised a book chapter authored by University of Utah College of Law Professor Terry Kogan that appeared in the book Toilet: Public Restrooms and the Politics of Sharing.
Kogan’s contribution to that book provides history and context to the concept of segregated restrooms. As the author of the blog notes, Massachusetts passed the first law mandating gender-segregated restrooms in 1887, and many other states quickly followed suit. As the author of the blog observes, “much of the United States’ toilet-related building codes reflect a literally Victorian prudishness that we might mock in other contexts.”
To read Trautman’s Slate blog posting, including additional references to Kogan’s book chapter, click here.