Unisex toilets and equality before the loo

SOUTH Africa had a bout of anxiety over policy talk by the Minister of Education, Angie Motshekga, who has thrown her hat into the ring in the battle of unisex toilets for schools.

What is the evolution of defecation and what are the hidden nuggets that unisex toilets may resuscitate?

Plants like sunflowers track the sunrays. Another spreading plant called Mosala Suping possesses similar properties, which act like sun tracking solar panels. The tracking of the sun by the Mosala Suping plant was interpreted as a transferable power to attract a girl when potion is spread on a fresh deposit of urine. The idea of unisex toilets has a consequence of unearthing the answer to a vexing question of equality before the loo, but may bring back this long-lost benefit with the evolution of defecation.

This may as well become a Sustainable Development Goal because of the weighty issues to be raised in the meandering road towards equality before the loo.

The traditional concept of open veld defecation provided an extended equality because it eliminated the scarcity of loos and queuing. But hygiene requirements viewed through a social and biological lens led to separation of defecation systems by sex and invariably introduced more intense inequities before the loo.

This does not mean that the inequities were not present before in the loo tribe. There were always inequities by fact of sex.

This is illustrated vividly by a Sesotho idiom that says “sekotlo sa monna ke leralla” and translates into “a man’s occipital skull bone is a hillock”. When a male seeks to relieve himself from the pressures of the urinary tract, he needs only to face away from the crowd and all exposed will be unseen because it is protected by sekotlo or occipital bone.

In this regard even in tradition beyond natural technology, males have always been advantaged by social and economic technology such as standing against human artefacts such as a kraal to relieve themselves. If women tried this trick, it would have gone down as a taboo.

This inequity in the natural and economic spheres of open defecation life was momentarily halted in the era of pit latrines and bucket systems.

But it was resuscitated with modernisation of the loo through waterborne defecation systems.

What is it that makes this anti cuisine topic so appetising?

I have for the longest period as a statistician been intrigued by long queues of the fairer sex at highway filling stations, restaurants and at malls.

At the face of it, long queues at

malls confirmed my developing thesis that females dominate in travel, eating out and definitely in a proclivity for shopping.

Otherwise, what would explain the long queues formed in the toilet facilities of the fairer sex?

The experiment from a design point of view, however, failed to yield any result on aeroplanes, except for bringing about an observation that putting on makeup often explains the length of stay in the loo to the irritation of all others.

But unlike in the plane, at the average toilet facility women’s makeup rituals happen at the basin, outside of the loo, and don’t explain the long queues that occur.

This advanced the cause for equity brought about by unisex toilets.

Obviously, the inequities in the so not noble of human activity are artefacts of male dominance in the building industry.

Instead of bringing about equity for women, men actually doubled their comforts by adding as many urinary basins as the are toilet seats.

This gives males twice the advantage over women and that is why there are no long queues for men.

While women have to twist and turn uncomfortably and in indignity, males enjoy a splendid and uninterrupted relief.

The Sow Airport Lounge has introduced unisex toilets.

The urinary basins are all gone and all sexes file in a queue.

What a way to bring about equity. But better look at the brighter side brought by the sun.

It might be time though to search for the sun tracker Mosala-suping plant and by statistically modelling the queueing, the timing might bring about that lucky charm in the heights of luxury and no longer in open defecation.

Dr Pali Lehohla is the director of the Economic Modelling Academy, a Professor of Practice at the University of Johannesburg, a Research Associate at Oxford University, a board member of the Institute for Economic Justice at Wits and a distinguished Alumni of the University of Ghana. He is a former Statistician-general of South Africa.