What Bathroom Signs Tell Us About Sex and Gender

What can bathroom signs tell us about gender, sex, and society? Plenty, according to this great article by Marissa at The Society Pages, a multidisciplinary social science project organized by the University of Minnesota’s sociology department.

Marissa has gathered an extensive, thought-provoking, and occasionally hilarious collection of bathroom signs from around the world. (A few are anatomically correct, so they might be NSFW.) In addition to sharing the images, she makes a lot of good points about the social construction of gender. It’s a great read. (Thanks to Lee Wind for pointing it out.)

Anyone else shudder at the messages our kids might be getting from some of these signs?

(Photo credit: Irina Slutsky. Not from the abovementioned article, but proof that there are clearly even more examples than Marissa has catalogued.)

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