I felt really feminine the other day.

I felt really feminine the other day.  Not really, but I was the third guy in line for the “single gender” men’s room at a gas station and the last guy who went in took his bran muffin and newspaper so I figured it would be awhile.  Three feet in front of me was an empty restroom with the stick figure in a skirt on the door. California has been legislating gender-neutral bathrooms so I shook off my gender shackles and went in. It seemed pretty normal and I started to think that the new bathroom rules might be ok.  Why waste an empty bathroom if no one is using it? Then I opened the door. There were now three women standing in line for my bathroom-of-choice. The first one said “you know that’s the women’s bathroom?”  I said, “yes, do we really need to get hung up on labels, maybe I feel like a woman today.” She said, “if you felt like a woman you would have put the seat down.”  I said, “put it down? You’re lucky I put it up in the first place. If I’d been drinking I would have left it down and played American Sniper for 5 minutes.” That’s when it hit me – the legislature didn’t ask any women if the new laws were a good idea, and they have unleashed a firestorm of potential problems.  For example, do employers now have to get two subscriptions to Sports Illustrated?  Seat up or seat down?  Paper roll up or down?  Urinals in all bathrooms or just trust men’s aim? I think we are on the verge of a new women’s constitutional ERA movement – Equal Restroom Amendment – to go back to the old rules. I can guarantee that women don’t want to share bathrooms with men.  Not to be sexist but our view of bathroom etiquette has been colored by years of gas stations, sides-of-the-road, and trees.  On the bathroom evolutionary scale we are Cro-Magnons in a world of  21st Century women.  I’m sure we can evolve but it could take millions of years. The legislature has no clue. They should have just mandated that men use ablue a hut and leave the nice bathrooms for the better sex.

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