edit: I am a man and the only man in this scenario
This happened some time ago. I was driving and stopped on a gas station. probably for coffee and had to go pee. I saw a long queue of around fifteen to twenty exclusively 30-something girls, definitely bit older than me. They probably were a sports team, since there was a hired couch bus waiting outside and they were mostly wearing sweats. There were separate stalls for men and women (one each), so I went for the men’s room. It turned out locked, so I stood just outside it. One of the girls in the queue said that the back of the queue is “back there”. I replied “sure, but I’m going to the men’s room”, understandably assuming they were queueing for the ladies room. To which she said “yeah but there’s one queue for both”. I am familiar with the concept of shared queues, but mostly from supermarkets or post office, where you would queue for several checkouts and just go to the first one that is free. Never encountered shared queues for gender-separated toilets, so I said “but the toilets are separate, I’m going to the men’s room and you can queue for the ladies room” and simply went in without any more protest from them when the men’s room emptied (and it was another girl in there).
Were I the asshole?
YTA. It’s a penury situation. And you’re enforcing a privilege.
Fortunately foe you women are used to this, which is why they didn’t complain after you ignored them.
what sort of privilege were I enforcing?
The privilege of taking a restroom for yourself while everyone is waiting for its turn. When you have a right that other people don’t have, it’s a privilege.
wouldn’t you say then that the girls were enforcing the privilage of using men’s toilet due to no men at the station (before I arrived)?
That’s not what a privilege is.
what do you mean? they used the men’s toilet because there were no men around — therefore they acted on the privilege of being exclusively females
No. That’s not what privilege means. I’m not a native English speaker so I won’t make you the offense of teaching you what it means.
neither am I
I mostly kidding. I just like to try and justify silly things.
But honestly, if someone told me to get to the back of the line, I absolutely would not have. But I personally would have noticed the queue in the first place, and not gone to the front.
Do you ever use a handicapped stall? Would you allow a handicapped person in front of you in the queue?
You’ll say yes, “because they have special needs”. But that’s an inappropriate judgement. Many don’t. But you’d still let them ahead, right? Why?
Because we’re a society of rules and customs. There are times that it’s important to break those rules and make a point to use your privilege to stand up to power. That time is not in a random queue where power isn’t even watching. If anything, he should have gone afterwards to complain that the restrooms aren’t gender neutral. But going to the back of the queue would just be performative nonsense and change nothing. It would be white knighting to make the ladies feel better about their oh-so-poor existence.
Tip your fedora and move on son.
It’s not about fighting for any cause. It’s about not making the world a shitty place. Every time you act like a selfish asshole, you make the world a shittier place. That’s all there is.
The gendered restrooms is about comfort. But at some point, comfort get in the way, so you scrap the useless rules.
I have been in handicapped restroom. I never had a case of a handicapped guy bypassing the queue for it, but if there was a big queue and he would do it, he would be an asshole.
You can be selfish and individualistic, or you can try to not be an asshole.
Forcing a handicapped person, who might have significantly different and more urgent needs than the rest of us, to wait on the queue is making the world shittier. So if that’s your metric, work on that.
“might have significantly different and more urgent needs”… You know, a specific situation can always be dealt with specific solutions. Where I live we’re civilized people, we can discuss these things. Like you could also talk about a wounded person or a pregnant woman.
But unless specified, a handicapped person is a normal person that can wait in the queue like everyone.
Or it can be like so many people here: an asshole that will enforce its privilege to the expanse of everyone else.