Hypospadias, the “Bathroom Panopticon,” and Men’s Psychological and Social Urinary Practices

Abstract

This chapter draws on three parallel discourses. Firstly, it reflect on the ideological and architectural redesign of public bathrooms whose intention is to regulate and prevent queer sexual practices. Secondly, it revisit what Halberstam refers to as the 'bathroom problem' that is, the regulation, discrimination, and violence faced by transgender and gender queer people in public bathrooms. Finally, this chapter reflects on the global movement toward gender-neutral public bathrooms. I am adopting the common thread in the extant literature which specifies that public bathrooms are not just spaces in which one enters to void the bowels or bladder. Public bathrooms are socially constructed, malleable spaces: ideologically, as well as architecturally. So much so that they offer ample opportunities to build up some important discursive scaffolding onto which we can graft not only a critique of the medicalization of intersex and the surgical normalization of 'inadequate' phalluses but also the psychological scripts and social relationships surrounding urinary practices. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)