Restroom etiquette for Aspergers

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This is about a problem not talked about much. Even here it will be difficult to discuss it because it touches situations we don’t like to face in detail. It’s even more taboo than talking explicitly about sexual interaction. It’s about sex, after all, and, more or less obliquely about homosexual experiences. So, double taboo. But this is something that every male faces with embarrassment and some anxiety every time he has a need to urinate in a public restroom. And though these are miniaxieties they weigh a lot more than we want to admit. There are probably many other minicurriculums that must be learned and that are difficult to learn and teach. No one writes treatises about urinating in semipublic places (as restrooms are). Ervin Goffmann might have written a witty learned essay on this subject, but he never did.
The piece is about Asperger urinators and the whole story is here:
http://www.ocregister.com:80/articles/d ... 4-male-don

The essential part of the article is here:

“There are rules in the men's room that most every male knows.
You don't speak. You don't peek. You just leak.
Stare straight ahead. Get the urinal farthest from everybody else. Be efficient with your movements.
It might seem that men are born knowing this etiquette, but they aren't. It's learned. It's part of what educators and others sometimes refer to as the "hidden curriculum," those lessons we pick up without being explicitly taught.
"In our life, we've learned this stuff," Dixon says. "We learn it immediately in social situations because we don't want to be ridiculed. If I go into a restroom and I'm staring at a guy's shirt because I like the colors, and I get an intimidating look back, I'm going to learn not to do that."
But many children with autism don't learn the hidden curriculum, educators say. Teaching them requires repetition and explicit explanations.”

good point.

I reckon that ettiquette books are are good gift for any AS.
they give good advice and guidlines to learn how to act in situations one hasnt ecperienced first hand.

we can study and learn expected behaviour and feel a sense of schievement having never been exposed to a situation before yet knowing we have achieved what is "socially expected"

In Australia, it was just......"dont look"
speaking wasnt suggested.

Men's room manners/piss pot rules topic

It must be difficult for AS men/boys. We women/girls are lucky, as we have private stalls, and can do both eliminations in one sitting. Many mothers take their boys, whether NT or Autistic, to the women's rooms because of safety issues, and now their are many single and family restrooms to avoid the Urinal thing altogether.

Good topic. , Paolo. Thanks, Donkey.

One time I was just letting it fly, minding my own business when the guy pissing next to me looked at me and said "Nice Cock!" I always thought that was a nice thing to say.

yeah it was.

he probably learned that pilow talk in prison!

You forgot one thing that a lot of autistic do: Pee with their pants completely down to their knees. You should only pull down a little bit of the front half, an none of the back.

And then there is the whole field of the respect or disrespect of privacy inside one's own house or between family members. A short piece of Kafka about going to swim with his father.
"I remember, for instance, how we often undressed in the same bathing hut. There was I, skinny, weakly, slight; you strong, tall, broad. Even inside the hut I felt a miserable specimen, and what's more, not only in your eyes but in the eyes of the whole world, for you were for me the measure of all things. But then when we stepped out of the bathing hut before the people, you holding me by my hand, a little skeleton, unsteady, barefoot on the boards, frightened of the water, incapable of copying your swimming strokes, which you, with the best of intentions, but actually to my profound humiliation, kept on demonstrating, then I was frantic with desperation and at such moments all my bad experiences in all areas, fitted magnificently together."

Privacy Issue topic

In North America we are generally more private about our bodies and elimination practices. I suppose there are pros and cons to this, but I would not have it any other way. And because I am a woman, I have been afforded more privacy than a man. Being North American Female Aspie means I demand the ultimate in separation in all aspects of my life.

Having said as much, in Kafka's time and place there was not as much privacy for many reasons, and so people saw more of what they did not want to see, despite the contradiction of Victorian conventions. Franz's father was ashamed of Franz because he was smaller than him, and Franz was painfully aware of this. Franz attempted to engage in physical training to improve his physique and was a vegetarian. Sadly, the latter did not contribute to his muscle mass, and the exercises, while religiously practiced, did not result in him looking like his father, let alone Mr. Universe.

I think fathers and sons have always engaged in an unhealthy competitiveness that is damaging to both parties. Mothers and daughters do it as well. There is also father-daughter and mother-son problems. All this dysfunction can result in unhealthy envy at best, and tragically in death in the worst case scenarios. I think of Marvin Gaye as a contemporary example of jealousy between a father and son gone tragic. Some are plain crazy, as when a 33 year old mother uses her teen daughter's ID to become a cheerleader.

I always use mine and others' analyses (plural) to learn something or to teach something to someone else. The thing we must do to avoid all this dysfunction, stupidity and tragedy, is individual understanding, and to not compare ourselves with family members and others. We all have unique contributions/talents as individuals. If this is a North American/Western/Aspie phenomenon, then this is the NA/western/Aspie and Female contribution to the world.

Had Franz lived longer, I am sure he would have come to this realization. Even though he lived in a herd society he very desperately wanted to detach himself from it.

I am not part of a herd, and I always drink upstream from the sheeple.

Paolo, you inspire me. Thanks. You and Primo Levi.

He might have been ghey.

In the Seventies I used to have a poster hanging in my hallway of a woman (with back turned) standing and using a urinal with men doing the same on each side of her. It was done in good taste, no body parts showing, and was, I suppose, a sign of the times, a poke, if you will, at the feminist movement. Unfortunately, I could not find that poster on the web, but found this interesting collection of urinals instead.

The Ten Most Interesting Urinals in the World

Not bad the Sorensens's urinals, depriving of shame that activity which, after all, is natural and sometimes even pleasurable.

I may add, on the subject, that that fascinating philosophical school, the Cynics (Anthistenes, Diogenes, 4th century AC) got their name because they didnt't have nor proper houses, nor bathrooms, and urinated against walls, just like dogs.

Yay, another Australian! Anyhoo, yeah I borrowed and read a body on body language over the holidays and I cannot stress how USEFUL I've found it. OMG. It's crazy the stuff that was there all the time that I never know. And everytime I'm in a group I wonder if everyone else is picking up on this stuff too to the same degree, and I find it hard to believe. It seems like nothing at all is hidden, because the body language says everything!

I feel bad for males, because they don't get the level of privacy that females are afforded in restrooms. Cannot imagine being able to deal with such an arrangement-am female, yet still quite discomfitted by public facilities. Avoid them as much as I can: for reasons of conditions in public bathrooms, but also am utterly weirded out by having other people around (while I'm doing something so personal/intimate !).

(Not to be yucky)-seriously & intellectually wonder about how plain fact that the different sexes eliminate so dissimilarly is reflected in each gender's thought processes. As in: Men have to know which business will be taking place before deciding to stand or sit. Women don't have to separate/compartmentalize those eliminatory functions, nor predict beforehand which one (or both) will occur. Am I only person who has such analytical thoughts on traditionally gross topic ? Not from prurient p.o.v. just mere curiosity: about how the usual operation & behavior of one's anatomy (and the physical functions one is conscious of) influences/modifies people's mind/brain/mental content.

Going about one's business topic

Interesting. I had not thought about it that way. A male division of elimination labour! Men have to stand, and then sit, often moving to the one available stall. Always lots of urinals in the men's rooms

I suppose this is one area in which I am able to multitask!

Women have periods, too, so we need time privacy to deal with this. I certainly could not have dealt with menstrual care in front of women. I remember that some women would even have to breastfeed in a cubicle, and I did this on more than one occasion, until things changed and there were baby care rooms made available in some malls.

At least in some areas, women have more improved services than men, but of course we have different needs/issues.

I feel sorry for what guys have to go through mentally being forced to urinate in front of other guys. If there is a stall in the restroom you guys should go in there to get a little more privacy. As a woman I find it uncomfortable to even have someone in the stall next to me "listening in". Its down right disgusting at work having a line of women waiting outside the stalls for their turn and having them peep throw the slots around the stall door seeing you with your pants down. I think that's plain rude that they stare like that. Stalls should be solid units so they can't be peeped through.

I heard on tv that outside the U.S. most public restrooms are unisex. That would be disgusting having guys in the restroom with women because guys in the U.S. are so perverted & many in gangs I would fear for being raped.

I dislike the idea though of boys being taken into women's restrooms. I was once in a library restroom when this mom brought in her son. He looked around 6 yrs old and he leaned under the stall door and stared at me sitting there. I fought back the urge to scream curses at him or kick him in the face. Why do guys have to be such perverts? Its really not that exciting seeing a stranger with their pants down.

I saw something on tv about Roman soldiers having the first restrooms with running water. They would sit next to one another on the pot and have a sponge on a stick to wash their rears off. They had no privacy. Thank God for Victorian era that finally brought us a bit of privacy. I wonder if Asian restrooms are more private since they seem to be more private people. Anyone know?