I read several opinions regarding “gender-neutral” (mixed-sex) bathrooms on Ann Althouse’s blog, and don’t know what to think because I’ve just come back to the States after living in Japan for four years, where bath houses, called onsen, are separated into men’s and women’s halves, but it wasn’t at all unusual for me to climb into the same steaming tub with several boys and girls so young they weren’t at all shy about staring at me. I’m tall, very skinny, and very light-skinned — I was used to drawing stares in Japan, but I found myself strangely intimidated by the presence of other people’s children in the bath, precisely because fears of pedophiles and other perverts would prevent such mixed-sex bathing from ever happening in almost any setting outside a private residence in the States. Having no idea at all how to act, I jumped into the tub and slouched into the water until it was up to my chin. They didn’t stop staring, but at least I didn’t feel as though I was on parade.

I eventually got used to bathing in the presence of other people’s children (unless they were American children; I never felt comfortable bathing with them; I guess the cultural norm was too deeply ingrained). However, there were not only mixed-sex children in the men’s onsen, but women as well! They weren’t bathing, they were the cleaning ladies, and for the most part they acted as though the men around them were invisible, discreetly planning every movement so that they never had to so much as excuse themselves to get out of the way. The men did much the same. There was one occasion, though, when curiosity apparently became too much of a temptation for a cleaning lady at an onsen in Misawa, and she stared like a little girl. I’ve never felt so naked in my life.

A bath house is not a toilet, but I’ve been in many public toilets in Europe attended by cleaning ladies, and they weren’t at all shy about noting my presence. In a public toilet in Paris, a cleaning lady was apparently so determined to keep to her schedule that she hardly waited for me to step away from the urinal I was using.

I don’t mean to say that my experiences were at all comparable to the kind of intrusion that seems to offend Althouse; I think I agree with her objections to having to share a public toilet with men. I know my mother would have the same objections. But isn’t that a cultural norm that could, and probably will eventually change? The Europeans didn’t seem at all tripped up by mixing sexes in one toilet (granting that the women weren’t actually using the toilets I visited), and the Japanese weren’t bothered by letting their daughters bathe with grown men (or I don’t think they were, anyway).