Dirty Dishes	Dirty Dishes Archive

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Ann Landers recently ran a column in which a man complained about fathers bringing their young daughters into men's toilets to wait while they (the fathers) used the crapper. The distraught writer was concerned that should the daughters see his peeing pecker, he could be ("rightfully," he barked in his letter) arrested for exposing himself (and thus face life in prison in many states and a lifelong brand as a "sex offender" under Clinton's registration program).

Dawn finds the solution ever-so-simple: uni-sex bathrooms, used by both (or, in deference to the transgendered among us, should Dawn say "all"?) sexes, with the understanding that seeing other people's wee bits would not constitute "exposure" (since even the most puritanical feminists have not-- yet-- suggested that we should be legally required to pee and shit with our clothes on lest someone see the organs involved and thus feel "visually raped"). Maybe someday we will look back on "M" and "W" signals on toilet doors with the same queasiness with which we remember apartheid's or Jim Crow's similar signs designed to steer people to their appropriate places.

Ann's stupid response? She thought the pee-shy dad had a valid point, but argued that the age-of-toilet-consent should be four, not two as suggested by the writer.