Space as a gender adjacency and sexuality's spatial dimension are recent themes in architecture. The case of the bathroom as a gender-regulating device is a constantly discussed topic at the intersections of queer theory in architecture. The discussion is even broader within LGBTQIA+ guidelines.
The philosopher Paul Preciado, in 'Garbage and Gender', points to toilets and urinals as gender-demarking devices: the condition of sitting on the toilet or watching/being watched at the urinal, guarantees the perpetuation of the hermetic nature of male and female gender binarisms. Women urinate seated in private stalls, while men do so standing up in collective devices. Therefore, by this logic, men who use private stalls are "less manly". Another interesting example of thinking about genderifying spaces is the alcoves, traditional environments in colonial buildings in Brazil. These environments functioned as devices of segregation and surveillance for virgin daughters. These small, unventilated rooms were usually located in central areas - next to the hallway, kitchen or living room - to allow family control.
These two examples illustrate how gender and architecture theories have discussed the constitution of architectural space designed to support gender-sex dynamics. That is, it is considered that (cis)masculinity and (cis)femininity need spatial apparatuses to be constructed. The urinal, the alcove.
Among the many architectural types that the recent capital expansion of the global south has produced, and that cross gender and class - such as the gas station-food-court and the barbershops-that-celebrate-hypermasculinity, to name a few - there is a very common case of semi-public spaces in Brazil: the provider-waiting-room, or the semi-public room. Normally scattered in malls, airports, bus stations, in wide corridors in front of department stores, makeup, and fast fashion, these "lounges" are discreet spaces designed to materialize the dynamics of "woman buys, man waits". This logic, so remarkable in the cis-heteronormative discourse, allocates/affirms/supports the man-father-of-the-family as a provider, producer, and the woman-mother-of-the-family as a consumer. This dynamic even helps to reject consumption by the provider, relegating consumption, and buying, as typical of female performance or homosexuality. It is the male's place to wait. Waiting is male.
Semi-public lounges are usually made up of seats arranged around sober décor, with dark colors predominating. The architectural type lives its caricature when the details denounce that this space is not, in fact, a resting place for people who walk with canes or crutches, as they do not have accessible devices; or for people with children who need a break, as they are usually made up of individual seats. On the contrary, these spaces constitute a simulacrum of a living room, the place of domesticity where the cis-straight man waits for his wife and his beer, as cinema and advertising have already told us excessively.
The crucial difference between the semi-public lounge and the private living room of the cis-hetero family is that in the latter, the man contemplates entertainment made to measure for him - television and the very existence of an environment dedicated to it, demarcating his position as a provider in the private sphere. In the semi-public lounge, the ritual of affirming provider masculinity is shared by other provider men and their offspring. The scene is typical: the man-provider fiddles with his smartphone next to his kid exchanging minimal words as he waits by Zara's door for his wife with the shopping bags.
In this sense, I invite you to think of the semi-public living room or the waiting-room-for-the-family-provider-father as if it were a semi-public space urinal. It is a place where men compare themselves and position themselves to demarcate the position of provider, not consumer. More than occupying the space for the function of waiting, out of tiredness, or for the pleasure of leisure, the provider man occupies the lounge to be seen by other provider men as the one who does not buy but provides. The provider-waiting-room is the urinal that everyone can see. Still, in the context of leisure, it is the collectivization of part of the cis-heteronormative performance.
Amidst spatial production that perpetuates heteronormativity, projects like Stalled! seek to question gender-normalizing devices. The proposal presents guidelines for bathroom design that promote social justice from a multi-gender and collective space. Stalled!, was developed by Susan Stryker, transgender historian, Joel Sanders, architect and Terry Kogan, law professor, and launched prototypes for public buildings, acting from the design process to its possible implementation and legal procedures. The bathroom, in Stalled!, is a space designed for a safe experience for trans people, breastfeeding mothers, and accompanying children, in a spatial arrangement that allows for fluid circulation, and wide access for everyone's safety and comfort.
Stalled! proposes the bathroom as a device for the collectivization of sexuality. The prototypes and guidelines present waiting rooms and lounges that make the bathroom and care practices less segregated experiences, possible to be shared between people of different genders. It starts with the idea that waiting and hygiene are broad practices for all genders. Finally, Stalled! is a clear example of the possibilities of spatially reversing cis-heteronormative logic.
Based on Stalled's example! and the case of the semi-public lounge, one can speculate about gender and sexuality intersections in spatial practices. Our task now is to create and seek spatial solutions that take those who have been in the position of waiting and privilege for a long time out of their comfort zones and propose projects that enable other logics in the current spatial dynamics.
