Okay, if you weren’t horrified by Russia’s widespread harassment and abuse of LGBTs in the leadup to the Olympics, maybe you’ll be horrified by this: twin toilets.
Yes. That’s right. They’re building bathrooms for the Olympics with multiple toilets in one room with no partition between them. It is the worst.
Now, to be clear, we are maybe a little extreme when it comes to bathroom privacy. We can’t deal with urinals. We don’t get why regular toilet walls don’t go all the way from floor to ceiling. We feel that anyone who tries to make conversation in a bathroom is a terrible, terrible human being.
So perhaps this explains why we look on this bizarre setup as one of Russia’s greatest atrocities.
How about we take this to the next level?
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The one potential advantage: if you wanted an excuse to hook up with another dude and wanted a little privacy, locking yourselves in a two-person bathroom might not raise as many eyebrows as a locking yourselves in a single-user room. But it will still raise plenty of eyebrows because it is so gross.
Also, where is the toilet paper? And what is that trash can doing there? This whole situation is incredibly troubling.
Here’s what’s worse: apparently this is not totally uncommon in Russia. That’s bad news because it means that our distaste may actually be an unexamined cultural prejudice on our part, and if there’s one thing we hate, it’s examining our own prejudices.
And oh, sure, in Roman times everyone would just sit around in one gender-neutral chamber with holes in the benches. Does that make this modern Russian setup okay? No, it does not. The Romans also ate day-old meat for ientaculum and paid soldiers in bags of salt. It’s very nice that they invented aqueducts but that doesn’t mean we have to poop like them.
EricNYCity
I”m sure one of those toilets will be occupied by a KGB agent at all times. 😉
Darling Nikki
Perhaps this was designed by Larry Craig, eliminating the need for a wide stance.
There is NO WAY that 2 dudes using these thrones at the same time wouldn’t be bumping knees. But I digress.
There are things just better kept a “mystery”, but then again Putin has nothing to hide. And this is quite militaristic.
yaoming
Could be worse – it could be two squat-toilets next to each other (or just one, for that matter)
hephaestion
I’m sure our Afghanistan War veterans can all tell of FAR worse places to defecate. And I recall a toilet in the Kiev, Ukraine, Botanical Garden that was just a very gross hole in the floor that you had to squat over. In Russia I never saw 2 toilets together before but I did see a lot of people that had a toilet in one room and the sink and shower in another room.
Christopher.
Wonder what this setup will look like once people have actually started using these “facilities”.
Throbert McGee
I lived in Moscow in the early ’90s and sometimes had occasion to use public toilets — though I tried to avoid them! — but all the ones I saw had normal partitioned stalls for the “thrones.” (But often just one communal trough-urinal.)
As to the lack of toilet paper — that’s why God made newspapers so absorbent, you ignorant _pindosy_! 😉
Harley
As long as no children are in there then shouldn’t have any problem with gay “propaganda”.
Shirley M. Godfrey
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Kieru
While I share your distaste for public bathrooms (urinals are the most awful thing ever) there is something far more insidious happening here. Unless you are using the Royal “We” or are, in fact, multiple people… for the love of all that is holy just say “I”.
krystalkleer
the other seat no doubt is fer the undercover nono homo popo!