In New Zealand, they don’t hesitate to use the word “female.” The signs for public rest rooms there (and in Australia) read, unabashedly, “Female Toilet” and “Male Toilet.” Some hairsplitters would argue that a toilet is just a toilet, regardless of which gender is using it; the porcelain itself has no characteristics that would identify it as male or female. Many Americans, myself included, will be less put off by the “male” and “female” labels than by the use of “toilet.” In this magazine, for decades, the word was considered vulgar, a judgment I seem to have internalized.
Mary Norris
Birdie:
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