Can I at least pee without being patronized, please?

Lately, I've been noticing a weird thing happening to semi-public women's bathrooms all over. When I first began my current job, the women's bathroom on my floor required that female prospective urinators enter a code into a little keypad on the door to the bathroom. This was not required for male prospective urinators. Fortunately, within a couple months of my employment, they removed the keypad from the door and now anyone can charge on thru as they please. I, for one, was kinda annoyed that the whole elimination process, at work anyway, required yet another step for girls that was not required of boys (ok, I'll admit, punching 4 buttons isn't a big deal).

But beyond that, I couldn't help but to feel completely patronized by the fact that it was deemed necessary for women to have this extra level of security surrounding the lifting of skirts/dropping trou that the men who work on my floor apparently do not need (when they, uh, also lift their skirts or drop their trousers!). I mean, heaven forbid one of the nerdy old guys who works for my company got a wild hair to furtively dart into the women's bathroom and then...what?...stand on a toilet so as to peer at our dimpled little knees over the partition? I suppose this is a POSSIBLE scenario, but it's HIGHLY IMPROBABLE, don't you think? Really, I do not fear for my safety at work, nor do I worry about peeping toms. At my last job? Where I acquired a few stalkers over the years? Well, that was a different story... but, even there, it was more likely that the nerdy old men (different nerdy old men, by the way) were gossiping about who'd seen my body parts rather than trying to capture their very own glimpse of them.

I bring this up because, while I'm in OH for work and working in rented office space, I couldn't help but notice a little green plaque underneath the picture of a skirt-wearing figure by the women's bathroom (in said rented office space) that read "Shelter Zone." Directly across from the women's bathroom is the men's bathroom, but there is no analogous sign underneath the pants-wearing figure's picture. There are no locks on either door and they're roughly 20 feet apart... so, I wonder exactly how sheltered a woman running into this bathroom might actually be, but that's kinda beside the point.

Why is it that there is this perception that women need all this sheltering to begin with? I mean, this is kinda the same concept as the "Take Back the Night" business, isn't it? Like somehow, we aren't able to function normally within a totally civilized office space without needing special hideouts and underground networks? Or maybe, there's an assumption that we need someplace to which we can run after a dramatic tearful exit? (Because girls LOVE to make dramatic, tearful exits at work, right?) Or maybe these shelter zones are like those menstruation tents of yore (yeah, let's send all the chicks to a smelly little room so we can get them off our hands while they're bleeding... and let's call it a "shelter zone!" Brilliant! They'll never catch on!)

In truth, I have a hunch that it's really a bunch of misguided womenfolk who are behind these little insipid security measures. I imagine they're probably very well-intentioned in that they think they're providing a safe exit to sad little girls who find themselves in sticky situations. But what they're missing is that, by assuming that women should not EXPECT to be safe in their own workplaces, they've instituted this entirely dis-empowering little practice of putting signs and keypads up in front of doors behind which women might be naked from the waist down for about 90 seconds at a time.

And I suppose these small measures are resulting from various and assorted workplace problems that have arisen and have since been categorized under the heading of Sexual Harassment. And sure, women (and men) should not be physically assaulted in their offices. Nor should women's (and men's) employment or promotional status or payscale be affected by their gender or sexual habits. Nor should women (or men) have to put up with anyone continually infusing the professional atmosphere with sexual entendres (OK, fine, I'll admit, I'm a little guilty of this one). But the fact that women (and men, but particularly women) should have an EXPECTATION of freedom from all these things should render the aforementioned keypads and signs unnecessary. And because they SHOULD be unnecessary, I can't help but feel that their presence is entirely condescending and infantalizing (oh, please, big, tough keypad! Take care of me, save me, for I am weak and cannot handle the mere threat of someone watching me pee! *simper*).

Can we all just agree that the first step to not feeling victimized is NOT assuming that women are, by definition or by nature, victims in the first place? Please?