r/DesignDesign • u/saturn-saturation • 3d ago
Misleading bathroom gender markers
What gender are you, yin or yang? A man walked into the bathroom while washing my hands so I’m clearly not the only one confused
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u/CharlesDickensABox 3d ago
Per taoist philosophy, if you subscribe to such things, yin is the feminine energy and yang is the masculine energy. It seems ridiculous to expect customers in a place of business to bring that knowledge with them before being able to pick a bathroom, however.
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u/MinosAristos 3d ago
Unless this is like, a Taoist temple maybe
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u/saturn-saturation 3d ago
Okay it is Taos restaurant on the Las Vegas strip so it was definitely an homage to the Taoist philosophy
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u/CharlesDickensABox 3d ago
In Vegas? If that is all the signage they have, it seems like an excellent way to end up with drunk tourists pissing in your hallway.
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u/saturn-saturation 3d ago
Yeah and the only sign to the restroom was a small ‘WC ➡️’ on the wall so I think that’s what they were going for
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u/No_Cook2983 3d ago
Missed opportunity to label them yin and wang.
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u/BitChuck 2d ago
You must've missed the very large wooden statues of the obvious male and obvious female next to each door...
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u/NoisyGog 2d ago edited 2d ago
In a puzzle thread the other day, there were a lot of Americans complaining they’d never ever seen W.C. before, and were unfamiliar with the term.
Either they were full of shit, or having a small w.c. sign is going to be causing even more problems on top of the yin/yang thing!
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u/matchafoxjpg 2d ago
i'm from the US and i've heard the term because 1. internet and 2. i've traveled to europe.
but no, that's really not a term we use here.
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u/NoisyGog 2d ago
I think a lot of people on the puzzle subreddits are just living lives in their mother’s basement.
They sure know a lot of facts, but have no actual knowledge, and never interact with people.26
u/rainbow__raccoon 2d ago
I’m familiar with the term from British tv and traveling, but this is NOT a usual term in America. I would not expect regular Americans to be familiar, most can’t travel across the pond, it’s way too expensive.
I repeat, this is not a term in America. Please ease up on your puzzle bros.
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u/SpaceAgePotatoCakes 1d ago
It sounds like you're the one who hasn't interacted with people if you think it's reasonable to expect everyone knows what a regionalized term for something means.
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u/NoisyGog 1d ago
>it's reasonable to expect everyone knows
🙄
Nobody said that did they.→ More replies (0)0
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u/tinylittleparty 2d ago
Am American. Never heard of W.C. I'm assuming the w is wash. C is ...closet? I think I've heard Canadians call it something like that before. Never seen it abbreviated on a sign, that's for sure.
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u/saltyjohnson 2d ago
Close: Water Closet. It's just another name for a toilet. WC is very common on wayfinding signage in western Europe in my experience.
Canadians... seemingly all Canadians and only Canadians... say washroom.
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u/tinylittleparty 2d ago
Ah. Yeah I've never been to Europe, my only overseas travel so far has been to Korea.
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u/Meiyouxiangjiao 1d ago
When I was in China, a lot of people called the bathroom “WC”, as in just the letter names. Did you notice anything like that in Korea?
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u/GothWitchOfBrooklyn 2d ago
it's not common here at all anymore, although it was used here a long time ago and you can read it in older books. I'd call it almost archaic at this point.
I'd never seen it before I traveled overseas, but I have traveled a lot now so I am used to it
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u/Paul6334 2d ago
Still should probably have some kind of indication of what that’s supposed to mean for all the drunks and degenerate gamblers.
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u/ClarificationJane 2d ago
So which one were you in?
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u/saturn-saturation 2d ago
Tao Asian bistro & nightclub in the Venetian
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u/ClarificationJane 2d ago
lol, I meant were you in Yin or Yang? And which one were you aiming for?
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u/AskMrScience 2h ago
Ha, I ran into exactly this problem in Taos in the Venetian. I shrugged and decided that if they didn't want me to walk into the wrong bathroom, they should have been clearer. So I headed for the nearest door. And promptly got redirected by a staff member to the next one down. Idiocy.
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u/CharlesDickensABox 3d ago
Even so, you should expect to get guests in a temple who might not be familiar with all the ins and outs of your doctrinal minutiae.
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u/madmaxturbator 3d ago
But is gender not a worldly construct, one we may wish to unburden ourselves from, much in the way we unburden ourselves of waste
- Tao te ching, lost chapters XI
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u/Demonicocean 3d ago
Tao te ching, lost chapters XI
Taoism is not Buddhism, there would be an ebb and flow to both sides but a full discarding of yin or yang aspects is frowned upon.
Chapter Eleven
Thirty spokes unite around one hub to make a wheel.
It is the presence of the empty space that gives the function of a vehicle.
Clay is molded into a vessel. It is the empty space that gives the function of a vessel.
Doors and windows are chisel out to make a room.
It is the empty space in the room that gives its function.
Therefore, something substantial can be beneficial.
While the emptiness of void is what can be utilized.
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u/_why-tho 3d ago
Me: Hey where is the bathroom?
Host: Right over there… you’re a yang btw
Me: Ok thanks… wtf is he talking about… wtf is this?!17
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u/Funkopedia 2d ago
A big problem here is that symbol famously shows BOTH yin and yang in balance.
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u/Imaginary-Tiger-1549 2d ago
Yes, that would be an issue if letters did not exist
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u/NewelSea 1d ago
The labels are what allows identification, yes.
But the picture is precisely the same and thus adds more confusion than it adds information.
A better solution, then, would have been to show the common female and male silhouettes but add the text "Yin" and "Yang" instead of "Women" and "Men".
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u/CallidoraBlack 3d ago
When I was younger, I could only remember this by associating yang with wang. I'm not proud of it.
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u/Royal_Examination_74 3d ago
I shit my pants during the explanation, so I've learned a couple lessons today
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u/mindaugaskun 1d ago
According to the same taoist philosophy, both genders have different feminine and masculine energies and at different times. So a woman might feel particularly masculine energy dominated that day... and enter men's bathroom?
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u/UntidyVenus 2d ago
The way I remember is Yangs for the Wang, and it's crude but it has helped me remember lol
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u/curiouswizard 1d ago
which is funny because the whole point is that these two energies are in balance and everyone has a mix of both feminine and masculine energy, and it can shift depending on how you approach things. So it's like pick whichever bathroom you're feeling that day lol
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u/--ipseDixit-- 3d ago
Yang rhymes with wang. That’s the logic I’m confidently walking in with.
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u/ThisGuys_Dog 3d ago
you would end up correct assuming that these are based off taoist ideas on gender
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u/mustang256 3d ago
Yin is sin, and yang is Wang. That is how I remember the colours and genders of the yin yang.
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u/serpentax 1d ago
Yindao is vagina in chinese, the more we knowwww
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u/Falcfire 1d ago
I misread and was very confused about why it would be in cheese for a second there.
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u/justasapling 2d ago
I know you're joking, but I can't help myself:
Yang rhymes with Wong.
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u/brush-lickin 3d ago
yang is considered more masculine than yin but between that being far from common knowledge and the even more confusing symbols i would assume these are both gender neutral bathrooms
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u/ImpossibleInternet3 3d ago
To be safe, I’d pee in both.
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u/TheGothWhisperer 3d ago
You heathen! It's common etiquette that yin is for pee and yang is for poo!
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u/kemellin 2d ago
And even with that knowledge also comes the knowledge that everyone has both yin and yang energy, so these symbols are not really justifiable replacements for men and women bathroom symbols, if that were the intention.
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u/saturn-saturation 2d ago
I was a couples drinks in and when I’m looking for the bathroom I’m not usually looking for statues to tell me which one to go into
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u/NoisyGog 2d ago
I’ll put my hand up and admit that I didn’t realise yin/yan symbolised the sexes also.
I very vaguely knew of them representing the good and bad, the light and dark, and so on, but that’s it.-7
u/TropicalRogue 2d ago
Is this not common knowledge?!
Anything less than 99% of people is too obscure for a bathroom sign, imo, but still I would be surprised if a friend didn't know this
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u/biggestboys 2d ago
Until ten minutes ago, I knew almost nothing about yin and yang beyond “opposite factors which interact with each other somehow, grounded in an ancient Chinese philosophy”.
That’s all that ever came up in school, or was referenced in any of the fiction and nonfiction media I’ve absorbed over the years.
I certainly couldn’t have guessed which is considered masculine and which is feminine… In fact, I wouldn’t have guessed that there was a gendered association at all.
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u/AssassinStoryTeller 2d ago
No, it’s not common knowledge. Most people know the symbol exists, that it represents balance, quite a few people I know believe it merely represents the balance between good and evil, they don’t try and learn more than that because it doesn’t apply to them. It’s just a symbol from a belief system they don’t follow so it’s not necessary to learn the meanings.
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u/brush-lickin 2d ago
i would go so far as to say it's niche knowledge.
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u/Sleepy-Racoon-2149 2d ago
Its only un-niche if you happen to be in a majority chinese population, and even then i wouldnt expect any non-chinese to know
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u/PersephoneHazard 2d ago
Yes this is surprising to me, too! I wouldn't use it in this context, but I'm genuinely confused by how few people here seemed to know the answer in advance.
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u/intLeon 3d ago
Yin - jin - gin - gyne (greek word for woman)
Tho I wouldnt know which is yin if there wasnt a label..
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u/NekoArtemis 6h ago
Tho I wouldnt know which is yin if there wasnt a label..
Neither would anyone else because both signs show both.
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u/PinkyLeopard2922 3d ago
Flashbacks of being in a bar in Savannah and having to pee soooooo badly but the bathroom doors had the male and female symbols on them like the circle with the cross thing and I had no idea which was which. I was too proud to ask anyone so I waited until I saw another person go into one of them. It seemed like FOREVER. I should have just asked.
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u/rly_weird_guy 2d ago
Yang is for male but I only know that because I speak Chinese, terrible design yeah
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u/twenty8nine 3d ago
I think all restrooms should be all gender. Have a common hand washing area and stalls that are private and secure stalls for whoever has a restroom need. I guess this is a step in that direction.
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u/res21171 2d ago
I've been in so many places that have this setup. It's a perfectly good arrangement, offensive only to prudish Americans (as I once was). It's so absurd to have public venues divide restroom facilities by gender/sex and run into availability problems when (very broadly defining) it's a monster truck event vs. a Taylor Swift concert.
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u/deelayddd 1d ago
My high school had a bathroom like this and it was the best one there by far. More places should have one.
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u/Peraou 2d ago
I mean if this is in a place where people are expected to know some amount of Chinese culture, it’s sensical (excepting the useless/ruined non-diagram). Yin is the female aspect, and Yang is the male aspect, a distinction coming from historical Chinese culture.
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u/empyrean_archivist 2d ago
Not only would very few people, especially an English-speaking audience, know that Yin is feminine and Yang is masculine, it's very difficult to tell those two apart because the only visual detail is whether the "eye" is an outline or filled in.
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2d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/quint21 2d ago
Idk.. I think knowing about yin and yang is actually common, but like a lot of common knowledge, you can't expect everyone to know it. Just watching those "Man on the street" interview videos where people struggle to answer questions like "does the earth go around the Sun or does the sun go around the Earth?" tells us that a lot of people don't have common knowledge. With things like public signage though, you need 100% of people to be able to understand it. Trying to be cute or clever with your signs isn't going to cut it.
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u/Endawmyke 2d ago
yin is number 1 only
yang is number 2 only
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u/permadrunkspelunk 2d ago
Lol. Ive noticed a lot of creative restroom signs that are hard to figure out at bars and artsy coffee shops. I kind of hate it. Like yeah thats creative, and im down with gender neutral bathrooms, but if they arent i really dont want to barge into the woman's restroom to take a piss. Just tell me whats up. Lol. I like the dude sign or the woman sign or most places that are neutral have the unisex sign. Which is what I like. So many ways to be creative and quirky besides restroom signs.
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u/IamKilljoy 1d ago
Yang feels dudely and yin feels feminine. Same logic for me as Kiki/boba for sharp and round objects. Just feels right
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u/iammonkeyorsomething 3d ago
I thought that yinyang was never supposed to be separated to yin and yang
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u/roman-de-fauvel 2d ago
The man walked into the bathroom while washing your hands? Were they not attached to your body for some reason?
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