| Psst, Lady, You're in the Wrong Room |
 From the beginning, The Cad has made it clear that women are to be romanced and celebrated. Doors are to be opened, chairs held, and whenever there’s a chill in the air and nothing but the usual feckless sweater upon their backs, we’re to remove our coats to place them about those quivering shoulders. As men, it’s our lot in life to be prepared for mercurial weather only to find ourselves in shirtsleeves, yet the receipt of a girl’s appreciatory smile will always outpace the need to ask ‘Why didn’t you wear something heavier?’ That sort of line, as we know, is only for the foolhardy. Some women, though, object to this old-fashioned sort of chivalry, claiming that even the slightest gender-based kindness is a subtle assertion of male superiority. The Cad has to collectively roll its eyes at such paranoia. Traditional courtesies such as this lie outside the arguments of equal pay and glass ceilings, and, in fact, far from wanting to see a return to the days of female subservience, The Cad encourages women to muster up the strength to achieve full one-hundred percent equality. In order to reach that plateau, however, they’re going to have to have three things: a strong mind, a strong heart, and a strong bladder. Bladder? Yes, bladder, because there’s one courtesy that men no longer want to extend to you, ladies, and that’s the use of our public facilities. Frankly, we’re tired of hearing you whine about respect and equality when you don’t show an ounce of compunction when it comes to entering a room that’s clearly marked Gents. We’re sorry your lines are long. We’re sorry that you need to fiddle with undergarments and hose and whatever else you got going on down there. We’re sorry that it’s always an emergency, but if women want men to think of them as equals, they’re going to have to micturate like equals, and that means respecting the sanctity of our toilets. After all, isn’t it true that we respect yours? Actually, most men have don’t want to use the ladies’, ever, and that’s even when the gents’ is broken and we’re directed to a ladies’ single-seat affair. Though we know no one else can get in once the door is bolted, if it’s marked Ladies, we see it as Ladies, eternally, and despite the emergency we might have on our hands, we’ll sort of helplessly stand there for a bit, wondering what it is we’re going to find on the other side of that door. Will there be a machine, or worse, the remnants thereof? Squeamishness? A sign of immaturity? Hardly. Our abhorrence to using the Ladies has nothing to do with either. It’s about respecting privacy - yours - and when we do finally use the facility, our exit is made surreptitiously and with deep feelings of guilt. Not so for women, though, I’ve noticed, who are freely dropping their drawers in men’s rooms around the world, exiting with a coy smile that says, ‘I know I did wrong but isn’t it so amusing that I had gone where I shouldn’t, and it’ll be our little secret so, ‘shhh.’ ‘Don’t get cutesy with me lady,’ I always want to say. You women need to go where you’re supposed to go, and while you’re doing that, just consider that if it were the other way around, if a man were caught in the ladies’, bouncers and guards would be summoned, authorities notified, and in some transgender those - that - had - them - but - now - don't - or - didn’t - but - now - sport - them cases, medical experts dispatched. And even though you may be one of those women who is completely comfortable with the idea of attending to nature in a mixed environment, your relaxed inhibitions don’t automatically bestow you the right to invade, this, our most sacred chamber of male effluence. In short, ladies, if you want respect and equality, you’re going to have to realize that it’s a two-way flush. I certainly don’t know how you’re going to fix this, ladies. Go faster? Exercise your bladders? It’s something you’ll have to work out amongst yourselves. All I know is that I view your inability to restrain yourself from using the gents’ as a sign of weakness and therefore detrimental to your cause: strong women don’t use the men’s room – strong women do the dance. As of late, however, there’s been a movement to solve this problem by getting rid of gender-based restrooms altogether, the argument being that modesty is antiquated. If that should happen, I don’t know where I’m going to go. I don’t even like going when I have guests in the house. Jack Newcastle Publisher, Editor-in-Chief The Cad
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