Berlin – When we received an email in the editorial office that announced misogyny in the middle of Kreuzberg, I was astonished. The district actually has a different reputation, is considered enlightened, progressive. I drove to Hohenstaufenplatz. And saw how three brave fighters for justice stood outraged at the toilet house: men can pee there for free, women, on the other hand, have to throw in 50 cents if they have an urgent need and want to get rid of it inside.
The three men in their prime, experienced, serene, a toilet cleaner, the manager of the market in the square, the market trader who had informed us about the irritating installation, explained their displeasure to me in detail. “Here in Kreuzberg, of all places,” said the dealer several times, shaking his head. He has often been approached by customers, “they reacted with incredulous astonishment or slightly annoyed”. He himself does not like to endure the situation. “I am given an advantage (free peeing) because I am a man and this benefit is also given a physical monument in the form of a urinal. At least that’s unjust. “
There are 71 of these misogynist toilet houses in Berlin, and in the coming year there will be a total of 416 public toilets – also in other variants. Jan Thomsen, press spokesman for the Senate Department for the Environment, Transport and Climate Protection, explains the situation as follows: “Free men’s urinals were built into some of the facilities in order to avoid the optically and olfactory pee from almost exclusively men with a low-threshold Prevent offer. Fortunately, this succeeds in many places – albeit at the cost of the injustice that women cannot do the small business here for free too. “
This is not solvable in the previous system: Open urinals for women (as now for men) would not be accepted according to previous assessments and are also problematic in terms of safety. On the other hand, closed rooms with urinals that are accessible free of charge would quickly be misused and thus no longer usable for anyone. That is also the reason for the nominal fee on the normal toilet – it prevents these rooms from being used in such a way that they can no longer be used as a public toilet.
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