Posted by Jay Livingston
Where Americans see sin that should be punished, Europeans often see a problem that needs a solution. Drug policy is the obvious and important example. Our forty-year prison-bulging moral panic contrasts with policies in the Netherlands, for example, which focused less on righteous punishment for offenders and more on reducing harm.
The same rational, non-moralistic approach applied to sex was the topic of a recent “Friday Flashback” post by Lisa Wade at Sociological Images (here), posted originally in 2010. Lisa mentioned Dutch government policies on prostitution – Amsterdam’s red-light districts for legal and regulated prostitution may be more famous even than the cannabis-selling coffee shops. But her example was from Scotland
Julieta R. sent in this picture, shot by her friend at the Aberdeen Pub in Edinburgh, Scotland. Sex in the bathroom, it appears, had begun to inconvenience customers. But, instead of trying to eradicate the behavior, the Pub just said: “Ok, fine, but just keep it to cubicle no. 4.” |
This flashed me back to post (here) from 2007. I’m not too proud to recycle my garbage, especially since our moralistic approach to problems came up in class last week. So here is that post again in slightly altered form.
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Men can be slobs, especially at the urinal.
At airports, for example, jet lagged travelers, men at least, tended to be, how shall we put it, careless? aimless?
What to do?
Americans tend to frame problems in moralistic terms. If something is wrong, drug use for example, punish the wrongdoers. And if that doesn’t work, make the penalties even harsher. Applied to the problem of spillage and splash in the men’s room, we might expect to see signs warning: “No Spillage or Spraying. Penalty $500 fine.”
The Dutch have a more practical approach, more focused on solving a problem than on punishing evil. The Dutch also have a reputation for cleanliness. Around 1970, when the men’s rooms at the Amsterdam airport were looking and smelling like, well, like men’s rooms, Schiphol, the company that runs the Amsterdam airport, looked into the problem. And the problem was that most men weren’t looking. They simply didn’t watch where they were going. So Schiphol came up with a simple and non-punitive solution:
At airports, for example, jet lagged travelers, men at least, tended to be, how shall we put it, careless? aimless?
What to do?
Americans tend to frame problems in moralistic terms. If something is wrong, drug use for example, punish the wrongdoers. And if that doesn’t work, make the penalties even harsher. Applied to the problem of spillage and splash in the men’s room, we might expect to see signs warning: “No Spillage or Spraying. Penalty $500 fine.”
The Dutch have a more practical approach, more focused on solving a problem than on punishing evil. The Dutch also have a reputation for cleanliness. Around 1970, when the men’s rooms at the Amsterdam airport were looking and smelling like, well, like men’s rooms, Schiphol, the company that runs the Amsterdam airport, looked into the problem. And the problem was that most men weren’t looking. They simply didn’t watch where they were going. So Schiphol came up with a simple and non-punitive solution:
It’s that black spot (I’ve added the red outline). Click on the photo for a larger view, and you will see that it’s a fly. Or rather, it’s a realistic picture of a fly. The idea was that men would aim for the fly – the stream would go from one fly to another (I’m sure this pun doesn’t translate to Dutch) – and the men’s room would stay cleaner.
It worked. A study by Schiphol’s social science team found that fly urinals had an 80% reduction in spillage. Some years after that, JFK hired Schiphol to run the International Arrivals Building there. So now at JFK too, the urinals have the target flies. At the Newark airport, I saw urinals with a cartoon-like bee (a realistic bee might have might have triggered a counterproductive startle and flinch). [This post is from years ago. Things at these airports may have changed.]
More recently, urinal targets have gotten even more playful. For the Europeans, there’s soccer.
It worked. A study by Schiphol’s social science team found that fly urinals had an 80% reduction in spillage. Some years after that, JFK hired Schiphol to run the International Arrivals Building there. So now at JFK too, the urinals have the target flies. At the Newark airport, I saw urinals with a cartoon-like bee (a realistic bee might have might have triggered a counterproductive startle and flinch). [This post is from years ago. Things at these airports may have changed.]
More recently, urinal targets have gotten even more playful. For the Europeans, there’s soccer.
This was still before soccer was at all popular in the US. So an American company, not to be outdone, encouraged men to piss a field goal through the uprights.
Good clean fun.
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Update, April 10: Language Log had a post yesterday not exactly on the same topic – it’s really about the perils of translation – but it does focus on signs intended to improve the aura of men’s rooms, and it’s too good to pass up.
For more information on the mis-translation go here.
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Update, April 10: Language Log had a post yesterday not exactly on the same topic – it’s really about the perils of translation – but it does focus on signs intended to improve the aura of men’s rooms, and it’s too good to pass up.
