The bathroom debate

By Marilú Acosta

Being able to debate (and insult each other) about whether or not a penis and its testicles can share a bathroom with vaginas should provoke enormous gratitude. The sixth sustainable development goal (SDG) for 2030 is to ensure access to clean water and sanitation for all, for which - it seems to me - we are well behind schedule. With figures from 2022, 43.75% of humans (3.5 billion people) do not have adequate services for the treatment and disposal of human excreta and wastewater. This leads to a problem of access to clean drinking water for 22.5% of the world's population (2.2 billion people). 18.5% (1.5 billion people) lack a toilet on which to debate. Although many washed their hands of the recent issue of which genetic code corresponds to which toilets, 25% of the world's people have no adequate place to wash their hands, of which 8.17% have absolutely nothing to do so. Yes, in a country as complex as Mexico, in a city as chaotic as Mexico City, in a space as public as the Cineteca Nacional, within a government as first-people-good-and-what-horror-the-privilege as the fourté, we have an (aggressive) discussion of the privileged.

The reason for the existence of public toilets is to avoid contaminating drinking water and prevent epidemics of gastrointestinal diseases, a need that has been identified for more than 5 thousand years by different cultures in different parts of the world. For millennia, in public toilets, friendships were made, business deals were closed or political meetings were held. If bathrooms were discussed, it was to improve the drainage system and reduce the odor that came out of them.