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Our bathrooms weren’t always separated by sex

According to Terry Kogan, public "multi-user" restrooms didn't really exist in America until the 1870s.
flickr user Ted Eytan
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According to Terry Kogan, public "multi-user" restrooms didn't really exist in America until the 1870s.

Our conversation with Terry Kogan

Deciding who should be allowed to use what bathroom has consumed a lot of attention across the country, and certainly here in Michigan.

With all the controversy about public restrooms and transgender people using the ones that match their gender identity, let's roll back the years to figure out just how sex-segregated bathrooms came to be in the first place.

Terry Kogan is a professor at the University of Utah's College of Law. He has spent the past decade considering the rights of transgender people, and the public restroom question in particular. 

Kogan joined us today to talk about bathroom history in America, and when and why we started separating public restrooms by biological sex. 

GUEST

Terry Kogan is a law professor at the University of Utah.

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