The recent introduction of laws that regulate whether transgender people can use the facilities that align with their gender identities has brought the issue of bathroom sex segregation to the forefront of national conversations. Some have proposed that the solution may lie in gender-neutral facilities, while others worry about what the consequences might be. But, while efforts to prohibit gender intermingling in restrooms have taken on a new focus, the roots of the debate date back over a century.

Though the first sex-segregated toilets were established in Paris in the 1700s, regulations requiring that American men and women use separate restrooms got their start in the late 1800s. The first regulation requiring separate toilet facilities for men and women was passed in 1887, when Massachusetts required the establishment of separate privies in businesses. “Wherever male and female persons are employed in the same factory or workshop, a significant number of separate and distinct water-closets, earth-closets, or privies shall be provided for the use of each sex and should be plainly designated,” the law reads. In the next line, mixed use of such facilities is prohibited. Over the course of the next three decades, nearly every state passed its own version of that law.

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But the rules that govern who pees where in public spaces were not created simply because of physical differences between men and women that affect how bathrooms are used. “One might think that it makes perfect sense, that bathrooms are separated by sex because there are basic biological differences,” says Terry Kogan, a law professor at the University of Utah. “That’s completely wrong.”

Kogan, who has done extensive research on the history of sex-segregation in public restrooms, tells TIME that the policies came about as a result of social anxieties about women’s places in the world.

MORE: ‘Little Rock Nine’ Student: Transgender Bathroom Debate Is Part of Civil Rights Fight

Social norms of the period dictated that the home was a woman’s place. Even as women entered the workplace, often in the new factories that were being built at the time, there was a reluctance to integrate them fully into public life. Women, policymakers argued, were inherently weaker and still in need of protection from the harsh realities of the public sphere. Thus, separate facilities were introduced in nearly every aspect of society: women’s reading rooms were incorporated into public libraries; separate train cars were established for women, keeping them in the back to protect them in the event of a crash; and, with the advent of indoor bathrooms that were then in the process of replacing single-person outhouses, separate loos soon followed. The suggested layouts of restrooms, says Kogan, were designed to mimic the comforts of home—think curtains and chaise lounges.

“[Ladies’ rooms] were adopted to create this protected haven in this dangerous public realm,” says Kogan.

Today, even though society’s views on women have largely shifted, sex-segregated bathrooms remain the custom.

Why? Because major plumbing codes in the U.S. use a public building’s capacity to dictate how many restrooms should be built, and those codes specify that men and women’s facilities should be separate. The codes even mandate a minimum number of toilets and urinals per sex. Often, those formulas result in more facilities being made available for men than for women, despite famously long lines for ladies’ rooms.

MORE: The Everyday Sexism of Women Waiting in Public Toilet Lines

There have been efforts to chip away at the inequity facing the sexes in bathrooms—in 1987 California signed the Restroom Equity Act, which said new public projects needed to include more restrooms for women. Similar ordinances were adopted in cities across the U.S., but in many places there is still a reluctance to neutralize bathrooms in terms of gender.

As the debate over bathrooms has shifted, some of the arguments policymakers are using to defend the status quo ring may ring familiar to those familiar with bathrooms’ history: the idea that separate facilities will protect women from harm remains. Two North Carolina lawmakers have said that eliminating separate bathrooms would “deny women their right to basic safety and privacy.” Research does show that trans people may be at risk in bathroom situations—a 2013 survey by the Williams Institute found that 70% of trans people reported experiencing denial of access, verbal harassment or physical assault in an attempt to use the bathroom—but Kogan says the idea that all women are in increased danger in mixed or gender-neutral bathrooms doesn’t make sense, as predators “are not waiting for permission to dress up like a woman to go into bathrooms.”

“It’s a total red herring,” Kogan told TIME, “that men will use these new laws related to protecting transgender people as ways to attack women and children.”

(Yahoo News)

BAGHDAD (AP) — A wave of bombings struck outdoor markets and a restaurant in Shiite-dominated neighborhoods of Baghdad on Tuesday, killing at least 69 people, officials said — the latest in deadly militant attacks far from the front lines in the country's north and west where Iraqi forces are battling the Islamic State group.

In an online statement, IS claimed responsibility only for the deadliest bombing of the day, which took place in Baghdad's northeastern Shaab neighborhood and where at least 34 people were killed and 75 others were wounded.

In that attack, a roadside bomb first exploded outside the concrete blast walls surrounding the open-air market, followed by a suicide bomber who blew himself up as people gathered to help the victims of the first explosion, a police officer said.

The IS statement said the attack was carried out by an Iraqi who targeted members of Shiite militias. The Associated Press could not verify the authenticity of the statement but it was posted on a militant website commonly used by extremists.

Tuesday's bombings were just the latest in a wave of attacks in Baghdad and surrounding areas that has left more than 200 dead over the past week. The attacks, many claimed by IS, come as the group has lost significant chunks of territory to Iraqi ground forces over the past year.

As the Islamic State militants are pushed back along front lines, the group is increasingly turning to insurgency-style attacks to detract from their losses, Iraqi and coalition officials say.

Iraq is also in the midst of a political crisis that has gridlocked the country's government. While Iraqi security officials say they are concerned political instability is distracting from the fight against IS, some analysts say the extremist group is launching the attacks at a time of political crisis in an attempt to further delegitimize the Iraqi government.

Shortly after the Shaab attack, a parked car bomb struck a fruit-and-vegetable market in the Shiite-dominated neighborhood of Dora, in southern Baghdad, killing eight people and wounding 22 others, a police officer said.

In Baghdad's sprawling eastern Shiite district of Sadr City, a suicide car bombing hit a crowded outdoor market, killing 18 people and wounding 35 others. In northeast Baghdad, a suicide bomber targeted a restaurant in the Habibiya neighborhood, killing nine and wounding 18.

Medical officials confirmed the casualty figures. All officials spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to talk to reporters.

Commercial and public places in Shiite-dominated areas are among the most frequent targets for the Sunni militants seeking to undermine the Iraqi government efforts to maintain security inside the capital. But the Islamic State has not confined its latest attacks only to Baghdad.

Earlier Tuesday, Iraqi oil workers resumed work at a natural gas plant north of Baghdad, two days after a coordinated IS dawn assault left at least 14 people dead there, a senior Oil Ministry official said.

Sunday's spectacular attack in the town of Taji, about 20 kilometers (12 miles) north of Baghdad, saw a suicide car bombing at the facility's main gate, followed by several IS fighters breaking into the plant where they clashed with security forces for hours before the attackers were repelled.

The dead included six civilians and eight security forces while 27 Iraqi troops were wounded. Closed-circuit television images showed an explosion that sent thick black smoke rising above the plant. As flames engulfed the facility and nearby palm trees, pedestrians were seen running for cover. The top of one of the gas-processing units was blown off.

Clashes lasted for hours before Iraqi troops managed to repel the attackers.

On Tuesday, work at the plant's three production lines returned "to normal levels," said Deputy Oil Minister Hamid Younis.

The plant was back to full capacity of producing 30,000 cooking gas cylinders a day, he said, adding that Sunday's attack had only damaged two gas storages and a few pipelines. Iraqi state TV showed workers in navy blue overalls filling metal and plastic cylinders on conveyor belts and forklift trucks loading cylinders into trucks.

In 2014 after the Islamic State group blitzed across Iraq and declared an Islamic caliphate on the territory it holds in Iraq and Syria, the extremists were estimated to hold nearly a third of Iraqi territory. Since then Iraq's government says the group's hold has shrunk to just 14 percent of Iraq.

However, despite battlefield successes against IS, Iraq's political leadership is in disarray. Parliament has not met for more than two weeks after supporters of influential Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr stormed Baghdad's highly fortified Green Zone. The breach followed repeated delays to government reform legislation that lawmakers claimed would fight Iraq's entrenched corruption.

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Associated Press writers Murtada Faraj and Qassim Abdul-Zahra in Baghdad contributed to this report.

(Yahoo News)