Researching Female Public Toilets: Gendered Spaces, Disciplinary Limits

I have always been drawn to study intimate yet public spaces – most notably Victorian ladies’ public lavatories and American honeymoon suites. Such research raises larger questions concerning the legitimacy of certain objects of inquiry and of feminist and interdisciplinary work in general. This paper aims to go behind the curtain of academic research and to think about the challenges one faces “back-stage” when investigating spaces or objects connected intimately to sexuality and the gendered body