Creating a Positive Bathroom Culture: A Lesson from the Geosciences

Mo and Merilie are the co-authors of  “Feeling Relieved: Creating a Positive Bathroom Field Culture in the Geosciences,” published in 2024. The article raises concerns about how the lack of discussion about bathroom practices may negatively impact those doing fieldwork in the geosciences, particularly when hierarchical power dynamics are in play, and offers suggestions to mitigate this problem. 

The geosciences are far from the only discipline or area of work where lack of discourse about bathroom matters creates problems. I believe Merilie and Mo’s experiences and research are relevant to any conversation about bathrooms and equity. 

Mo (they/them) is an Associate Professor in the Earth and Environmental Science Department at Acadia University in Nova Scotia, Canada. They spend a lot of time outdoors, for work and pleasure, and state that going to the bathroom outside is very common for them. “I have a bladder the size of a walnut,” Mo reported.

Merilie (she/her) is a geologist at the Northwest Territories Geological Survey in northern Canada. She does fieldwork in remote areas and loves to cross-country ski, rock climb, and canoe. She tried a stand-to-pee device five years ago and hasn’t looked back! Her portions are in italics. 

This isn’t an article that comes out of blue nowhere. Clearly there was a need for this to be said. What’s the story, and why did you write this? 

Mo: [Laughs] This is all Merilie’s brainchild. I’ll just say it straight out. Merilie was waxing poetic about stand-to-pee devices for over a decade, maybe more—

Merilie: No, because I only used one for the first time in 2020. 

Mo: No Merilie. Impossible. It seems like my whole life. [Laughs] In 2022, Merilie and I decided, because Merilie loved the stand-to-pee device so much, that we were going to give a talk together at a national-level conference. There were so many people who loved it and were interested, so I think it just came from then. But it was all Merilie’s love for the pStyle, and stand-to-pee devices period.

Merilie: The more people we talked to about it, the more it was clear that everyone has a story, from some point in their career, about something negative that happened related to going to the bathroom in the field. It seemed like a really important topic. 

The reason I first got a stand-to-pee device was—actually, I didn’t think that I needed one. But, I was assisting with this field trip. The field trip leader was not giving the students time to go to the bathroom. I went on two field trips with that group. At the end of the first one, I was chatting with a student, and she told me that she had stopped drinking water because she never knew when there would be a chance to go to the bathroom. 

And I was like, “Oh no, I let that happen on my watch!” 

And then a few weeks later, at the second trip, I was chatting with one of the male students, and he told me he was so distressed because everyone in his car had to poop.

After that trip, I was like, “I’m going to get one of those stand-to-pee devices, and then I can at least advise the students on SOMETHING, even if they have no control over anything else.” 

And yeah, turns out stand-to-pee devices are just the best thing since sliced bread! 

Mo: Some might say better. [Laughs] You can slice your own bread. 

Tell me a little bit about “the field.” When you say, “We’re doing fieldwork,” what is the bathroom situation like?

Merilie: Where I work right now, we’ll go out for ten days in a pretty remote area, and the standard operating procedure here is to dig a pit toilet, and have a folding chair that goes over the top, then cut a hole in the seat and duct-tape a toilet seat to it. If it’s really fancy there will be a tarp to cover it from rain, or some netting to protect from mosquitos.

So that’s pretty deluxe and makes things easy while you’re in camp.

Then I use a pStyle when we’re out during the day, and I also like to use it in my tent at night, so I don’t have to get up to pee in the night, or if it’s raining. 

Mo: In the article, we define “field work” as a circumstance where you are not in your typical workplace where you would have access to a washroom. This can look different for different folks. In my job, I take students on three-hour-long field trips, or a week-long field school, and I do my own fieldwork where during the day I might not have access to a washroom but in the evenings I do—the situation changes. 

I would say if you’re doing field geoscience, you can expect that you are away from a useable toilet for more than a few hours. Holding it is not easy for many folks in that situation. 

Merilie: We did hear a lot of stories from people in the pandemic, where people were just doing fieldwork in the city, but because public places were closed, there wasn’t any place to go to the bathroom without going all the way back home or back to wherever their company was operating out of. 

One thing that you emphasize in your article and that I’m hearing from both of you is that it’s a problem if we don’t talk about these things! Like your car full of people who had to poop. That’s what happens when there’s no discussion, right? I’m curious as to whether you’ve had any pushback against that discussion, people saying this isn’t that big of a deal, why talk about it?

[Pause]

Mo: I have. So much. [Laughs] 

Merilie: [Laughs] Definitely! 

Mo: I’d say that in my workplace, and just my life, typically my older, white, male, high SES colleagues think that the work that we do in this realm [research on bathroom practices] is ridiculous. I’ve been dismissed, erased, mocked. I think we see a lot of pushback to this kind of discourse, especially from the “old guard.” I don’t know if you agree, Merilie?

Merilie: Yep. Definitely. There’s active pushback, and then there’s people who are like, “Oh yeah, I just came back from field school, I don’t think anyone felt that way.” [Laughs]

Mo: [Nods] Speaking for others is very common. 

Merilie: And that’s just more ignorance, I think. Or they just haven’t stopped to think about it, rather than the active pushback. I think, at least for those people, even if that’s their attitude in the conversation, we plant a seed, so that as they continue to have experiences, they might be like, “Oh wait!” [Laughs] “Maybe there is something to this.”

Mo: Yeah. Established folks who have worked in the field for a long time, they had to figure it out for themselves. They either forgot what it was like—if they struggled at all, they forgot that that had happened—or if it was easy for them, they think it should be easy for everybody. It’s that they don’t realize that people move through the world in a different way than they do.

I do think it’s a lot of assumptions. “If people have to go, they’ll just go!” That’s what I think I hear the most often from colleagues. “I don’t know why you’re making a big deal out of this, you’ll just go when you have to.” And it’s like, well, for you it might be that simple. 

Merilie: After that guy told me that everyone in his car had to poop, I went to the professor, and I said, “There’s a bunch of students who have to poop. Can we either give them some time to do that at the beginning of the next stop, or stop someplace with a bathroom so that people can go?”

And he said, “Why didn’t they do that in the campground, in the pit toilet, this morning? That’s what you’re supposed to do.” 

Mo: I love having a schedule for my bowel movements. [Laughs]

Merilie: Especially when your normal eating habits are disrupted as well! And your normal sleeping habits. And you’re maybe stressed out, also. 

His other comment was, “Well, we’re not going to be able to make it to the last stop of the day.” And I was like, “Thirty percent of the class is not really paying attention right now!” [Laughs]

Mo: Yeah. “There’s no time [for bathroom needs]” is SO COMMON. “The day is too busy.” Then you made the day too busy! [Laughs]

I’m hearing a lot about hierarchy from you right now. There are professors. There are graduate students. There are undergraduates. And it sounds like sometimes the people in positions of power are not using that power in ways that are conducive to learning. They’re making assumptions that overlook concerns related to gender, sex, ability, that kind of thing. 

Mo: We discuss perceived power levels in the article, and how those who are lower in the power structure are those that are most negatively impacted. 

In my direct sphere, those are students, early career researchers, early employees, seasonal employees, and folks from under-represented groups. Merilie, that’s probably similar to what you have in your workplace in government?

Merilie: I think I’m not so much in the hierarchy, so I have the luxury of having fewer direct confrontations about it. If I’m working with a professor, I’m just a free agent, I’m not reporting to them. The students aren’t giving me reviews, the faculty aren’t reviewing my promotion, so I think I have a lot more freedom than Mo does. Freedom not to have to deal with that sh*t! [Laughs]

I’m a young student on a field trip doing geological work. How can I advocate for myself, in terms of bathroom practices? 

Merilie: What we say in the paper is “arm yourself with information.” That’s the easiest, most independent thing you can do. You can do that in a really private way. If it’s possible, engage your peers, supervisors, and/or professors with questions. The more specific information you can get, the more everyone else will benefit too.

Mo: It makes me very sad, personally, that I always have to advocate for myself, but unfortunately it’s a reality. One of the really effective things I’ve seen done, or I do myself, is to bring it up at the beginning, and then bring it up again. 

At the beginning, before you even leave, be like, “Are there going to be bathrooms? Are we going to expect to have a bathroom?” Or, “When can we expect a pit stop?” Or, “Do I need to bring my own bathroom supplies with me?” 

But that depends on the person, whether you’re comfortable calling out or calling in. It’s a confidence thing and a power thing. I’m able to be loud and take up space. But that’s not the same for other folks. 

You published this article in 2024. What changes or additions would you make to it, if any? Or would you just DOUBLE DOWN? 

Merilie: I think I’d just double down. I might put a little more emphasis on hygiene in general. Since we wrote the article, I was in a camp that had very limited access to water, and I wish I had known more in advance about how to keep my body fresh, especially my genitals, for ten days! [Laughs] The person who had planned the camp had brought some wipes, but they were scented and I really didn’t like the scent. Looking back, I’d take wipes. I’d have a system for the wipes. Two wipes a day. One for my face, one for my body. They’d be unscented, and I could keep them in my tent and not have to worry about attracting wildlife or being grossed out by the scent.

So, I think general hygiene. It’s really a reflection of how every field situation is so different and it depends on people having different needs. I think the underlying message of the paper is that it’s really important to create that culture where people can ask questions to get what they need, because you can’t predict every scenario. What do you think, Mo? 

Mo: I think the paper is the tits. It’s the best. [Laughs] But the work’s not done, right? We have, hopefully, another paper coming out soon, that has data behind it.

We did a survey that was advertised to people who work in geoscience across Canada, and got over 500 responses. We have both categorical data and qualitative data. I think the categorical data is almost ready to go, and we may be presenting on it in a sexual health research conference in Quebec in October!

I felt like the “Feeling Relieved” paper was really important, to say like, “This is a problem,” but now that we have this data, it’s good to keep the momentum. This is an active area of research in my research group. We are doing work on it all the time and we talk about it all the time. Adding things is important! Hygiene stuff is a great add; when we do our next paper we can talk about that. 

I think it’s a conversation that needs to keep happening. 

Merilie: I’m so excited for those data. And when people say, “Oh that’s not a problem!” It will be something we can point to and say “Well…” [Laughs] 

Mo: “You sweet summer child.”

Tell me more about the research you’ve done. What is it indicating?

Mo: I think what you said earlier, Maz, was true, that it’s a gendered thing a lot of the time. It’s a marginalized or under-represented group thing. Geoscience in general is a gate-kept career choice, so being outside that very large majority just makes life harder in every way, and bathroom stuff is just one of those ways. I can be part of that problem myself.

It’s interesting because in our field we’re natural scientists so we love data! Sometimes people are really snobbish about quantitative data vs qualitative data. So I think having quantitative data is helpful! Because you can read a qualitative data study, and listen to people’s lived experiences, and still be like, [Dismissive noise]. But having a survey with hundreds of responses, from a huge spectrum of different folks in different career paths, that are all saying the same thing? I think it’s impactful. And I think it’s important to share. 

Who is benefited by shutting down discourse about bathroom practices?

Merilie: Well, in the example of this professor on the field trip I was on, it was for his own convenience. Easier to plan things if you don’t pay attention to [bathroom concerns]. It’s a lot less work.

Mo: In academia—only because that’s where I work, I’m sure it’s in government and industry everywhere—people at the top like being right and knowing everything and being really smart. Especially in academia, they like being the smartest in the room. Admitting that they’re not knowledgeable, that they’re not doing good work, especially in equity-related topics, is hard! They don’t want to feel stupid, or that they are not doing something right. That’s something I get very commonly. 

Merilie: Also, just feeling awkward! It’s the same thing as when you’re in a position of no power.  You STILL feel awkward talking about it! 

Mo: Yeah. People leading field schools for like FORTY YEARS were like, “Oh I just don’t drink water during the day, so I don’t have to go. The students always follow me and I feel uncomfortable!” Like, for real?

And yeah, we could talk about “the patriarchy,” or “systemic problems,” like all of those things for sure! But, at the individual level, I think those “little” things, like bathroom discourse, can really chip away at people’s ability to make their way if they’re in some way different. 

Any concluding thoughts?

Merilie: While women and genderqueer folks may be more likely to be impacted by these matters, they really do affect everyone on the gender spectrum. It's really about creating a culture of communication, awareness, and respect in which anyone can feel comfortable asking questions and getting their needs met.

Thanks Merilie and Mo! You can learn more about the geosciences here. You can order Merilie’s favorite device, the pStyle at thepstyle.com or check out my reviews to find what works best for you. Want to share your story? Get in touch!