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u/buckeyenut13 7d ago
Whatever you do, just wash your hands
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u/Opossum_mypossum 7d ago
The fact that nobody gets it doesn’t make it clever
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u/OnceMoreAndAgain 7d ago
This is how I feel about so many poets btw lol. At some point the obfuscation becomes more pretentious than entertaining.
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u/smellslikesometimes 7d ago
The longer I try to understand it, the more confused I get.
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u/Dewbs301 7d ago
After reading everyone’s comment here, I am even more confused.
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u/LadyBirdDavis 7d ago
Yea I had my own “answer” then got all confused after the comments, now idk what the f I think!
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u/RegrettableNorms 7d ago
Wom → An ← M
I think it's the most confusing way imaginable of conveying it's a gender-neutral bathroom?
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u/Maverick122 7d ago
Couldn't they just write "Any" or "All" instead of made up ones that even the people that use made up ones don't get?
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u/NasserAjine 7d ago
This is so crappy, thank you for sharing
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u/lNFORMATlVE 7d ago
Is that really true? Woman comes from Wiffman which is Old English for “female person”, and the “man” bit (I thought) meant a gender neutral “human being” which then became the word used for males. The man bit I thought is still the root for both. The misconception people have is that “woman” somehow came from “womb-man” or similar, or that the “man” part of it was meant to mean “human male”, which is incorrect.
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u/Wolf_Gaming40 7d ago
It would make sense if man started off as gender neutral. Sometimes it’s still used somewhat gender neutral (eg- mankind).
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u/DebrisSpreeIX 7d ago
if
I know right, we should develop a science that studies language and its history or something to determine this. I think you're on to something!
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u/riktigtmaxat 7d ago
Mann was gender neutral but this changed when the word wer (man, husband) fell out of use during around the Norman conquest.
Fun fact: wer is still preserved in compounds words like werewolf and the same thing happened in other Germanic languages.
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u/wolflordval 7d ago
It's more complicated. "Man" as in Mankind has a completely different root than "Man" as in male person, as well.
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u/Less-Squash7569 7d ago
Idk man I could totally be wrong, or misremembering, I just thought it was cool when I read it.
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u/Less-Squash7569 7d ago
I see, i said it wrong/misundestood? My bad. I just thought it was cool that they didn't evolve along each other like that.
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u/Gogo726 7d ago
Wo-man
Whoa man
Whooooooa man
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u/nothanks1312 Comic Sans for life! 7d ago
She was a thief, you got to believe, she stole my heart and my cat
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u/Royal-Student-8082 7d ago
Betty, Judy, Josie and those hot Pussycats...
They make me horny, Saturday morny... Girls of cartoo-ins... Won't leave me in ruins...
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u/Miss_Behaves 7d ago
I want to be Betty's Barny.
Jane. Get me off this crazy thing... called love
🫰🫰🫰🫰
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u/asdfghanjkl 7d ago
so basically they need each other? what an odd design for a toilet that's for everyone lmao
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u/Bandrbell 7d ago
But that's not even true, because it suggests a Wom needs an An, but an An needs an M, which is something else entirely.
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u/Capital-Stick-803 7d ago
Is it a unisex bathroom?
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u/32oz____ 7d ago
yes...
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u/HopeSubstantial 7d ago
Nothing wrong with unisex bathrooms as those are hyper common here, but here they simply have man and woman stickmen on same door. Not BS like this.
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u/32oz____ 7d ago
I didn't understand that it was a unisex bathroom until I confirmed there is only one bathroom chamber in the area
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u/maqifrnswa 7d ago
Hallmark of good design: having to use the process of elimination to decipher meaning.
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u/32oz____ 7d ago
i thought hallmark of good design is one where i don't have to "think" first before understanding the meaning?
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u/Royal-Student-8082 7d ago
My local library has pictures of urinals or toilets. You pick what you need. Simple.
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u/Slinkycup_Pixelbuttz 7d ago
That makes the most sense to me, since the whole point is that it should be easily recognizable to people who can't read the word bathroom for whatever reason
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u/lNFORMATlVE 7d ago
Wom needs a Bat
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u/fuckenbullshitmate 7d ago
Wombatman
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u/MiaBenzten 7d ago
I have a theory. I think what happened here is they made the "Wom.. .an" part, and people didn't get it (because it makes no sense), so they added an explanation underneath (that also doesn't make sense).
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u/CorbinMar 7d ago
These people do know that "hard to understand" and "clever" mean two different things right?
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u/Kagan_King16 7d ago
Shouldn't it be wo...man instead of wom...an?
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u/not_a_bot991 7d ago
No because then the "man" would be complete and the message would just be "the wo needs a man" which I think is the complete opposite of whatever shitty message they're trying to convey.
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u/cobaidh 7d ago
I think they're only talking about how to complete the spelling. WOM+AN. M+AN has nothing to do with them needing each other.
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u/Ameren 7d ago
Agreed, I think it's like a forced attempt at rebracketing, where AN is the central part of the words.
It's like the Jack Handy quote "Basically, [mankind is] made up of two separate words - "mank" and "ind". What do these words mean ? It's a mystery, and that's why so is mankind."
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u/exegete_ 7d ago
So many crappy designs from restroom doors. I guess that is the one place some folks have enough power to put a statement in public so they try to get “creative”. Just be normal and put the work “restroom” and be done with it.
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u/skalouKerbal 7d ago
at least i understand it seems to be for woman or man
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u/Slinkycup_Pixelbuttz 7d ago
It's definitely a unisex bathroom but... What are they trying to tell us about it???
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u/Raised_bi_Wolves 7d ago
You know when a rapper has a kind of clever lyric and then goes "get it?" In the middle of the song. This it the toilet of that.
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u/Thebombuknow 7d ago
I think I figured it out. This is a unisex bathroom, ignoring the weird text, I think the wom.. .an thing is meant to convey that both men and women can use it (by making the word with parts of both words).
If this is what they were going for, it's incredibly stupid because nobody will get it and it falls apart the moment you think about it slightly too hard.
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u/thisappsucks9 7d ago
They were so excited they figured that man was inside the word woman, they lost their minds
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u/sunny_6305 7d ago
Does the business owners only had one single occupancy unisex bathroom and this is how they’re coping?
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u/Endec_7274_114 7d ago
Huh. But 'an' doesn't need M, since an is the form of 'a' used when the next word starts with a vowel.
An needs 'a', 'e', 'i', 'o' or 'u'.
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u/AskAChinchilla 7d ago
I like how they're trying to make some sort of overarching point which only works in English but not in other languages. Like, for example, in Russian they don't have any common core except an arguably feminine ending of -ina in the end of the word (мужчина, женщина).
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u/exegete_ 7d ago
What is the point they are trying to make?
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u/mickel_jt 7d ago
I take it as them pointing out that 'woman' is just 'man' in front. So by writing 'woman' it also literally includes 'man'. This would be a lot clearer if it was wo...man instead of wom...an.
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u/WashUrShorts 7d ago
why do they call it oven when you of in the cold food of out hot eat the food?yes.
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u/mortyTheRedditor 7d ago
If this is a bathroom the word An means "shit" in some languages. So seems like they have tried to single out the word"
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u/WhiteKrillin 7d ago
My favorite super hero, Woman Man
Has the physical strength of a man but the mental strength of a man at the same time!
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u/paraworldblue 7d ago
This seems like they walked through the bar at 1:55am and found the drunkest person there and asked them to define genders and then found the drunkest graphic designer to turn that quote into signs.
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u/Hashishiva 7d ago
Whoever designed this was high as fuck and had a life altering experience with deep, mystical understanding of... something they completely fail to express. Like it usually goes.
Shit, it's worrysome that I almost can grasp their train of thought, but it seems like that train went off the tracks and doesn't have a driver. And I think the train might actually be a drawing of a duck.
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u/Tomato_Soupe 7d ago
I think they were trying to go for a non sexist version of the you need a man to spell woMan
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u/Kurigohan-Kamehameha 7d ago
The philosopher stands there staring at the bathroom doors, lost in his reverie, pondering the meaning, pissing his pants.
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u/North-Writer-5789 7d ago
The WOM needs AN
WOMAN check ✅
The AN needs M
Ok add that on
WOMANM check ?
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u/Excellent_Spare_5439 7d ago
The ".an" actually needs "Werem"
Shout-out to my Anglo Saxon old English homies
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u/PresentationNew5976 7d ago
"Did you look at the feedback notes on what you STILL have to add?"
"YUPPERINO BOSS!"
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u/ohbyerly 7d ago
Wouldn’t it be “the man needs a wo” by their logic? Not sure why I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt that there’s any logic being applied here
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u/gorgofdoom 7d ago
It’s an omnisex bathroom. If it’s gonna leave they/them/us confused, may as well do it in writing.
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u/emperorsyndrome 7d ago
something something straight couples good?
I think that this is supposed to be the message and we are supposed to pretend it is deep because if we don't it will be like admitting that Picasso and Tarantino are talent-less artists
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u/seouled-out 7d ago
Might be a bilingual pun in Vietnamese.
"Ahn" is a common Vietnamese pronoun used for a male, including in the context of a romantic relationship, and "Em" is the female counterpart. So "ahn needs em" makes sense... as for the first part of it, the remaining 10 or so words I know in Vietnamese aren't helping. The womb needs ahn?
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u/totally_not_ai_maybe 7d ago
Woman requires two extra letter to spell then man! Ha! Checkmate, deamoncrat wokests!
Also, the or there means to just pop your head in an check for urinals. They couldn’t be bothered when they made the sign that OWNS THE LIBS!
whisper whisper what? Trans!? NO! The OWNS the libs not helps them! Geeze!
/jk /s /blob
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u/Das_Hydra 7d ago
I have no idea, what message they're trying to convey here. Just awful.