A dirty little peek into the mind of the opposite sex

The only example of the word love being used by men, was this example below.

MEN’S BATHROOM, SHOREDITCH, LONDON

Woman were by far the most prolific users of the word love, using it in total 39 times. It featured in 4% of all the messages left by woman, making it the most popular word used by woman. The word love was used by woman 2x more often than swear words*.

Women used the word love to show affection for people, ideas and even pop culture idols such as Amy Winehouse.

*Words considered swear words were: Fuck, Fuk, Shit, Sh*t, Cunt, Bastard, Dick, Bitch.

Woman appear to be more willing to express their feelings for the opposite sex on bathroom walls.

WOMAN’S BATHROOM, CAMDEN, LONDON

Due to mens inability to see these messages, we concluded that women are likely directing the messages at other woman. Romantic sentiment was ascertained by looking for familiar romantic sentence structures such as: ‘Selina 4 Cody’  and key words i.e.:  ‘I love john’. While men did used female names in public bathrooms, it wasn’t for affectionate purposes, but to express their dislike or sexual prowess.

The sex of the names were confirmed using open source data from the United Kingdom census via the website genderchecker.com*. Woman wrote people’s names 111 times however only 37 times was there a romantic sentiment for someone with a male name. Although men wrote names 46 times, not once was there a romantic or affectionate sentiment.

*Genderchecker.com uses a strict approach to deeming the sex of a name. Using data from the 2001 and 2011 UK census, they can cross reference to see if a name (say john) ever appeared as both male and female. If it did (for example the name Alex) it would be deemed neither male or female and only as unisex.

Men were much more likely to use intimidating or aggressive language. 8% of all messages by men were abusive, compared with only 1% by women.

MEN’S BATHROOM, SOHO, LONDON

Men and women were called out by first and last names and for a variety of reasons. Even toilet ‘pissers’ were on the radar by pen wielding men. The above example was typical of the abusive messages left by men.

Women are not only less aggressive towards each other but are, in fact, more encouraging to their fellow women.

WOMEN’S BATHROOM, SHOREDITCH, LONDON

If ever a little unsure of yourself, there is likely a positive message to be found in the loo. There were 74 pieces of advice or quotes in the female bathrooms. A minuscule 14 in the men.

Excluding illustration, men referred to sex  in 5% of all messages. This included everything from bragging about sexual prowess, to asking for sex or even just this simple message about sex and poo.

MEN’S BATHROOM, PECKHAM, LONDON

Men left 4 phone numbers on the bathroom wall. Which made up 1% of all messages by men.

MEN’S BATHROOM, SOHO, LONDON

Phone numbers left by males primarily had some sort of explicit behaviour request accompanying them (such as above).

Women left 3 phone numbers. While similar to the 4 by men, due to the comparably larger amount of message left by woman overall, it was accounted for 0.2% of all messages by women.

None of the numbers returned my calls.

The penis was the most common illustration. Interestingly, the second most common illustration was the love heart, having been drawn 4 times.

MEN’S BATHROOM, DALSTON, LONDON

Tagging was actually the most common marking in the men’s bathroom, making up 30% of all scrawlings. However, due to tagging commonly considered a signature with no detectable content (due to their abstract nature) they were excluded from the illustration data.

Men drew the same amount of vaginas as women did. However at only 1 each, males drew penises 5 times more often than they did vaginas.

MEN’S BATHROOM, PECKHAM, LONDON

Incidentally, females also drew penises more often than vaginas, but considering the amount of other illustrations by females, they only made up 0.14% of all female illustrations.

For every drawing of a penis found in the male bathroom, women drew 23 love hearts.

WOMEN’S BATHROOM, CAMDEN, LONDON

85% of illustrations found in the women’s bathrooms were love hearts. The love hearts were commonly used to surround names or to accompany messages. The love heart above looks to accompany a lyric from the London band Babyshambles.

There were 213 examples of illustration in the female bathroom. The below example was a particularly fine example of a penis by a female.

WOMEN’S BATHROOM, CAMDEN, LONDON

The size of the penis drawing was determined using the following technique:

Each penis illustration was divided into ‘penis’ verses ‘testicle’ ration based on the internal mass of the illustration. This was called the penis to testicle ratio. For mens illustrations it was average split of 60/40 (as in 60 percent of the illustrations ‘mass’ was penis. For the female illustrations it was a 80/20 split meaning females would give a much larger emphasis to the penis verses the testicles, making the penis in female illustrations ‘larger.’

Men used the bathroom wall as a method for expressing their opinion on everything from women to politics.

MEN’S BATHROOM, CAMDEN, LONDON

3% of all messaging in the men’s bathroom was of a public service announcement or political nature. Compared to 0.2% of woman’s messaging.

Walking into a men’s bathroom, you are significantly more likely to see a political statement than a man declaring his affection for a women. The reverse is true in the female bathroom.

There was 5 references to religion, 4 by men and 1 by woman. Men were primarily more negative with 3 of the 4 messages being negative.

MEN’S BATHROOM, DALSTON, LONDON

References included anything from religious iconography such as the Star of David to the above argument. While men far out weighed women referencing religion, men were primarily negative with 6 of the 8 messages being of a negative sentiment. The above example counted as 1 positive message for religion despite the surrounding messages.

2% of messages from both men and woman was of a humorous sentiment.

WOMEN’S BATHROOM, SHOREDITCH, LONDON

A humorous sentiment was ascertained by the sentence structure. The following is the criteria which was we used to allocate the scrawling as a joke:

It takes the form of a story, usually with dialogue, and ends in a punch line. It is in the punch line that the audience becomes aware that the story contains a second, conflicting meaning. This can be done using a pun or other word play such as irony, a logical incompatibility, nonsense or other means.

Remarkably, humour was the only time men and woman had a similar type of message or illustration used equally as often.

Popular internet acronyms (P.I.A.) are acronyms commonly found on social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

WOMEN’S BATHROOM, SHOREDITCH, LONDON

Woman out used popular internet acronyms 12 to 0. YOLO was most popular. Followed by OMG. Incidentally hashtags were also much more commonly used by woman.

Using the English Oxford dictionary as guidance, 13 spelling mistakes were documented.

MEN’S BATHROOM, DALSTON, LONDON.

This does not include grammatical errors or writing that was too illegible to include. 10 of the mistakes were committed by men. However their fellow man was often eager to correct the error – correcting 8 of the 10 spelling mistakes (as seen above).