Everybody Poops
We need all-gender bathrooms in every business, church, and school. Here's why.
A decade ago, a colleague of mine persuaded the school where I teach to turn a men’s room in my building into an all-gender restroom. At the time I would not have admitted that I didn’t understand the need for it. Nor would I have acknowledged the fact that I avoided that restroom, even though it is right down the hall from my office. Instead, I climbed the stairs to the women’s room on an upper floor.
What was my problem? What did I think might happen to me in a genderless restroom? Would I be attacked? Would it be dirty?
Oddly enough, three decades before that, I attended a college where no restrooms were gendered. Everything was coed on campus. And it didn’t bother me in the least. Hell, we all use non-gendered bathrooms all the time: at home, in others’ homes, at small single-bathroom eateries and shops as well as big chains like Starbucks that recognize the ridiculousness of gendering toilets.
Surely you’ve witnessed the long lines of ladies waiting to enter the women’s at concerts while men saunter in and out of the men’s. Do women ever think to step out of line and use the men’s? Sometimes. And it feels like going renegade. Which is absurd.
On a trip to Chicago last month, my partner and I found ourselves frantically trying to locate non-gendered restrooms for JJ in a city we didn’t know. Before leaving, I’d been excited to learn about a phone app called Refuge Restrooms that could supply the locations of such facilities. But either the app wasn’t working or there were no such bathrooms anywhere near us.
At a celebrated deep-dish pizza joint we had the misfortune to eat at, JJ reluctantly used the women’s room while I stood guard. This was after we had located a Starbucks—only to learn they were about to close and would not let us in. Life can be cruel sometimes.
At Charmers Cafe, a wonderful little breakfast place in the Rogers Park neighborhood, their non-gendered bathroom had a broken lock. There was a sign taped to the door warning patrons: PLEASE KNOCK. I stood by again for JJ while they went.
Holes in the ground
Soon after that (I drink a lot of coffee), I stood behind a woman who was standing guard for her adult daughter. We got to chatting about the broken lock. “Really,” she wondered aloud, “what does it matter? We’re all human.”
Exactly. I spent a month in China in 2007, and public toilets were holes in the ground one crouched over. I won’t lie and say I got used to them, but folks in China are accustomed to them and would surely find them preferable—and more hygienic—to our toilets, upon which we place the bare flesh of our asses.
Earlier this summer, on the road in Vermont, we had to use the gendered restrooms at a convenience store. JJ was nervous. They are looking far more masculine now, having been on testosterone for a year and a half. Yet they don’t feel comfortable going into men’s rooms (which are “scary” and “dirty”), and they worried they will be “hate-crimed” if they use the ladies.’
Imagine your own child turning “hate crime” into a verb.
“Family”
Anyway, the men’s was closed for cleaning, so JJ and I waited till the women’s was empty and slipped in. My partner, Peter, also had to pee, so JJ and I stood guard while he did his business. It felt like being in a Monty Python sketch—if only it were funny.
This whole conundrum could be solved if businesses and institutions did one of two things: either provide single-stall, non-gendered restrooms in numbers sufficient to handle demand, or provide a non-gendered alternative to larger restrooms with multiple stalls. Not just a “family restroom,” God help me (those are always locked at the airports).
I would like to think nothing terrible will happen to anyone in any such restroom. I personally don’t feel paranoid, but that has a lot to do with my being cis het. I don’t know what it feels like to have people hate my very being simply due to my gender identity. (But, wait. I do! I am, after all, a woman.)
We can modify these public spaces to help everyone feel at ease, even the folks who prefer gendered restrooms, like I once did.
And really, do we think a label on a door is a safeguard? Do we really believe locks on bathroom stalls can deter a determined harmdoer? Does no one else watch horror movies?
It just doesn’t make sense. A lot like gender norms. You know where I’m headed . . . . shouldn’t we worry more about guns in public spaces?
—T.C.
