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Gender-Neutral Bathrooms Campaign A QueerSafeCampus Initiative |
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Gender-Neutral Bathrooms Campaign A QueerSafeCampus Initiative |
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This is part of an ongoing effort to make all students, faculty and staff feel safe and welcome on this campus. The context is the reality of violence, harassment, and intimidation that some people face regularly in the semi-private setting of a sex-segregated bathroom when they don't seem to fit the gender coding. Cobb Hall and the Regenstein Library are two of the busiest buildings on the University of Chicago campus: the Regenstein is the most used building overall, and Cobb is the most used by undergraduates. Though there are some gender-neutral bathrooms on campus already, there are none close to these heavily frequented buildings.
Bathrooms segregated by sex are potentially unsafe and intimidating places for a variety of people.
Persons who are not easily legible as male or female often experience various forms of intimidation in these places. If a woman in a women's-only restroom is assumed to be a man, there may be real threats to her comfort and even safety. For example, one woman on our campus had security called on her while she was in the women's restroom of her workplace because a client thought she was "a man in a women's bathroom." Assault, insults, and police intervention are frequently part of the reality of sex-segregated bathrooms for butch women, transgender people, and others. Many people have had the experience of being harassed or threatened in public bathrooms; though this is not as strong of a factor on campus, it contributes to a feeling of discomfort with the single-sex bathroom setting.
Certain people feel threatened in single-sex bathrooms based on their presumed sexual orientation rather than gender identity. Students have faced gay-baiting comments in our university's sex-segregated bathrooms. Men's bathrooms may be particular sites for this sort of harassment because of their image as queer cruising grounds. Regardless of whether those making the comments intended to act on the threats made, people were made uncomfortable and felt unsafe.
Bathroom comfort issues are most acute for transgender and trans-questioning people on campus. Members of the transgender community face specific concerns and threats to safety depending on how they are read in certain situations. Choosing a sex-coded restroom is one of the most frequently reported sources of anxiety in this community: often, transgender people will go far out of their way to gain access to bathrooms that are more private or comfortable. For instance, one gender-transgressive graduate student reports waiting to go home rather than using public bathrooms on campus; this is a response to frequent hostility in that setting. Access to public single-occupancy bathrooms would be ideal for undercutting this source of intimidation, but converting existing multi-stall bathrooms to gender neutrality is an excellent, and easy, intermediate step.
It is important to realize that this is not simply a language or labeling issue: the initiative to create gender-neutral bathrooms is not driven by an avoidance of the angst of choosing an icon for one's gender identity. It is, rather, centered on the kinds of interactions that actually occur when some members of our community make either one of the available choices.
The most significant problem that arises in a gendered space is one of intimidation. When that gendered space is one like a restroom, a place that everyone should be able to go without incident and without feeling intimidated, addressing this problem becomes increasingly significant.
"...when they willfully ignore the concerns of LGBT students and staff,
they
not only limit opportunities for these individuals, but also stifle the
academic community as a whole. In the end, it is the community that loses,
as dynamic, intelligent, and highly skilled people move on to places that
value and respect them."
--National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, letter from director, 2003
The United States is unmistakably in the midst of a historic period of queer civil rights struggle, with issues like job discrimination, violent and harassing bias incidents, and civil unions on the national stage. It is critically important for the University of Chicago to be at the forefront of change, rather than being dragged along behind the movement.
The University of Chicago's LGBT community is growing in size, in organization, and in visibility. Community leaders are trying to cultivate a close and cooperative relationship with the University Administration, and so far have found the administrators to be encouraging and open to listening. However, concrete moves are necessary for the campus environment to continue to be safe and welcoming, and for the Administration to continue to earn a reputation as proactive.
Adding visible gender-neutral bathrooms in widely used buildings like Cobb Hall and the Regenstein, rather than just directing students to the few pre-existing ones far from these buildings, makes a clear statement to the campus community that the University is willing to take important steps towards making queer and gender-transgressive students feel safer and more comfortable here. The moves recommended by this initiative are extremely easy to implement and would speak loudly.
Undergraduates should not have to leave the building where the majority of their classes take place, nor should anyone need to leave the primary research and studying facility on this campus, in order to use a restroom without fear of intimidation.
Yes! If a space is not segregated into male and female categories, it significantly reduces the possibility for gender- and sex-based intimidation towards those whose appearance and presentation does not fit within the traditional male/female paradigm.
While it is not possible to entirely remove safety risks in any space, intimidation in public bathrooms generally happens because queer and gender-transgressive people are perceived to be trespassing on others' sense of space. This would not happen in gender-neutral bathrooms, which would significantly reduce the risk involved in using the facilities.
Ironically, many of the people who are most resistant to creating gender-neutral bathrooms on the grounds that they constitute "special rights for transsexuals" are also uncomfortable with either of the choices a trans person might make about use of conventional sex-segregated public bathrooms.
It is also important to note that many people in the U.S. are questioning their sexuality and gender identity and coming out at younger ages as lesbian, gay, bisexual, and/or transgender. The University must realize that many potential students and faculty are looking for a campus which is proactively supportive of queer concerns. Transgender and allied people in particular want to know how their needs will be met in terms of comfortable restroom options, because it is a real concern in many day-to-day lives.
Potential objection: Women will be less safe in multi-stall gender-neutral bathrooms than in the status quo.
Though this is a valid concern, it is not supported by existing evidence
and there is a plausible argument that the opposite effect will occur.
Researchers such as Mary Anne Case of the University of Chicago Law School
and Martine Rothblatt, President of the William Harvey Medical Research
Foundation, have said that there seem to be no data indicating that
sex-segregated bathrooms are safer. Rothblatt, in her book The Apartheid
of Sex, writes that "it is pure speculation as to whether unisex bathrooms
would increase [women's harassment in a] restroom." She adds, "The
thought that persons
of any sex can enter any restroom at any time should discourage sexual
violence in restrooms."
[Martine Rothblatt, The Apartheid of Sex, (Crown Publishers Inc, New York: USA, 1995) 94]
Potential objection: People will be made uncomfortable based on religious, political, ideological, or other reasons by the addition of multi-stall gender-neutral bathrooms.
While we understand that the University needs to be sensitive to the concerns of a variety of students, the designation of a few bathrooms as gender-neutral will not limit, but rather increase the available options. Many of our residence halls have co-ed bathroom options that many of the students prefer over single-sex bathrooms, and in these arrangements students share not only toilets and sinks but stall showers as well. This arrangement has been available for students since the 1970s and remains popular. It is also important to notice that we are only asking for gender-neutral bathrooms on one floor of each building. People who feel uncomfortable using these new facilities would still have the option of sex-segregated bathrooms on six floors of the Regenstein and four floors of Cobb Hall, whereas currently people uncomfortable with single-sex bathrooms have no options in or close by either of these buildings.
Also please note that neither of these objections is applicable to single-occupancy bathrooms, as recommended in the long-term plan. Single-occupancy bathrooms offer privacy and dignity for other constituencies who may have problems with the existing bathrooms as well, like parents with small children. Having one such bathroom available in every new building seems like a simple and uncontroversial way to improve the daily experience of a significant number of members of the University community.
For more information, please refer to our main site, or stop by the Queers & Associates office in Reynolds Club 008.