Make every bathroom gender neutral. Or at the very least, don’t place a gendered bathroom right next to a gender-neutral bathroom. At least in Sherman, they’re on opposite ends of the hallway.Now don’t get me wrong — I’m very proud of UMBC for making strides toward inclusivity. This is a huge step in making this campus trans and nonbinary friendly, and I know I, as a trans person, feel considerably more comfortable at this school with more bathroom options. But there is more that can be done, and it’s as simple as sticking more of these new signs over the old ones. So, why not go ahead and do that to every bathroom on campus? I would love to think that we have come to the point in society, especially on a college campus like ours, where we’re no longer weird about peeing next to someone who doesn’t present their gender in the same way as us. So let’s go stick up some new signs, join hands and pee together in perfect, gender-neutral harmony.
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I suspect that the situation relates to the relative ease of converting a women's restroom to a gender-neutral restroom: no urinals to rip out. Not many women are likely to use a restroom where "tackle out" is the norm when there's any other option.
ReplyDeleteVassar has had coed bathrooms since at least the early 90s when I was a student.
ReplyDeleteThey built a new observatory and even though the bathrooms were allowed to be all-gender, some stupid code required them to have two anyway. It meant they couldn't have a room to nap between images if you were observing over night.
All the parents with their kids on tours assume the tourguide doesn't know what "coed" means when they say the bathrooms are coed - but they know - they're frigging Vassar, they have decent vocab skills. LOL.