A unisex public toilet (alternatively called gender-inclusive, gender-neutral or all-gender) is a public toilet that people of any gender or gender identity are permitted to use. Gender-neutral toilet facilities benefit transgender populations and people who exist outside of the gender binary. Unisex public toilets also benefit people with disabilities, the elderly, and anyone else who may require the assistance from someone of another gender, including parents who wish to accompany their children to the washroom or toilet facility.
Video Unisex public toilet
Background
Public bathroom facilities in 19th and 20th century Europe and United States were strongly segregated by sex, race, class, and religion, but only sex segregation remained normative at the end of the 20th century. Though unisex public toilets have become more common worldwide in the early 21st century, such facilities have proven highly controversial.
All-gender restrooms are designed to ensure that restrooms are fully accessible to all members of society. While the issue of gender inclusive restrooms has been raised as an equity and human rights issue for people who identify outside of the gender binary, eliminating gender segregation in bathrooms also benefits disabled populations who may have attendants of a different gender, parents with children, and anyone who may need additional assistance using public toilet facilities. A-Gender restrooms can eliminate discrimination and harassment for people who may be perceived to be in the "wrong" bathroom.
While opponents of unisex bathrooms have often referenced the fear of women and children being assaulted in bathrooms by transwomen, there is no credible research to support this claim. Instead, there is substantial evidence that demonstrates that transgender people and gender non-conforming people experience substantial and significant harassment in public restrooms. One survey of transgender populations conducted in Washington, DC, by the group DC Trans Coalition, "found that 70 percent of survey respondents report experiencing verbal harassment, assault, and being denied access to public restrooms." It also found that "54 percent of all respondents reported having some sort of physical problem from trying to avoid using public restrooms, such as dehydration, kidney infections, and urinary tract infections" making access to safe restrooms a public health issue.
Maps Unisex public toilet
Gendered and gender-neutral toilet legislation
China
Unisex toilets have appeared in China since before 2013 in Sheyang and Chengdu by 2015. However, it was not until November 19, 2016 that Shanghai China opened its first public unisex toilet near the Zhangjiabin River in a park, in the Pudong district. Many of these toilets have opened in high-traffic areas for the convenience of users as opposed to existing for the benefit of those in need of a gender neutral toilet, for example sexual minorities or those who are disabled. In May 2016 a Bejing- based non-governmental organization launched an 'All Gender Toilets' campaign to bring awareness to this issue in China. This resulted around 30 locations opening unisex bathrooms.
India
In 2014 the Indian Supreme Court gave transgender people, also known as 'hijras', recognition with a third gender. This legislation included creating separate toilets for transgender people in public spaces where transgender people are often met with violence and hostility. The two-judge Supreme Court bench was led by Justice KS Radhakrishnan, who said, "The court order gives legal sanctity to the third gender. The judges said the government must make sure that they have access to medical care and other facilities like separate wards in hospitals and separate toilets". In 2017 The Union Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation sent out guidelines to the Swachh Bharat Mission decreeing that members who are part of the transgender community should be allowed to use the public toilet they are most comfortable with.
Japan
As of 2016, still no laws were set in place regarding the usage of bathrooms in relation to gender identity; there may however be occasional signs in front of public toilets that indicate that the stall is 'gender free'. The Tokyo city government is planning to install one unisex toilet in at least seven out of eleven of the buildings being used for the Olympic Games in 2020.
Nepal
LGBT rights in Nepal have existed for a number of years but it wasn't until Sunil Babu Pant who was elected into Parliament, used part of the Parliamentarian Development Fund to build the first two gender neutral toilets in Nepalganj, one of which is in Bageshwori Park. Starting in 2014 The Nepal Country Report, A Participatory Review and Analysis of the Legal and Social Environment for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) Persons and Civil Society recommended that in schools separate toilets or gender neutral toilets should be built for transgender students.
Thailand
The term "kathoeys" used to describe effeminate male-bodied people, for whom schools have started opening gender-segregated toilets for since 2003. After legislation passed, in 2004 a private vocational college in Chiang Mai Thailand gave 15 'kathoey' students the opportunity to use toilet facilities that were solely for them, referred to as 'pink lotus' bathrooms. Alliance organizations in Thailand such as the Thai Transgender Alliance and the Transferal Association of Thailand were created to support kathoey people such as by helping create separate public toilet facilities. Kathoey enfranchisement was made helped by the creation of separate toilets at the Lummahachaichumpol Temple in Rayong.
United States
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission provides federal anti-discrimination protection on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, pregnancy status, age, disability, and genetic information. However, federal anti-discrimination laws do not extend to LGBT individuals. In May 2016 the U.S. Department of Education and the Justice Department indicated that single-sex schools and schools receiving federal money must treat transgender students consistent with their gender identity under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. This has not extended such a ruling to transgender students across the board. Each state, county, and city government enacts its own legislation governing how it will or will not protect the rights of LGBT individuals; this includes provision of gender neutral bathrooms.
The United States Department of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) requires that employers provide accessible toilets for all employees, and that employers do not impose "unreasonable restrictions" on employees who wish to use bathrooms at work. However, this federal requirement for employers applies mainly to the physically disabled, and to women employed in male-dominated workplaces. OSHA historically has not applied this law to transgender employees.
San Francisco, Philadelphia, Seattle, Washington D.C., West Hollywood, Austin, and the state of California have passed measures mandating that single-occupancy bathrooms in public spaces be labeled as gender-neutral. Meanwhile, state legislatures in Arizona, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas have proposed anti-transgender bills that would restrict bathroom access.
The Human Rights Campaign recommends that employers grant access, and use, to bathrooms according to an employee's "full time gender presentation", and provides a list of recommendations for employers on how to do so.
On September 29, 2016 Governor Jerry Brown signed legislation (Assembly Bill 1732) after being approved by the Assembly and Senate which meant California became the first state in the US to require all single-occupancy bathrooms to be gender-neutral since March 1, 2017. This includes California schools, government buildings, businesses and public restrooms. Legislation has also been proposed in California that "requires...private buildings open to the public, as specified, to maintain at least one safe, sanitary, and convenient baby diaper changing station that is accessible to women and men".
Opposition
In May 2016, North Carolina and the U.S. Justice Department disagreed on the issue, resulting in the Justice department engaging in a civil rights lawsuit over North Carolina's 'bathroom bill' in order to stop its implementation. This bill disallowed transgender people to use public restrooms if the gender of the restroom does not match their birth certificate. Moreover, businesses in North Carolina have enforced toilet restrictions on transgender customers at their discretion. Mississippi also limited public restroom usage through the enactment of a law that protects religious beliefs, citing: "male (man) or female (woman) refers to an individual's immutable biological sex as objectively determined by anatomy and genetics at time of birth," which does not consider transgender and intersex people.
Unisex toilets in educational institutions
Public schools
United States
In February 2016, Michigan was the first state in the US to pass a bill that forces transgender children and teenagers in school to use bathroom facilities that correspond with their 'chromosomes and anatomy' at birth. On 22 February 2017, the Trump administration lifted federal guidelines for transgender students that had been published by the Obama administration in 2016. These guidelines encouraged schools to let students use toilets or locker rooms that they identified with.
United Kingdom
In 2015 Scotland aimed to create its first sex toilet in Strathean Community Campus in Crieff, a secondary school. In 2015 Sex toilets were set to be introduced into every new school to be built in Scotland in a campaign to promote birth control. All future primary and secondary schools in the future will have sex toilets with free condoms. The Scottish Futures Trust which is in charge of Scotland's government's schools building program has already trialled this in one primary school and two secondary schools. In March 2017 the Glasgow City Council announced that toilets in school will no longer be labeled as 'girls' and 'boys' but instead be labelled as sex to help students. This will be implemented in three schools first.
College campuses
As of 2014, there has been a trend on college campuses in the US to open all-gender public restrooms. Some campuses are renaming their existing restrooms and toilets to do this. The motive is in part an effort to make students of any gender to use the restroom and feel safe. Activists also say they hope that anyone - not only gender-nonbinary people - can feel safe, raising the convenience it provides to disabled people to get assistance from someone with a differing gender. According to a University of Massachusetts Amherst LGBTQ organization, The Stonewall Centre, there were more than 150 campuses in the US in 2014 with gender-neutral bathrooms.
Research by the same organization comments on the need for gender neutral restrooms and the issue of safety. It says that certain people feel threatened using facilities that do not adhere to their gender identity, and this can become an issue when students are harassed by their peers. The organization states that this is more of an issue in restrooms that are designated for male use than those that are designated for female use.
According to a research article by Olga Gershenson of the University of Massachusetts Amherst, restrooms have always been an issue for one group or another. First, women around the world petitioned for the right to their own facilities; next were racial minorities in the US during the time of segregation. After this fight, people with disabilities raised the issue to get fully equipped facilities. That fight ended with changes to building codes to make washroom more accessible. Now the issue concerns transgender and other gender variant people.
The University of Oklahoma continually adds gender-neutral restrooms to their campus to accommodate students who may require use of a less excessively gendered bathroom. (Students that fit under this umbrella may identify as non-heterosexual). As of February 2014, the university had 13 unisex bathrooms. Recently, the university has vowed to include a gender neutral bathroom in all new buildings to be constructed.
Forcing trans / non-binary students to use normative gendered restrooms can stigmatize them daily by singling them out.
In the United Kingdom, all-gender restrooms are sometimes found on university campuses. In early 2013, Brighton and Hove city council introduced unisex toilets, which did not feature the words 'men/gentlemen' or 'women/ladies' (as is traditional), but instead used 'universal symbols'. Other British universities including Bradford Union, Sussex and Manchester, have already or are in the process of building unisex facilities.
Advocacy examples
Canada
In April 2014, the Vancouver Park Board decided to install all-gender restrooms in public buildings, with different signs to identify them. Amongst the options discussed was the rainbow triangle (based on the pink triangle used during the Holocaust), an 'all-inclusive' gender symbol, an icon representing a toilet or the phrases 'washroom' or 'gender-neutral washroom' placed on the entrances to the toilets. According to Global News, a Canadian online newspaper, many different regions across Canada offer unisex toilets and other gender-neutral facilities, but Vancouver was the first municipality to change building codes to require unisex toilets be built in public buildings. This movement, according to commissioner Trevor Loke, was aimed to make everyone feel welcomed and included: "We think that the recommendation of universal washrooms is a good idea [...] [w]e will be using more inclusive language based on the BC Human Rights Code." Some initiatives to make washrooms more diverse and inclusive have focused on language simply by using the phrases 'washroom' or 'gender-neutral washroom' in order to be inclusive of all genders and gender identities, or using specifically geared language such as 'women and trans women' as opposed to just 'women' (and vice versa for men and trans men).
Private companies
In March 2017 Yelp announced that they will add a gender neutral toilet finder feature on their app. Yelp was one of over 50 companies that signed a 'friend-of-the-court' amicus brief in favor of a transgender high school student Gavin Grimm who claims that his school board denied him access to the boys' bathroom in school and thereby violating Title IX. HRC President Chad Griffin stated on the brief that, "These companies are sending a powerful message to transgender children and their families that America's leading businesses have their backs,"
History
Making public facilities accessible to diverse populations has long been a divisive issue. Historically in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere public toilets have been segregated by race, class, religion, and gender, and have frequently been completely inaccessible to certain people with disabilities. Gender segregated restrooms in the United States and Europe are a vestige of the Victorian era where women's modesty and safety were considered at risk and under constant need of surveillance and discipline.
In 1739 the very first gender-segregated toilets were created specifically for a ball in a Parisian restaurant. The organizers of the ball made a chamber box (a chamber pot in a box along with a seat) for men in one room and for women in another. While public water closets were considered necessary for sanitation reasons, they were viewed as offending public sensibilities. Because public facilities were associated with access to public spaces, extending these rights to women was viewed as "immoral" and an "abomination". As a result of Victorian era codes, women were delegated to the private sphere, away from the public, fulfilling their roles as dutiful wives and mothers where any association with sexuality or private body parts was taboo. For women, the female lavatory in a public space was associated with danger, unrespectability, and even immoral sexual conduct.
The decision to create separate toilets in the U.S. for males and females was a reflection of their shift and growth in society. As women entered the workforce and factories, they needed to have a place to relieve themselves. In the U.S., the very first regulation that enforced separate toilets for males and females passed in 1887 and was titled "An Act To Secure Proper Sanitary Provisions in Factories and Workshops." At this time, Massachusetts required establishments to have separate privies in businesses.
During the Jim Crow period, public washrooms were racially segregated in part to protect the morality and sensibilities of white women. During this time, architectural isolation was imposed- through isolation and partitioning, blacks and whites were kept in separate spheres and allowed whites to hold the upper hand in society. Strategies to keep African Americans out of sight included the "basement solution;" by locating colored restrooms in the basement next to janitor supply rooms, Jim Crow laws were able to maintain separation of the races.
While some public facilities were available to women in London by 1890, there were much fewer than those available to men. During the 19th century, concerns over public health and sanitation led to the sanitarian movement in which citizens rallied for better sanitary conditions and advocated for better public waterworks systems and plumbing. Although sanitary reforms continued through the 1900s, it became a source of political debate.
As of the 2010s, US public toilets are regulated by two federal agencies. The U.S. Department of Labor is in charge of workplace restrooms, which means setting state guidelines through the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). For non-work related restroom guidelines, the Department of Health and Human Services governs regulations.
In contemporary times, there are gender neutral toilets in some public spaces in the United States. Despite this, transgender and non-conforming gendered people are still sometimes subject to visual and/or verbal scrutiny; this is reinforced by the architectural design and heteronormative gendered codes of conduct that are still present within the US.
See also
- Gender identity
- Sex segregation
- Transgender rights
- Public toilet
References
External links
- Directory of gender neutral toilets
- Searchable database of family restroom locations
- Queens University - Gender Neutral Washroom Policy
- Canoe.ca - UWO opens transgendered washrooms
- Canada.com - A revo-loo-tion on the UBC campus
- Unisex or Gender Neutral Toilets - the Facts Some facts about unisex or gender neutral toilets
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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