To Cis People-

Imagine a world where you cannot go into a bathroom without feeling pressured. Observed. Uncomfortable. Afraid. A world where the bathroom is a foreign environment and you must conform, at the risk of awkward conversations at best and verbal or physical assault at worst. That is the reality for most trans individuals. While I personally have, so far, avoided the worst of it, many trans people have not. According to a study conducted by the National Center for Transgender Equality in 2016, 12% of adult trans people were verbally harassed in a bathroom in the last year, 1% were physically assaulted, and 1% were sexually assaulted. Beyond that horrifying statistic, 59% avoided using public restrooms, intentionally dehydrating themselves to accomplish such, and 9% were denied access altogether.

Using the bathroom is a biological need. Not a wish, not a privilege, a NEED. Unfortunately, people see it as their job to police which bathrooms people can use, passing transphobic legislature announcing that the bathroom you use must align with your birth-assigned genitals. This legal and social condemnation of trans people leads to 8% of the trans community contracting a UTI or kidney infection due to avoiding using the bathroom, rates much higher than in the populace at large.

Because of the need for accessible bathrooms and the discomfort of many trans people in typical public restrooms, gender-neutral restrooms need to be more commonly and easily available. The advent of such restrooms would assist non-binary trans people like myself, who feel uncomfortable in any and all spaces with an enforced gender binary. It would also help binary trans people who don’t pass, who don’t feel comfortable in the bathroom of their identified gender, or are closeted and unable to transition. Gender neutral spaces also are more welcoming to parents with children of another gender.

In order to accomplish the creation of gender-neutral restrooms, I petition Coronado High School and D11 at the local level, and on the grander scale, Congress and the Supreme Court. While Coronado does have a non-binary bathroom, it is difficult to access, as it is hidden away in a corner of the basement. During lunch periods, you cannot wander the hallways (and as such cannot use that bathroom), and due to its inconvenient placement, it is difficult to use during the short passing periods. In order to truly be a resource to the many trans non-binary people at this school, there needs to be a more centralized gender-neutral bathroom, which one could use during lunch. In the more grand scheme of things, Congress and/or the Supreme Court have the power to rule on bathroom laws and put into place a legal requirement for federally funded organizations to have gender-neutral bathrooms somewhere accessible on the property.

This necessary and logical change to our society has so far been delayed by a few factors, namely the silencing of trans voices. Non-binary people especially have been erased, our existence denied, something that continues still today. Although non-binary individuals have come forward increasingly publically in recent decades, society is slow to change and the incorporation of marginalized peoples takes significant time due to prejudice, as has been proven time and time again. Gender neutral bathrooms have also been opposed by some conservatives, claiming that your gender is what is in your pants and that a gender-neutral restroom would serve no purpose. Contrary to that idea, even cisgender individuals who are stylistically gender non-conforming (GNC) may at times feel uncomfortable and judged in binary restrooms.

The implementation of gender-neutral restrooms would take some work: the remodeling or relabeling of current restrooms, or the construction of new ones. This may be of some inconvenience to the people initially implementing these changes; it is an inarguable fact that building a bathroom costs money. However, any sort of business making these changes will soon find itself espoused by greater levels of trans patronage- having a safe bathroom makes a place significantly more attractive, a fact illustrated by popular apps such as Refuge Restrooms, which marks on a map all nearby bathrooms that are safe for trans, intersex, or GNC people.

After the implementation of such a proposal, there would be fewer physical and verbal assaults in the bathroom propagated by cis people who feel that trans people’s presence renders them unsafe (despite the fact that there have been no reported assaults by a trans person in a restroom), fewer UTIs in the trans community, and greater awareness of trans people. While some may argue that gender-neutral bathrooms provide places for drug deals and other deviant behavior, this occurs with similar frequency in binary restrooms, or in plain sight. The problem is the people, not the bathroom. Gender-neutral restrooms are an accommodation that assist many, and in their own right, hurt none.