Through Hir Eyes

Gender. It's an immutable fact of life. Or is it? Hir, a pronoun/adjective somewhere between "his" and "her", negates the gender binary set up by the English language. How do we deal with this binary, interacting with gender politics and gender exclusion and inclusion? The answer: Postmodernist and Third Wave Feminist theory.

Friday, September 23, 2005

Fitting In to Pee

When most people got to go, they just go. They run to the bathrooms and either turn right or left into their respective restrooms. Pretty simple. Quite hassle free.

What about the TransGENeration (intersex, transgender, transsexual, gender queer); which bathroom do they go into? For these people, going to the bathroom can be a potentially traumatizing experience. People who don't fit into the culturally recognized gender binary are simply attacked due to their intrusion into purely feminine and purely masculine spaces.

This conflict does not only present them with the issue at hand: rude stares, derogatory comments, security personnel, and forceful removal from restrooms. The actions of others present an even more complicated dialectical situation: to follow the legal definition of their gender by going into a restroom that complements society's judgment of their genitals, chromosomes, and/or hormones; or should they follow their personal definition of gender, entering into either a masculine or feminine restroom depending on which caters best to their particular needs?

Though both seem to be plausible solutions, neither rectifies the problem. TransGender people, excluding some transsexuals, do not always deem themselves one "normal" gender or the other. For some, they experience a mixing of the two, placing themselves in a sort of gray area. Others can't even compare their internalizations of gender to one category or the other, and feel as though they are a completely other gender category.

For this reason, the TransGENeration truly requires and deserves to have access to non-sexualized lavatory. A simple single-room bathroom, such as a handicap restroom, can offer a safe and non-denominational space to conduct their business.

The problem is that there is not always access to spaces such as this. At American University, in the Ward building located on the northern side of campus, there are no general use bathrooms. This building is one of the most heavily trafficked buildings on campus, offering large classroom spaces on the terrace and a multitude of modern and high-quality classrooms on the upper levels, making it a central location to academic life at American University. This centrality makes it even more necessary for a safe restroom environment. However, fulfilling the legal requirements of the District, AU needed to convert all of its single-room lavatories into feminine spaces in order to achieve the mandated proportion of male to female restrooms.

This ordinance has thus changed a building layout with potential gender ambiguous spaces into a fully gendered area. Hmm… reinforcement of the gender binary, what a surprise?

http://www.bodieslikeours.org/forums/archive/index.php/t-498.html

2 Comments:

  • At Monday, September 26, 2005 11:05:00 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    it doesnt seem to me like there would be any higher incident of rape in cogender bathrooms. To rape someone the bathroom would still have to be empty save the victim and the bastard(s) doing it, so it seems to me like it would be no less a problem then a normal bathroom, which, if one wants they can still shove a girl in and rape her. rape doesnt occur in bathrooms right now so seperating them isnt a solution to rape.
    when I go to colleges I use chicks bathrooms all the time and they treat it like a normal thing. I think if you tried to insitute it somewhere else it would be drastically harder to carry through with. but look at how many schools already have coed showers, doesnt that promote sexual promiscuity more then coed bathrooms. personally a girl in a shower is alot sexier than a girl taking a shit.
    theres no way to immediatley intoduce a change like that into society, but I still think there are places where it would be accepted (i.e. - more liberal areas, collegetowns places like that). So you start it in places like that, and then when those people move to other areas they start fighting for it there because thats how it has always been for them so it doesnt seem like something thats too outlandish to even fight for. Theres always people who resist social change and yet it always occurs, so it seems counter intuitive to say its a pointless cause just because people would oppose it.

     
  • At Wednesday, September 28, 2005 5:34:00 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    It's really interesting to see this discussion from outside of the Hampshire College bubble. Hampshire was kind of notorious for how many students would go around tearing down gender signs for bathrooms in protest of exactly the kind of gender dichotomy imposed by having single gender bathrooms.

    While the absence of the signs continues, a free reign of bathroom swapping fails to materialize. People still choose the bathroom that they know from experience was once designated for a particular gender because, well, it's easier. In addition, while most students at Hampshire are open-minded and in support of the ideas behind gender-less bathrooms, one can never be sure of the ideas of every student, and so many students simply choose to avoid potential confrontation or awkwardness.

    However, a different situation emerged in the living spaces. Dorm halls, etc are almost entirely co-ed, and while many have more than one bathroom, each bathroom is intended for use by everyone in the hall, regardless of gender. It's strange for some people (especially if you have a guest, say your little sister, and she's using the toilet, and suddenly there's a large man in the stall next to her), but it's not hard to get used to. In fact, it made a lot of sense, especially in comparison to some other colleges where you pray that you live on a floor with the bathroom for your gender. Instead of half of every floor running up and down stairs just to urinate, everyone could... share?

     

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