Bih, herng-Dar & Peng, Yen-Wen. (2014).

Unisex Toilets
for All? the Sexual/Gender Ideology of Public Toilets
in Taiwan. The purposes of this paper are to analyze
the progression of Taiwan’s gender-equal toilet
movements, experiences of sexual minorities in using
public toilets, and attitudes of the general public
toward using unisex toilets.
In 1996, some feminist students groups in Taiwan
launched the Women’s Toilet Campaign using the slogan
and action of “Occupying Men’s Toilets. ” They
successfully attracted public and media attention, and
the government promptly amended the related building
codes. Concerns of number and quality of women’s
toilets, however, presupposed the legitimacy of sexual
segregation of public toilets without challenging the
dichotomy of sex, the reinforcement of stereotypic
gender performance and the inconvenience for
transgender people. In 2009, several LGBT groups
initiated another toilet campaign advocating for
unisex toilets in public space. It has not earned any
response from the government yet, but how the general
public and transgender people react to unisex toilets
is a question worth probing.
The problems brought by sexual segregation of toilets
(Browne called it genderism) has been increasingly
recognized, but the resistance from the general public
to use unisex toilets is seemingly huge. Kogan
suggested to introduce a third toilet labeled “other”
where people with disability, parents with children,
LGBT, or anyone who refuse to use traditional toilets
would feel comfortable. Without abolishing women’s and
men’s toilets, this alternative may be acceptable for
the general public. However, the problem of
ghettoization still exists. Sexual minorities might be
questioned more severely when using traditional
women’s/men’s toilets.
Public toilets are typical spaces segregated by sex.
By examining the unisex toilets dilemma, this paper
will reflect on the legitimacy of sexual-segregated
public spaces, social exclusion, and the mutual
construction of gender and space.

An article by Richard James Rogers (Author of The Quick Guide to

Classroom Management and The Power of Praise: Empowering
Students Through Positive Feedback).

Last week I wrote a short blog post about the issue of gender-neutral
toilets, and how some schools in Australia and the UK are now forcing
all students to use them. The reasoning that most schools give as to
why these toilets need to be installed is that they are ‘inclusive’, and
that they make transgender students feel more comfortable.
Tremendous opposition to the introduction of gender-neutral toilets in
schools has already been voiced by parents, students, local MPs and
members of local communities. At Deanesfield Primary School in the
UK, for example, parents launched a petition to remove the unisex
toilets that were covertly installed over the summer vacation; with one
main concern being that menstruating girls felt as though their privacy
was being invaded. Many girls were refusing to go the toilet during the
day and were at risk of picking up urinary-tract infections as a result.

“An AMAZING book!”

I made my opinions clear last week, and I still stand by them. I made
the point that no school should impose new restrictions or radical
changes on their students without first consulting with parents. This
was a classic mistake made at Deanesfield, and it backfired dramatically
(consequently, I did actually e-mail the school asking for an update on
the situation but I have thus far received no response). I also
questioned the underlying concept of a child being able consent to
being ‘transgender’ (along with the surgery and puberty-blocking
chemicals that go along with that), when that same child cannot
consent to sexual activity, cannot drink alcohol, is not considered to be
mature enough to vote and cannot legally drive.

That blog post earned me some haters, with one individual

commenting on my Facebook posts with expletives, profanities and
explicit prose. That person was subsequently banned from the
Teachers in Thailand Facebook group by the admin (and rightly so):

Another happy customer!

So this is a very triggering topic, and rather than briefly summarize

some of the more ‘popular’ stories by citing news articles, I’d like to
perform a brief investigation of some of the research that feeds into
this topic. I won’t have time to cover absolutely everything, but I will
provide a synopsis of some of the main findings.

The architectural approach

With privacy being cited as an issue for menstruating girls who are
forced to use gender-neutral washrooms, one solution could be a
functional one: change the architecture so that privacy is no longer
invaded.

This is exactly the point that Sanders and Stryker make in ‘Stalled –
Gender Neutral Public Bathrooms‘ [South Atlantic Quarterly (2016) 115
(4): 779–788. Duke University Press]. As a combined effort between a
world-renowned architect (Sanders) and an LGBT professor of Gender
and Women’s Studies (Stryker), this paper stands-out for it’s unique
take on unisex bathrooms, with a suggested floor-plan included in the
content (given below):

Which areas would be on CCTV?

My conclusion: I have a number of issues with the architectural

approach proposed by Sanders and Stryker:

• The design still includes an area outside the cubicles where boys
and girls have to mix and mingle. I think this removes the ‘communal’
factor of bathrooms, as girls and boys do like to use toilet areas for
chatting and socializing with their own gender. I’m still not sure if
menstruating girls would be happy mingling with boys outside the
cubicle areas.

• Massive investment would be needed to change current

girls’/boys’ washrooms in schools to the communal format shown
above (for most schools). This investment seems superfluous to needs
when one considers that less than 2% of American children identify as
being transgender. In addition to this, it’s confusing that transgender
students cannot use current boys’/girls’ washrooms. If you are
biologically a boy, but you officially identify as a girl, then you could use
the girls’ washrooms. Vica-versa if you are biologically a female. But is
the solution really as simple as that?

Public space is not a neutral space(?)

According to Kyla Bender-Baird, gender-segregated bathrooms are the

result of “technologies of disciplinary power, upholding the gender
binary by forcing people to choose between men’s and women’s
rooms”

That’s some profound statement! I had no idea that I was being

powerfully controlled by being forced to choose which washroom to
enter. I thought I was consciously making a choice to enter the men’s!

Kyla is a sociologist at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York. Writing

in Gender, Place & Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography (Volume
23 2016, Issue 7) she states:

“The resulting lack of safe access to public restrooms is an everyday

reality for those who fall outside of gender binary norms. Faced with a
built environment that denies their existence and facilitates gender
policing, I argue that trans and gender non-conforming people
sometimes engage in situational docility. Bodies are adjusted to comply
with the cardinal rule of gender – to be readable at a glance – which is
often due to safety concerns. Changing the structure of bathrooms to
be gender inclusive and/or neutral may decrease gender policing in
bathrooms and the need for this situational docility, allowing trans and
gender non-conforming people to pee in peace”7

It seems as though Kyla supports the functional/architectural approach

then – advocating for the creation of washrooms that are built in such a
way that anyone can use them.

My conclusion: I don’t agree with Kyla on her point that gender-

segregated washrooms were invented as a human-control system (the
official history certainly doesn’t support this).

One thing I will say in Kyla’s defense is that if an architectural solution

is found that is cost-effective and satisfies the needs of the majority
(men and women – that’s binary men and women who do not wish to
change their gender), whilst also meeting the needs of the tiny minority
(transgender individuals), then that could be a way forward.

Potty Politics and the Ladies’ Sanitary Association

An interesting paper from the University of Massachusetts, Amhurst

[The Restroom Revolution: Unisex toilets and campus politics] gave the
timeline leading up to the gender-segregated toilets we have today.
Here’s a brief summary:

• 1905: First women’s bathroom installed in London after a

tremendous effort and fight by the Ladies’ Sanitary Association and
similar organisations, along with support from the famous George
Bernard Shaw [This really surprised me, I have to say. I thought that
women’s restrooms were a thing long before 1905].

• 1970s America: Court cases were still being fought over the
segregation of black and white toilet facilities. Prior to this early ‘toilet-
integration’ period, blacks and whites couldn’t drink from the same
fountains or use the same toilet facilities. [Note from me: I think this
was a humiliating and disgraceful period in human history. The fact that
fully conscious adults penned policy to the effect of segregating toilets
on basis of race is frightening and baffling to me].

• In the Autumn of 2001, several students gathered at the

Stonewall Center (an LGBT educational resource center at the
University of Massachusetts). They formed a special group to work on
transgender issues on campus. Their efforts eventually resulted in
gender-neutral restrooms being installed on campus through their
‘Restroom Revolution’, and they also succeeded in bringing
transgender, ‘gender-queer ‘and ‘gender non-conforming’ issues into
the limelight on campus.
Key takeaways from this paper are the very revealing opinions of both
the Restroom Revolution advocates (a mix of gender non-conformists
and ‘allies’ – straight people sympathetic to their cause) and their
opposition.

In December 2001, the Stonewall students wrote a proposal to

university administrators in which they stated:

“As gender variant people, we encounter discrimination in our daily

lives. The most pressing matter, however, is our use of the bathrooms
in the residence halls in which we live. . . . We are often subjecting
ourselves to severe discomfort, verbal and physical harassment, and a
general fear of who we will encounter and what they will say or do
based on their assumption of our identities.”

Olaf Aprans, a writer for the Minuteman (an on-campus student

publication), expressed his strong opposition by questioning the
foundational motives behind the Restroom Revolution:

“The most probable motive for the Restroom Revolution is not the

need or want of transgender bathrooms, it is the desire for attention.

Transgender students have been using gender-specific bathrooms for
years without any complaints. Why the sudden outcry for transgender
bathrooms? The answer is easy, the activists behind this movement are
using a petty issue like bathrooms as a medium to throw their lifestyles
in the face of every-day students”

Biological identity, supported by irrefutable genetic evidence, is also

cited by the paper as one of the modes of opposition:

“There are only two things that make me a man and they are my X
chromosome and my Y chromosome. . . . People have the right to feel
that they should not be the gender that God gave them. . . . However,
the fact that some people do not live in reality or that some wish reality
were not true, does not entitle them to a special

bathroom in a public university”

My overall conclusions

• The concerns that transgender individuals have about their

personal security and comfort when using restrooms seem legitimate.
However, the concerns of women who do not wish to share
washrooms with men are equally legitimate [and as we saw from the
UMass article, women fought very hard for the right to have their own
restrooms in the first place]. The issue of ‘washrooms for all’ seems to
me to be a classic example of an old conundrum – that you can’t please
everyone. We can, however, aim to please the majority. The minority
will have to adapt.

• An architectural solution may be viable, but its application needs

to be consistent (and this will require excellent international
 collaboration). It also needs to be cost-effective, and provide suitable
privacy for everyone. I can’t see how this can be done, even when one
applies Sanders’ and Stryker’s design, without invasive CCTV systems in
place.

• An architectural solution may work in a shopping mall or other

public place, but I’m not sure if it’s a feasible solution for a school. Children
are not as mature as adults, and issues such as bullying, up-skirting,
inappropriate use of smartphones, silly and disruptive behaviour, etc. are
difficult to police in a gender-neutral facility without invasive CCTV systems,
some form of staffed duty or an open communal space that removes
comfort, rather than adds to it.