#public bathrooms
People get all up in arms about establishments denying the homeless access to their bathrooms, but conveniently ignore that when businesses allow it they end up with shit-smeared walls, people overdosing in there, or committing actual violent crimes. Their arguments always assume the worst thing they do is sleep in bathrooms. It is not. Then you get the “Well, I would gladly deal with a few troublemakers so the rest can have access.” No you wouldn’t. You want a minimum wage worker to have to deal with that so you can feel slightly better about the world
The same thing happens with public recreation restrooms where I live. The bathrooms for parks and beaches are usually pretty terrible.
The challenge: Don’t use any gendered bathrooms or change rooms for the month of April.
What are “gendered bathrooms”? Gendered bathrooms are designated for “men” or “women” by a sign. This challenges includes ALL multi-stall and single-stall washrooms, and the bathrooms at work, schools, libraries, bars/restaurants, and everywhere, really.
There are multiple purposes for this challenge:1) To give people who don’t find going to gendered bathrooms a difficult/unsafe experience a small idea of what it is like for trans and gender variant people to navigate this world. Hopefully, with some real life experience, you will have a broader understanding of how gendered this world really is. But,
DOING THIS DOES NOT GIVE YOU AUTHORITY TO SAY WHAT IT IS LIKE TO BE TRANS OR GENDER VARIANT.
2) To inspire people to fight for more gender neutral bathrooms.Tips:
- Don’t drink a lot of liquid if you are leaving the house for long periods of time
- Try to figure out where some gender neutral bathrooms are in your town/city, and plan your day around using a gender neutral bathroom.
- Remember, you can use gendered bathrooms again in May. Some people can’t.
And, even if you really have to go to the bathroom, try to not see gendered bathrooms as a possible place to go.If you are interested, feel free to write your experiences down and send them to [email protected]. With your permission, they will be included in a zine on the topic of gendered bathrooms.We also recommend fighting for gender neutral bathrooms in one (or more) public space(s). Often the fight for this aspect of bathroom accessibility is only fought for by trans and gender variant people; It would be nice if other people fought for it too.
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PLEASE SPREAD THIS!
This is a neat idea. I’ll certainly be giving it a stab.
I’ve added some extra emphasis (the bolded parts) where i think it needs to be.A helpful resource for locating gender-neutral/all-gender bathrooms is Safe2Pee.org.
