Gender Neutral Bathrooms
Kris Gebhard
However, I doubt any alums get as misty-eyed about their freshman bowel movements. Bathrooms are less politically contested than fraternities, and gender neutralizing them is within the power of students and the administration. Given the benefits we’ll reap from neutralized space, the suggestion seems logical—but I’ve heard from many students that gender-neutral bathrooms give them the heebie-jeebies.
Before we start bowing down to the mystical porcelain god, let’s try to tamp down on the panic, and note that bathrooms have been gender-neutralized at many other schools (Grinnell, Wesleyan, Oberlin, NYU, UCLA, and Reed, to name a few). It is not abnormal for human beings to share bathrooms with the opposite sex. (The most obvious example is a home bathroom.) At Dartmouth, most of us have had gender-neutral bathroom experiences—on DOC trips, while sharing hotels on trips or tours, and, let’s not forget, the (multi-stall) bathrooms at Greek houses.
Of course, the broader Dartmouth campus was not always sex-integrated, whereas nowadays it is possible for the sexes to mingle in class, the library, and (god forbid) Food Court. So, why are bathrooms a sticking point? Why do they remain sex-segregated spaces? Do integrated bathrooms make your skin crawl? Clearly there’s some kind of hard knot at the center of our gender relations at Dartmouth that needs to be massaged away.
Currently, men’s and women’s bathrooms are equal but separate, and therefore occupy specific ground in social hierarchies at Dartmouth. Our campus is essentially split into three varieties of public space with regards to gender segregation: fraternities (along with their sidekicks, sororities), general academic/social space, and bathrooms. Academic and eating spaces are integrated and structurally power-neutral. The vast majority of frat space (social space) is integrated (anyone is generally allowed entrance), but owned by men. Bathrooms are sex-segregated but equal. Are we afraid that the dynamic created by men and women in the same bathroom would be more like dynamics at AD and Chi Gam than at Novack and Collis?
Indulge me in a thought experiment: If bathrooms at Dartmouth were run like Greek houses, there would be two men’s rooms for every women’s. Most women’s rooms wouldn’t be allowed to have paper products, and half would be located off campus. Groups without physical plants would have to urinate in their trash cans or shit on the golf course. Thus, it’s understandable that many people are afraid a switch to gender-neutral restrooms would specifically harm women. They argue that a “safe space” for “women” would be “taken over” by “harmful male-female aggression patterns” that exist in “Dartmouth” “at large.” This is also known as the “What if she sees a penis?” argument.
Interestingly enough, the hypotheticals that plague the gender-neutral bathroom discussion actually occur daily at fraternities. In a gender-neutral bathroom, it is unlikely that someone will grab you from behind and start grinding on you with a hard-on. It is also interesting that the (unlikely) sight of a (typically flaccid) penis used for urination is so ostensibly scarring, when I saw three cases of public urination in frats with people of all genders present last Thursday alone. In fact, a lot of what you see at frats is men urinating all over everything—you get to see A LOT of dick.
Why are we afraid to pull our pants down in a stall next to someone (where they won’t be able to see us!) and conduct our biological functions with members of the opposite sex potentially present next door? What is the underlying message when the “last remaining safe space” for women is a ten-foot room in which people boot and change their tampons? Safe space from what? The Greek system? In this view, we are attempting to quarantine sexism to certain biological-function oriented spaces (frat basements), so that it is manageable.
This argument promotes not only the fallacy that sexism can be contained to frat basements, but it also relies on the assumption that women’s bathrooms are safe spaces. As the Transgender Law Center’s guidebook to gender-neutral bathrooms points out: “Putting a sign that says ‘women’ on the door of a bathroom does not stop people who want to harm women from entering…If someone did intend to assault a woman in a bathroom, they would certainly know where to look.” Arguing that gender-segregated bathrooms are safe spaces for women not only perpetrates the myth that if victims are separated from aggressors, they will be safe, but forces all men into the role of aggressor. This is a parlor trick, a shell game, essentially. It reduces us to our biology and ignores the myriad of ways in which women harm other women.
Conversely, gender-neutral bathrooms hold all people accountable and responsible for being respectful of each other. If gender-neutral bathrooms seem threatening simply because they are a location for humans, including women and men, to perform bodily functions beside one another, what does this attitude imply about a Greek space that is owned by men, reifies “masculinity,” and yet addresses the same biological realities in an integrated setting? Frankly, we are far too used to making exceptions for the Greek system. A male throwing up in a trash can outside a classroom is deemed inappropriate, but a brother throwing up in Tri-Kap’s trash can is excused because he owns the space. But if we are out trying to have a good time Friday night, we all have to put up with his vomit just the same.
Whether we are frequenting the frats, walking around in our clothes, or eating and studying in Novack or FoCo, we all put up with sexism that is engendered by male-dominated socialization patterns. It can be frustrating, but we find ways of coping. We engage with friends (of all genders) who say troubling things and challenge each other’s assumptions. I think we are all better off for engaging with each other in gender-neutral spaces rather than making enemies of all men or victims of all women. Defending sex-segregated bathrooms as safer than gender-neutral bathrooms contributes to a campus discourse that has one set of expectations for frats, and another set of (much more respectable) expectations for all other public spaces on campus. It is high time we raise our expectations in ALL spaces.
I suggest a three-year plan to transition to gender-neutral bathrooms, starting with academic buildings and working towards dorms. Some spaces such as the Library and Collis already have several single-stall gender-neutral bathrooms. This summer, I advise re-signing unisex bathrooms with a picture of a toilet, and make the first floor multi-stall bathrooms of every academic building gender-neutral. Next year, neutralize the remaining multi-stall bathrooms so that there are about half gender-neutral, half sex-segregated bathrooms. Build two-wall stalls around urinals to provide more privacy. The following year, neutralize all bathrooms in academic buildings. Neutralize bathrooms on residence hall floors where only one bathroom is present (these floors are currently all-male or all-female) and give residents a choice on housing forms to live on a floor with gender neutral bathrooms or sex-segregated bathrooms. We could fo
llow a model similar to Grinell’s, in which residents can elect to neutralize their bathrooms through an anonymous, unanimous ballot, or create our own model. Dartmouth is already blessed with many single stall bathrooms, in Collis, the Library, and newer dorms for those who prefer complete privacy. Any new building projects could include multi-stall bathrooms with more privacy—walls that extend to the ceiling, for example.
There is no space on campus that puts more structural pressure on us to conform to the gender binary than bathrooms. The “Men” and “Women” signs on the doors cause us to police gender conformity in ways that are simply silly and unhealthy. We need spaces that hold everyone accountable for disrespectful behavior, and we need to learn from each other how to be respectful of our bodies and bodily functions. Gender-neutral bathrooms normalize inter-personal relations based on personhood rather than biological sex. They’re more comfortable for queer-identified folks, and safer for transgender people. Ultimately, they’re safer for everybody. What are we waiting for?
