Public bathrooms can be a very stressful experience for transgender and gender non-conforming students. About 66% of students will often avoid drinking water throughout the day so they don’t have to use public bathrooms altogether, which can lead to drastic health impacts. According to the 2015 US Transgender Survey, 8% of trans Americans reported UTI and other kidney-related problems related to avoiding the bathroom.
Source: iStock
One way to make going to the bathroom a less stressful experience is to have gender neutral bathrooms available for all students. There are two different types of gender neutral bathrooms. The first is a single-user bathroom, and the second is a multi-user bathroom with completely private stalls (no gaps, doors come almost all the way to the floor). In many cases, converting multi-user bathrooms into gender neutral bathrooms only requires closing the gap between the door and stall and possibly extending the door. Unfortunately, this costs money, and schools often do not have a flexible budget when it comes to making cosmetic changes to the building.
At the school level, single-user bathrooms are the most common. There should not be one gender neutral bathroom that is specifically meant for transgender students. This is discriminatory. Students should also not be forced to use these bathrooms. In an ideal world, students should be allowed to use bathrooms that align with their gender identities. Unfortunately, many barriers exist (read more at the end of this post) where this often cannot happen, and some students would prefer more private environments. So, single-user gender neutral bathrooms are the most ideal.
In all the research I did for this post, I didn’t find many examples where schools had multi-user gender neutral bathrooms. Gender Spectrum touched on this a bit in their FAQ about bathroom use, and there is an example of a Kansas school district that has enacted multi-user gender neutral bathrooms.
Advocating for Gender Neutral Bathrooms in Schools:
If there are any single occupant bathrooms, ask that they immediately be labeled as gender neutral. The signs should avoid using male and female figures since those rare not inclusive of non-binary identities.
Since only one person is allowed to use it at a time, no internal/structural changes need to be made.
You could cite Vermont’s law that requires all single occupancy bathrooms to be gender neutral.
OR New York City’s mayoral order that requires access to gender neutral bathrooms.
They also have a great Myth vs Fact sheet.
Encourage your school board to budget for adding single occupant gender neutral bathrooms when renovating schools, or when creating new buildings.
Encourage your administration and school board to budget for converting staff multi-stall bathrooms to gender neutral bathrooms.
You can cite OSHA’s Best Practices Guide, where they actually state that employers should consider gender neutral bathrooms for employees.
Contact your local representatives and encourage them to consider making gender neutral bathrooms in schools a law.
Advocating for gender neutral bathrooms is so important! You can also support students by getting rid of gendered bathroom passes and avoid binary language when talking about restroom procedures (i.e. avoid saying “boys room” and “girls room”).
Additional Learning
Where did trans bathroom hysteria--the idea that “men will disguise themselves as trans women to sneak into women’s bathrooms and sexually assault women”-- even start? It wasn’t in 2016 when North Carolina tried (and failed) to pass legislation prohibiting transgender people from using bathrooms that align with their gender identity in schools and government buildings. It also wasn’t in 2017 when the Trump administration rolled back guidance on the exact same issue.
This particular phenomenon began in 2015 in Houston, Texas. The Houston Equal Rights Ordinance (HERO), a non-discrimination policy that included the LGBTQ+ community, had a referendum on the ballot. Conservatives argued that businesses should be able to discriminate against LGBTQ+ people due to religious values. They began campaigning that HERO would allow men to legally enter a women’s restroom and assault patrons because he had the right “to identify as a female.” They argued this would quickly trickle down to the school level, and cited a 2013 incident that was later proven to be completely false. Unfortunately, these scare tactics worked, and HERO was rejected by voters. Many states saw this is a success and began using bathrooms to advocate for anti-discrimination policies.
Friends, trans bathroom hysteria is a myth. According to Media Matters, 12 states and 17 school districts with non-discriminatory policies confirmed they had no issues of sexual assault in bathrooms. Does this mean that men never sneak into restrooms to assault women? No. However, these incidents were not caused by the implementation of the non-discrimination policies.
Let’s end this on a happy note, shall we? After four long years, Gavin Grimm recently won his court case against Gloucester County School Board. The school board required Grimm (a transgender male) to use the women’s restrooms or private bathrooms. The judge ruled that it was obvious discrimination and that Grimm’s rights were violated under Title IX. This ruling could potentially have an impact on discrimination cases that are pending in the surrounding states of Maryland, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. While discriminatory policies still exist in schools across the U.S., it's really nice to see the victories and know that there’s hope for the future.