Some people might think that washroom inclusivity is a no brainer, and wonder why it is necessary to keep the discussion of transgender washroom rights active after the 'bathroom bill' has been passed. This morning, as I was trying to figure out what to write about on our blog I saw the following article With a little searching I found this one debunking it. The encounter alleged in the first article never happened. The fear that trans women's genitalia is somehow a threat to cis people is a fabrication of cis people's (non trans) imagination. I want to dig into the hoax of the Toronto Star article a little further, it provides an opportunity to examine a few problems that could do with a little bit more open discussion. In section one the author unquestionably defends the right of trans women to use the women's change room, which is important, but goes on to make two critical mistakes. The first, seemingly small but still very important, is that he says “Transgender women, regardless of their status regarding surgical intervention, have the absolute right to use the women’s change room.” Even though this article is written about an encounter involving women he should have said something like “Transgender people have the absolute right to use the change room of their choice”. It is not necessary to talk about surgeries, and it is really important to include all trans people when discussing rights, not just trans women or men. A bigger problem though was the following sentence “It’s easy to sympathize with those who are surprised to see male genitalia in a woman’s change room”. The genitalia of a trans woman is, by default, women's genitalia. Some women have a penis, some women have a vagina, if the genitals are attached to a woman then they are a woman's genitals. Full Stop. Let's not talk about this any more. I am going to leave you with a link to a video by Red Durkin, a comedian who has a number of short videos online specifically addressing trans feminine topics. This one addresses the idea of questioning a womens gender, which is the core of what is happening when cis people fear trans people using the correct washrooms

Gender neutral washrooms are often central in discussions of transgender inclusivity in public spaces. The Washroom Inclusivity Project is no different in this, mapping the location of gender neutral toilets is the most visible manifestation of inclusivity that we can provide. Ensuring these washrooms exist and mapping them out is only the beginning of the discussion though, as part of a broader and more nuanced look at gender inclusivity it is also important to talk about why these facilities exist and how they might become sites of discrimination or of exclusion. There are two reasons why transgender people will use a gender neutral washroom. The first is that they do not identify as either male or female and are not comfortable entering gendered spaces. The second is that they identify as either male or female but fear the harassment and expulsion that may occur should they be misgendered by other washroom users. In the first case gender neutral washrooms are the perfect solution, in the second they are reinforcing patterns of discrimination. Explicitly or implicitly directing a trans person towards gender neutral washroom undermines the their identity and is an act of exclusion. In Canada we have legislation that protects transgender peoples choice of washrooms, this legislation is new though, the 'bathroom bill' was only approved by the house of commons in 2013. The University of Toronto supported inclusivity long before this time, and continues to show there conviction to transgender inclusivity through programs like the washroom inclusivity project.

As a way to understand the range of needs from the different departments involved in this project, we were each asked to share an article that highlights their specific concerns. When it was my turn to choose an article for the group, I had a lot of trouble narrowing it down to one. I wanted to be able to show the ways in which transgender people are denied access or forced into the wrongly gendered spaces, but in a way that stressed that gender neutral space is only a partial fit. In the end I decided to cheat a little and go with two articles. Gendered Restrooms and Minority Stress: The Public Regulation of Gender and its Impact on Transgender People’s Lives by Jody L. Herman, was chosen because it presented hard numerical data regarding the harassment and assault that visible transgender people risk whenever they enter a gendered facility. The second article Genderism and the Bathroom Problem: (re)materializing sexed sites, (re)creating sexed bodies by Kath Browne was based on interviews with women who had experience being misgendered as men within women's washrooms. I felt that the sentiments of these women, who encountered verbal harassment and physical ejection parallels in some important ways the feelings of trans people who have faced similar treatment. The first article was to show the group that the threat was real, that trans people really do encounter harassment in these spaces. The second was to explore the feelings of being ejected from a space in which you know you belong. This is why neutral washrooms are only a partial fit, when trans men and women are denied access to spaces in which they know, intuitively, that they belong, they are encountering the same sort of misgendering as the women in Kath Browne's article. This idea that gender neutral washrooms are only part of the solution to making spaces inclusive of trans people has been the overarching theme of my participation in the Washroom Inclusivity Project and it is something that I will write more about in future posts.