Binary Bathrooms: Ready to Trans-ition

Looking to the future of bathroom options for gender-nonconforming students on New Roads’ campus. 

10:30 AM on a Tuesday and the one and only gender-neutral bathroom on the upper school campus is occupied. 1:50 PM on a Wednesday and the one and only gender-neutral bathroom is occupied again. Morning electives on Thursday––walking all the way from the Moss to the Zen garden––and the one and only gender-neutral bathroom is, yet again, occupied. Monday at lunch, Friday after-school, each and every passing period during the whole week, the lock on the one and only gender-neutral bathroom is red, red, red. 

The issue of gender-neutral bathrooms on school campuses has been prevalent for years. The lack of multi-stall, all-gender restrooms in schools has taken a toll on the majority of transgender students who have no options. A 2013 GLSEN survey reported almost two-thirds of transgender students (63.4%) avoid bathrooms out of fear of bullying, being outed, or another reason that keeps them from comfortably using restrooms. Undoubtedly, not having access to bathrooms during an 8-hour school day can lead to a lack of concentration in classes or health complications.

In 2017, California was the first state to require all single-occupancy public toilets be gender-neutral, which was a step in the right direction. However, many schools found a loophole by just letting students use the bathroom in the nurse’s office, which singles them out, stigmatizes them, and even outs them. Additionally, this law doesn’t even require schools to have a gender-neutral bathroom option, just that pre-existing single-stall restrooms be labeled gender-neutral. For campuses that have no single-occupancy restrooms, there is nothing that requires them to make that change. And, yet again, transgender students are swept under the rug.

Gendered restrooms are not an option for many gender-nonconforming students. A member of New Roads’ Trans/Non-Binary Student Union (TNBSU) who chose to remain anonymous says, “I always feel really uncomfortable going into, like, the gendered bathrooms. As someone who’s non-binary, I feel out of place in both the women’s and men’s bathrooms so I’ll just avoid the bathrooms altogether.”

Another TNBSU member who also chose to stay anonymous agrees that gender-neutral bathrooms are important because “Where else are people gonna go to the bathroom if they’re not a woman or a man?” They added, “Also some trans men and trans women don’t wanna be using the bathrooms because people are weirdos sometimes.” Weirdos, meaning people who either make a spectacle of having to use the same bathroom as transgender people or otherwise make transgender people feel uncomfortable or unwelcome in the binary restrooms.

Gender-neutral restrooms are the only safe and comfortable option for gender nonconforming students, but having solely one single-stall restroom for a whole community on campus comes with many issues. Though we have two single-stall gender-neutral restrooms on the upper school campus, one is kept locked for teacher use only, leaving only one gender-neutral restroom for students.

“It’s always occupied,” says a member of TNBSU. “No matter when I go, [the gender-neutral bathroom] is always occupied. Where else am I supposed to go? I can’t just wait around until it’s free––I have to go back to class––so I either have to use one of the gendered bathrooms or just not go at all.”

“I think [the gender-neutral restroom option is] nice but it’s being used, a lot of the time, by people who don’t need to use it. Where am I supposed to go?” another member of TNBSU said. “Multiple times I’ve seen, like, two or three people just go in and they just…I don’t honestly know.”

“The good thing is [one of my teachers] gives me his key,” they added. “But no other teachers do that. And when he gave me his key, [a teacher] came up to me and was like, ‘Where did you get that key?’ Like, I’m just trying to [go to the bathroom].”

“[I would also] definitely like [a gender-neutral restroom] in the Moss so I don’t have to take a little trek around campus.”

The solution is not to police which students use the gender-neutral restroom––doing so would single transgender students out, not account for gender-nonconforming students who aren’t out yet, and keep other students who may need a gender-neutral alternative from getting it. The much-needed solution is to give the students more options.

The most ideal solution appears to be adding multi-stall, all-gender restrooms. Not only will this option ensure that the multiple students who need gender-neutral bathrooms at the same time can have access to it, but it will also erase the feeling of being singled out by using the one, single-stall option. No more waiting awkwardly to the side in front of classroom windows as the automatic door to the one gender-neutral bathroom creaks open slowly and then closes just as leisurely. A multi-stall option will be just as simple and easy as the gendered multi-stall restrooms but without the main issue: the gender.

It seems to be a perfect solution; it checks off all the boxes and works for both gender-nonconforming and cisgender students. So why hasn’t it been implemented yet?

Part of it is resources––it takes time, materials, and funds to build anything.

“The school is in a process of preparing for a renovation project,” says New Roads School’s Director of Student Wellness and Human Development, Mario Johonson. “It’s in a very nascent stage––it’s incredibly complex when you want to build things and…permitting in Santa Monica is next-level. But…already this conversation has come up of progressive bathrooms.”

But the other part isn’t so logistical.

“For something like [having all-gender bathrooms] we would need communal feedback––I can already hear some students that are like ‘hell no, no, no way,” Johonson said.

Opposition to all-gender bathrooms in the nation often stems from the fear of students’ safety if restrooms weren’t separated.

“Teenagers are very impulsive,” says Johonson. “So I’m just imagining, in my head, a situation where a student who identifies as female is using the restroom, a male student is being cheeky and impulsive and looks over the top of the stall––well, there’s a context in which that’s identified as sexual harassment.”

The fear that students will be harassed by the opposite sex is shared by some parents of students attending schools where attempts to include all-gender restrooms have already been made.

Oftentimes, not only is this fear partly rooted in the prejudiced belief that transgender people are a threat, but it is also a flawed way of thinking. This is an issue unrelated to having access to all-gender bathrooms. If harassment is occurring on campus, that’s a problem that lies with the harassers and the school’s lack of anti-harassment initiatives, not with gender.

As Rodrigo Heng-Lehtinen, the executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality says, “Harassment is still illegal in a gender-neutral facility. Protections and norms around acceptable behavior still apply.”

TNBSU members’ consensus is that New Roads has some work to do for the inclusion of the transgender community.

“It just feels like trans people are always a second thought,” added another TNBSU member. “Like no one really cares that we’re being misgendered or that we have nowhere to go to the bathroom or whatever…We’re all big on diversity but I don’t feel comfortable being out as a trans kid on campus. What does that say about New Roads?”

Johonson and New Roads’ Upper School Dean of Student Life, Jimmy Morrissey, insist that they’re open to finding a solution to the lack of gender-neutral bathroom options.

“As a school that really believes in equity, it almost has to be [something we’re working towards a solution for] because I think there’s an increase in students that are gender-nonconforming,” says Morrissey. “We want students…to feel comfortable being who they are and I think we recognize that part of being comfortable with who they are on campus can be something as simple as having access to a bathroom and not necessarily feeling singled out.”

As Morrissey recognizes, everyone deserves a safe and comfortable option for bathrooms. The issue: even though the solution seems so simple, gender-non conforming students are still waiting for an open stall.