Every Tuesday and Thursday, after getting out of my Investments class, I dash to the Ratty in an effort to beat the lunch rush. This has more times than not proven to be an unsuccessful strategy, as many who have tried can testify. On one particular Tuesday two weeks ago, I rounded the corner near Phi Psi to find the line once again stretching twenty feet beyond the entrance to the Ratty. Two exceptionally well groomed males, dressed in drag, were directing students through two doors, one marked “female entrance” and the other marked “male entrance.” I had known before this that the issue of gender specific bathrooms versus gender neutral bathrooms was becoming a hot topic on campus, spurred by the publishing of a BDH editorial in support of the latter. What I had not expected were the lengths that advocates would go to in order to get their message out.
Incidents such as this are why I love Brown; at what other place in the country can one find virtually every “traditional” norm being challenged at the drop of a hat? Such protests encourage discussion and enrich debate. On the issue of genderneutral bathrooms, the norm being challenged was the contention that individuals can justifiably be placed in two distinct groups – male and female – and the differences between those groups are great enough to warrant exclusive restroom facilities. The men in dresses outside the Ratty that Tuesday, Patrick Nagle ’10 and Robin Peckham ’10, believe that the provision of restrooms to only two “recognized” genders excludes those who do not identify with either. To correct this situation, they propose that one-third of University bathrooms be classified as “gender neutral.”Weighing the concerns of both sides, I believe, and will argue, that the solution to this problem is to stop campus discrimination against trans-genders etc., classify perhaps one restroom per building as “gender neutral,” and promote the construction of single use bathrooms in new University buildings so long as the cost is not prohibitive.
So-called conservative traditionalists reject the notion that someone could possibly lie outside the gender binary. Those with more liberal leanings on social issues insist that gender is entirely socially constructed, and as such it is cruel and discriminatory to put everyone in categories that have no biological basis. As a libertarian, my view (or “lens,” if you will) is a utilitarian one – I want everyone to be as happy as possible at the least cost. Such a way of looking at the world naturally leads to a rejection of the traditionalist view of what should be done (or not done) regarding the gender neutral bathrooms issue. While I believe that gender has a strong biological component, the truth of this really doesn’t matter; what matters, rather, is what people believe now about gender and how to balance that with the potential discomfort of others who don’t feel the same way. I am optimistic that scientists will sort out these questions some day, but for now this approach is optimal.
When someone objects to seeing two guys make out at a party, he or she is expressing an emotion – an emotion that can be overcome in the same way and for the same reasons that racist feelings can be overcome: they are not based on fact but rather groundless prejudice. Nothing in walking into a men’s restroom dressed in a skirt physically or mentally coerces someone else to do or think anything – everyone is still free to use the restroom as they wish. It is in the act of openly expressing a discriminatory attitude toward someone else, as happened to Robin Peckham in an incident he later recounted in the aforementioned BDH op-ed, that one unnecessarily causes discomfort to an innocent individual, which by any measure is morally wrong. I was fortunate in preparing this piece to be able to interview both of the people who participated in the drag protest outside the Ratty. In my interview with Robin, who identifies as “pan-gender,” he agreed that the primary objective of the gender neutral bathrooms campaign is to eliminate discrimination. However, he sees this as an immediate short term goal in a long term effort to stop sorting individuals by supposed gender and end the current “sexualizing” of restroom usage:
“The ultimate goal is . . . having a safe space for everyone to use the bathroom. [Our] immediate goal is we want to lessen discrimination. [In] the long run term we’ll do away with the whole idea of gender and just have people identify with their sex, or just . . . it doesn’t really matter how you express yourself on the outside, it’s just how you identify on the inside.”
Robin envisions a restroom situation in which no one feels excluded for how they look or act. He sees gender neutral bathrooms as a way to acclimatize people to this concept, and is optimistic that such a system will see far fewer incidents of discrimination.
The real question is: how will Brown students react if a large portion of restrooms are re-classified? Will greater tolerance ensue, or will the discomfort generated for those who identify with a gender far outweigh any of the possible benefits to those who do not? There is no way to know the answer unless the experiment is actually conducted, so for now all that we can do is estimate. We know a few things to begin with: according to Robin’s “best estimate,” roughly fifty people at Brown can be said to be uncomfortable with seeing “male” and “female” symbols outside of restrooms, representing at most 0.85% of all Brown undergraduates. We also know that, as a general rule, women are less comfortable around men in restrooms. Besides the obvious differences in general cleanliness, women appear to desire a separate restroom as one of a few private places away from men. Apart from observing this sentiment when speaking about the issue with female friends, I have also witnessed a sort of natural experiment in my dorm to test this hypothesis. I live in Harkness on the third floor. At the beginning of the year bathrooms were marked with the conventional male and female symbols, and the men and women on the floor honored them. About two weeks into the year, it was decided that the two restrooms on either end of my floor, which were previously men’s restrooms, would become gender neutral, but the women’s restroom in the middle of the floor would remain exclusively female. Initially on my floor, you could see men and women going in and out of the newly classified gender neutral restrooms. This continued for about a week, but then reverted back to the old arrangement by and large: the women simply did not feel comfortable in a restroom with men, and instead chose to walk the extra distance to the women’s restroom. The “gender neutral” signs have been torn down on the restrooms at either end of the floor in quiet recognition of this fact.
Having lived through this experience, it is clear to me that every bathroom we might classify as gender neutral would be, effectively, one fewer that females would feel comfortable using. When I interviewed Patrick Nagle, the other person dressed in drag on that fateful Tuesday, he agreed: “I think sometimes it’s kind of important to have those safe spaces for people. . . .Women, a lot of them, expressed a fear about if they don’t have a woman’s place, you know, that it would maybe make them vulnerable to sexual assault, and then there’s also standard body image issues.” This must be recognized as an especially serious problem because, if gender neutral bathrooms are to be used principally by males, and if we take as a given that males are more likely to be hostile to transgender (or to “pan-gender”) students, the bathroom label change effectively accomplishes nothing, as no group explicitly benefits.
Discrimination can be overcome with time. However, discomfort issues are here to stay, at least for the foreseeable future. If Brown increases the number of gender neutral bathrooms on campus, it must keep in mind that such efforts accommodate only an extremely small portion of the Brown student body. This is not to say that their concerns are not valid; however, we have a moral obligation to weigh them against the concerns of the rest of the student body. And, in my estimation, the size of the community that we are speaking of does not come close to making the “one-third” proposal justifiable. At most, I think, a single gender-neutral bathroom per building would suffice.
However, there is one potential course of action that the University can take which would make everyone better off: the construction of single-use restrooms in new University buildings would entirely bypass the discomfort issue. Cost might be a factor, but such short-term expenditures would allow the University to avoid difficulties in the future. Of course, the University can’t just convert all the multi-use bathrooms currently in place to single use, so this solution has limits. Invariably, some individuals will feel uncomfortable at seeing doors marked “male” and “female,” but at least the University can try this idea as a way to indicate that it is doing the best it can to accommodate everyone.
As an institution, we must try our best to make the most people happy with the tools and information that we have, and in this situation that means taking the steps I have outlined above: accommodate, but only so far as the needs of the minority do not impinge upon everyone else. Additionally, it should be noted that the way to end discrimination is not through restroom reclassification, but rather through general awareness campaigns. Finally, the University must take this issue seriously when planning new construction projects. Single use bathrooms will only help against discrimination for a small portion of the day, but that is a big step up from nothing.
