Gender Neutral Bathroom Analysis

Lately, the transgender community’s push for more gender-neutral public bathrooms has drawn a fair amount of attention, support, and criticism. I identify as pansexual and I personally do not have any gender preferences. I’ve been supporting LGBT since I had an understanding of the term. There was a time I cut my hair very short and dressed more masculine than feminine. I used to get weird looks when I went to female bathrooms in public places like grocery stores and malls; therefore I had the experience of how transgender people feel when it comes to using public bathrooms. Of course, transgender individuals should be able to use facilities for the gender which they live and identify as. And the creation of more gender-neutral restrooms, in
One of the articles that caught my attention was “Gender Neutral Bathrooms” by Jonah Yokoyama, the director of Heartland Trans Wellness Group. He is a transman and an experienced educator, regularly training providers on how to best serve transgender people in hospitals, doctor offices, clinics, and schools. In his article, Yokoyama answers most of the questions related to gender-neutral bathrooms. He points out that not only transgender or gender non-conforming people are affected by bathrooms segregation, but other people who are totally happy with their biological sex also experience this difficulty. For example, parents with different gendered children are not able to accompany them in gender-segregated bathrooms (a mother with her son or a father with his daughter). Disabled people with differently gendered attendants or family members are not able to bring them into gender-specific, multi-stall bathrooms. To the best of my knowledge, not all public places have family bathrooms. Gender specific bathrooms are potentially unsafe and intimidating places for a variety of people. Many people have had the experience of being threatened, harassed, assaulted, or questioned by authorities in sex-segregated bathrooms. Gender-neutral bathrooms are extremely necessary. Everyone is allowed to use gender-neutral bathrooms. They create private, individual spaces that are
Having done this research, I understand that gender neutral bathrooms are desired and should be legal everywhere in the United States and around the world. According to Heartland Trans Wellness Group, places with multiple person gender neutral bathrooms report no complaints, no harassment, and no violence (Yokoyama). The safety of a gender neutral restroom actually does not depend on the use of different genders in the same restroom, but instead depends on the consciousness of people regardless of gender. The idea of switching to or adding gender neutral public bathrooms might feel strange to an amount of people at first; but these changes will go a long way toward improving the lives, health and safety of transgender individuals. Transgender people have the rights to feel comfortable using public restrooms. As I end my exploratory essay, I want to say that we all are created equal. However, some of us have less equality of opportunity than others. It’s time to make a