Sociological Analysis of Transgender restrooms

Sociological Analysis of Transgender restrooms

Abstract

The contemporary restroom’s history has been a history marked with consecutive social groups that have proposed the right to gain access to along with a toilet configuration mode fitting the desires and requirements of the various genders. Initially it was the women who commenced the potty politics, particularly the various women groups that fought for their own restrooms. The establishment of lavatories for women in various countries including the United States and the United Kingdom was marked with persistence meant to overcome resistance both the vestry and residents. In countries such as the United Kingdom, the restrooms for women were only build in 1905. At present, the issue of own restrooms for transgender persons has risen and this has been attributed to the lack of safety, gender-based segregations and the sense of non-conformity while using the lavatories. This has, in turn necessitated the need for unisex restrooms to enable the use of such restrooms by members of all genders thereby eliminating the discrimination and other negative vices that might affect those of different genders from the normal male and female.

Introduction

In various places, as well as more than all other aspects of public life, the restrooms are known to reinforce and inscribe the difference in gender. The markings are normally for “women” and “men”. While this might not just be a difference but rather a hierarchy, owing to the observation that women are tasked with waiting in different lines even as men are always not required to wait. Such an immense binary and inequality that has regularly been correlated, is neither inevitable nor natural. This, therefore, raises the question of the origin of the gender segregated restrooms. According to Jones (2016) the earliest cases of sex elimination and unisex toilets can be traced back to 1739 during the Parisian ball where various signs placed at the event were used in the direction of the participants to women and men restrooms. Prior to this, the public restrooms were mainly designated for only men; however, the emergence of women in the workplace necessitated the need for reforms. Approximately one and a half centuries later the urinary segregation was brought into the United States with the state of Massachusetts being the initial one to enact and execute laws mandating the building of women only restrooms within workplaces with female workers.

Discussion

The public restrooms tend to reaffirm the gender/sex binary. Firstly, the public restrooms are known to reaffirm the sexual differences. Gaining entry into a public restroom is not just an ordinary and embodied experience, but is additionally a public and also a conscious reaffirmation of the gender identity of an individual, as well as of the rigid cultural demarcations amongst the polar sexes (Ahmed & Ahmed, 2017). For instance, Judith Butler has often been known to describe how the various public restroom doors tend to force individuals to select their gender, and that she has always read the indicators in the restrooms marked men and women as providing anxiety generating and normative choices, delivering the demand for the users to strictly conform to the indicated genders. As opposed to epitomizing of the increasingly oppressive gender systems, the public restrooms should be open and free for the use and enjoyment of all regardless of the gender or sex (Jones, 2016).

Within the United States and other developed nations throughout the globe, the separation of genders tend to be the norm with the public restrooms. Being one of the limited and remaining free public spaces that also tend to be often explicitly segregated through gender, the restrooms are always experienced as sites of physical and symbolic exclusions by the transgender individuals as well as individuals who are gender non-conforming (Ahmed & Ahmed, 2017). Based on this observation, amongst the key focuses of the transgender activism in different parts of the globe regards the need for safer access to the public restrooms that is often carried out through the advocacy for the configurations that are gender neutral. Such challenges with regards to the established separation norms have always provoked sturdy resistances. Nevertheless, the challenge of the resistance to change has often been less of a pressing matter to the transgender activists compared to the challenge of having to convince the policymakers, the public, as well as the possible allies that the restrooms issues is worth holding discussions about.

Still, in relation to the on-going debate on the transgender restrooms, Davis (2018) has observed that the controversy surrounding unisex bathrooms tends to echo the chronological controversies regarding the building of the public toilets for the women, along with the destruction of the restrooms that were racially segregated. It also discloses the extant deep cultural apprehensions regarding the outcomes of the progressively eroding gender-based binary. Similar to the previous exclusionary practices, the simple observation that the cultural practice tends to be common and distinctive does not, however, make it fair and desirable. As queried by Richard Wassertrom, “what can a better society do to make of the gender-based differences?” His response was unequivocal as is observed the elimination of the sex-role divergences was vital in the maintenance of a system of gender categorization that have often resulted in sexists practices and attitudes of considering sex in a given manner within the settings of a specified group of institutionalized arrangements, as well as a specified ideology that jointly develop and sustain a system of institutions that are unfair, as well as unwarranted attitudes and beliefs (Peng et al., 2014).

Conclusion

In a nutshell, as observed by Wasserstrom, the sex-segregated restrooms tend to be simply a smaller part of the gender or sex-role differentiation scheme that is known to employ the phenomenon of sexual anatomy in relation to other factors (Peng et al., 2014). This is mainly meant to effectively sustain the preeminence of the heterosexual sexual attractions that are at vital to the extant form of the patriarchal power relations systems. Similar patriarchal systems, which tend to envision gender and sex as vital binary classes, have insisted on the gender-based segregation of the restrooms. Given that gender is considered as sexism’s raw materials, there is a need for communities where biological sex as no major systematic social importance just as the eye color. Nevertheless, this does not imply the obliteration of gender differences.

References

Ahmed, S. K., & Ahmed, S. S. (2017, December). Socio-cultural acceptability of urine diverted   composting toilets: A review of literature for possible adoption in peri-urban areas as a sustainable sanitation solution. In AIP Conference Proceedings (Vol. 1919, No. 1, p.           020043). AIP Publishing.

Davis, H. F. (2018). Beyond trans: Does gender matter?. NYU Press.

Jones, Z. (2016). The social paradox of passing (Gender Analysis 23).

Peng, Y. T., Huang, Y. D., Chen, J. L., & Chen, C. (2014, June). Designing “Female Prospect”     into Public Space for Taipei City. In International Conference on Cross-Cultural         Design (pp. 309-320). Springer, Cham.