Gender neutral restrooms mean progress

Pierce and its people are a melting pot. We provides an education to students from countries around the world as well as students with different sexual identities.

The Williams Institute found that there were 700,000 transgender people in the United States in 2011, which makes up .3 percent of the population. Transgender students have been using bathrooms that they have been told are appropriate for them to use.

Transgender people have not been afforded the same rights in the United States as the rest of the general public. Only 18 states have clear laws that protect transgender people’s rights according to the American Civil Liberties Union. California is one of those states, but the state and nation still have a long way to go.

Pierce College should open a designated restroom in each building or area of the campus to be a gender neutral restroom. This is not to alienate a group of people, but an attempt to give them the same freedom to go to the bathroom in a space that feels safe.

Students would not be forced to use these new bathrooms, but they will be left as a choice to anyone who believes they would benefit from them.

There have been transgender people who have been embarrassed and harassed for trying to use a bathroom that is comfortable for them. It seems that every day there is a new video that pops up of a member of the LGBT community, not being allowed to use a restroom that matches their gender identity.

The fact that the transgender suicide attempt rate is at 41 percent, according to the National Transgender Discrimination Survey in 2011, should show that we need to change something.

President Barack Obama instructed schools to allow transgender students the choice to use the restroom that matches the student’s gender identity.

Target stores recently created controversy and received negative feedback for its announcement that they will allow people to use the bathroom that matches their gender identity. Since then, over a million customers have pledged to boycott target stores nationwide. Although Target stores were attempting to accommodate transgender customers, they ended

MAX SULLIVAN News Editor

As gender equality becomes a more central issue, there is a push at universities across the country to have gender neutral bathrooms. They are now available at over 150 Universities, according to a University of Massachusetts study. Gender neutral bathrooms already exist on the campus. They are locked and not available to students, just faculty. Making this a reality at Pierce is as simple as unlocking the doors and maintaining them in addition to the facilities that are already in use.

A benefit of gender neutral bathrooms is that they are open to everybody and do not segregate anybody.

In most developed countries, bathrooms are the last place of segregation, but it wasn’t always that way. The first evidence of urinary segregation is in 1739 Paris, according to Sheila Cavanagh, a sociology professor at York University. Prior to that, public restrooms were either gender neutral or for men only.

In the United States the need for women’s restrooms became necessary when women began to enter the workforce in the late 1800s. Massachusetts passed the first law mandating employers to have bathrooms for women if they had female employees in 1887, according to TheHeraldonline.com Identity is at the core of all of us and who we are. How some body identifies themselves helps to shape their worldviews, and what is valuable to them. Identities are often not something that you choose.

Barack Obama became president

Photographers: up making a large portion of customers uncomfortable.

This plan for Pierce to bring a comfortable and safe atmosphere for everyone does not accommodate a minority while exiling a majority.

Santee Education Complex is a secondary school that was the first in the Los Angeles Unified School District to designate a genderneutral bathroom for students.

People who feel uncomfortable with sharing a restroom with someone who was born of the opposite sex could still use a women-only or men-only restroom. And transgender students can still continue to use the restroom they have been using all their life. People have been sharing the bathroom with transgender people their whole life. Pierce will be having a Theoria Discussion in the Associated Student Organization building on the this topic on May 18 at 5 p.m. College is hard enough without having to worry about being harassed while using the restroom, or even if you will be allowed to enter the bathroom at all. Let’s make Pierce College an area of safety and acceptance. largely because he wrote a book on his identity and spoke about it at the 2004 Democratic Convention, launching him into the spotlight. People have been oppressed for how they identify as far back in history as we know whether due to gender, religion, nationality, race, political views or an array of other identities. publicity releases, poetry or other such materials as the Editorial Board deems not to be a letter. The deadline is 11:59 p.m. the Sunday prior to the issue date.

Separate spheres for men and women have been a part of American ideology since the Industrial Revolution, and is commonplace throughout most of the world. Men inhabiting the public sphere while women handle the domestic duties is archaic thinking. Views on gender and sexuality have progressed over the past century and especially more recently. Tolerance toward transgenders has lagged behind.

Gender is not binary, it is a spectrum. It is estimated that 700,000 Americans identify as transgender, and 71 percent hide their identity, according to the New York Times. A startling 41 percent of transgender people have attempted suicide at some point in their lives, opposed to 4.6 percent of the general public, according to USA Today.

These statistics show there is still much progress to be made in the acceptance of the transgender community. Neutral gender bathrooms are only a minor step in the right direction. These bathrooms do not exclude anybody from using the men’s or women’s restrooms, including transgender people. It merely provides the option for anybody to choose the bathroom they are the most comfortable using.

With many supporting views as to why we should have gender neutral restrooms on campus, many people are not thinking about the specifics. In reality, having gender neutral restrooms is tricky, and the school would have to be very cautious and take much more into consideration than simply equality for one specific, and relatively small group of students.

Gender neutral policies would mean that if a man sees a pretty girl walk into a restroom, he can easily follow her inside without anyone stopping him. One of the many fears of having restrooms where anyone can walk into would be the role that rape culture plays. Approximately every one in three girls have been victims of sexual violence and one in six men have been victims as well. This means that 33 percent of women and 17 percent of men have been victims of being touched inappropriately. This means multiple women and men have experienced some sort of unwanted sexual contact.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t stop there. The statistics do not include the “Peeping Toms.” Being exposed doesn’t have to mean that the victims will be touched. Having gender neutral bathrooms mean anyone will be able to walk in, and peep into the stalls while the victim has half of their body exposed.

Even if a student were to report the incident, the peeper’s rights would be protected. By arguing that he was allowed to be in that restroom, and was simply peeking through the stall to see if it was occupied, would be enough for him to get away with it.

Having gender neutral restrooms defeats the purpose of helping students feel more comfortable. Although it would help make the transgender community feel safer, you have to look at the cost. The cost would be that the majority of the population would not feel secure using Pierce’s restrooms.

I believe that students should feel safe using their own school’s restrooms, and this change will prevent many from feeling comfortable using them. The safety issue could potentially cause two things. Either students will begin holding in their waste, which can cause many harmful health effects, or will begin to boycott Pierce, much like how shoppers began to boycott Target. This means registration could potentially decrease because of issues that have nothing to do with the educational quality that students would be receiving at Pierce.

In addition, I believe many students would simply abuse the rule. They would opt for the restroom with the shorter lines or cleaner stalls for their own personal gain, not because they actually identify themselves as person of the opposite sex. Not only that but it can even increase the chances of sexual activity on campus. Since anyone would be allowed to walk into any restroom, for some that could potentially mean bathroom quickies between classes on a busy day.

I think the transgender community has nice intentions, but it is important to remember to be realistic and realize that not everyone has good thoughts. In cases like these, it is always better to be safe, rather than sorry.

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