Last month, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio signed an executive order that mandates individuals be allowed access to public bathrooms consistent with their gender identity. The executive order guarantees that transgender and gender nonconforming individuals will not need to show identification at any of the city’s buildings or facilities, including offices, parks, and recreational centers.
The executive order is undoubtedly a victory for transgender and gender nonconforming people in New York City. Nonetheless, the order will do nothing to counter the bathroom discrimination that prevails in countless cities throughout the United States. Unfortunately, De Blasio’s executive order that passed in New York City is identical to initiatives in other states that have failed, such as in North Carolina and South Dakota.
Bathrooms are no longer a mere place to settle one’s private business. While to some, using the bathroom may seem second-nature, transgender and gender nonconforming individuals are at risk of discrimination and disciplinary action for using the bathroom that is consistent with their gender identity. Kit Malone, one of thousands of transgender people in the United States, faced discrimination and harassment for using women’s restrooms in Indiana – a state where 45% of the population believes that transgender individuals should use the bathroom consistent with their birth gender.
There are a number of arguments against protections for transgender and gender nonconforming people’s use of the bathroom they identify with, ranging from religious and family values to the distinction between sex and gender. However, the two sides of the argument do meet on a common ground: concerns for safety. Transgender people and proponents of legislation like de Blasio’s fear for their safety and the possibility of harassment and violence if they use a bathroom that others view as inconsistent with their sex or gender identity. Opponents to legislation are just as concerned for their safety, believing that transgender rights laws will lead to greater sexual assault and violence in bathrooms.
De Blasio’s executive order may allow the 25,000 transgender people in New York to use bathrooms consistent with their identity and avoid the legal consequences that Kit and many others have faced. It does little, however, to overcome the reliance on gender as a way of categorizing people, and it will do nothing to eliminate institutionalized attitudes and biases towards transgender and gender nonconforming individuals when they use the bathroom they identify with. It also does not account for gender nonconforming individuals—people who do not identify as either male or female.
Gender is, and has been, a means of dividing and organizing society in accordance with the two sexes. Thus, a more effective solution to eliminating discrimination of transgender people would be to eliminate gendered bathrooms altogether and implement gender neutral bathrooms with private stalls—they would not be men’s or women’s rooms, nor would they be trans male or trans female but rather, rooms for anyone to use regardless of their gender identity or lack thereof. Removing the division between male and female subsequently eliminates the requirement for physical appearance to be consistent with gender identity, as well as the requirement that one either be male or female.
Bathroom politics have emerged as an important topic in public debate, and the LGBT community has shifted its focus from marriage equality to bathroom politics—not to mention the wide array of issues that transgender people face in healthcare, employment and housing discrimination, and voting rights. A lack of research on transgender issues relative to LGBT issues as a whole may explain the recent prominence of bathroom politics, but they are rapidly gaining momentum as more and more transgender and gender nonconforming people continue to advocate for equality and work towards a gender-neutral nation.
