Gender Neutral Bathrooms

A big issue for me anyway. I don't feel safe in a bathroom anymore unless I can lock myself in and be alone, and certainly not a shower. I don't want to think about what could happen if someone walked in on me when I'm not wearing a shirt; for a male bodied person (can I even use that word anymore?) to have breasts, even small ones, is something that gossip lives on. Not to mention my supreme fear of confrontation and harassment, of being accosted by ignorant cisgenders. I've heard the horror stories, just like any other spivak.

Today several people from the Gay-Straight Alliance and the GLBTQ Ad-hoc committee on campus and taped signs saying "Gender Neutral Bathrooms: Please be respectfull of this sign, do not remove it", and then inside the bathrooms information on the legislation that has been passed, and the reasons. I was so afraid of what might happen, so afraid that someone might stop and start harrassing us, so afraid that someone I didn't want to know about me would find out. Bringing the will power to get myself to do this was very difficult. I don't have confidence like Jacob, who was actually putting signs OVER the "Men/Womens" signs, something we were told not to do. Sie can be such a genderfuck, something I'm not.

I was able to do it for an hour, and thats all I could stand. The person I was paired off with was as non confrontational as I am, so it worked well for us, kinda. At least one of us didn't feel uncomfortable with what the other was doing. We got stopped once, for taping things up, because of something about tearing off paint with tape (though it was painters tape, it couldn't even wreck PAPER if you wanted it to). And then, we got stopped another time by the gender studies professor, who thought it was totally awesome what we were doing and applauded us. At least one prof is on our sides.

Its sad really. The GSA at large is a really transphobic organization. One of the advisors is a transphobe, which doesn't make any sense at all, and lots of the members are apparently. This needs to change, or I just won't go anymore. There are other ways to get involved with transfriendly people on campus without going through a bunch of transphobic gay men, which really, thats what it seems 80% of the organization is composed of.

Last night at the college feminists meeting, someone brought up a good point. They mentioned that calling the bathrooms "family bathrooms" would get across to people MUCH better than calling them gender neutral bathrooms, and that it would mean the same safety for us. However, some people, Jacob included, got a little indignant....I can understand how anyone wouldn't want the issues to get swept under the carpet, but for me, safety is safety, and I don't care whether its called handicapped accessible unisex, or family, or gender neutral, it all means the same to me: that I have somewhere that I can go that is SAFE to use the bathroom on campus.

And thats what is really important.