If you use a single stall public restroom in Washington, D.C. it’s going to be gender neutral. It’s a city ordinance that mandates all of its restaurants, businesses and other public places with single occupancy restrooms to designate these as gender neutral.
In June of last year, the City of West Hollywood passed a similar ordinance into law that also requires all of its restaurants, businesses and other public places with single occupancy restrooms to designate these as gender neutral restrooms.
Some in San Diego’s trans community are asking if the same thing couldn’t be done in San Diego.
There are a number of reasons one can cite for having all single stall restrooms designated as gender neutral. One is to be child friendly. If a father takes his young daughter or a mother takes her young son into a single stall restroom to help them do their business, having a gender neutral family restroom makes a lot of sense.
Another reason is for physically disabled people who need assistance in restrooms and receive help from someone of an opposite gender. It’s a more disability friendly way to label a restroom.
Yet another reason is because women take longer in public restrooms than men. Having two gender neutral restrooms in a business means rotation through restrooms can be quicker during times of peak usage.
And too, there’s an LGBT reason. Trans and other gender nonconforming people often find it difficult to use gendered restrooms. If one’s appearance is considered too masculine for the women’s room or too feminine for the men’s room – or both at the same time – then having a gender neutral restroom provides a restroom where one’s gender isn’t policed.
Trans people have begun asking for the same thing here in San Diego: gender neutral restrooms. Blue Montana spoke at the Feb. 3 San Diego City Council meeting. “Just last week,” he stated to the Council, “a trans woman was told she couldn’t use a woman’s restroom because she was ‘a man.’”
That woman was Giselle Sarai De la Rosa. “A little while ago I was discriminated in a public restroom in Balboa Park,” De la Rosa told the City Council, speaking in Spanish, “and the point of this is that these people don’t understand how dangerous it is for me to enter a restroom that is not corresponding to my [assigned gender at birth].”
“One of the things that moves me to inhabit this world and be a part of it is respect,” she told the City Council through a translator. “And, that is something I learned as a young child from the Bible. Since then I’ve known that I am a part of the universe; I never felt excluded even with the hardships imposed on me to be happy. If people could understand this basic principle of life I wouldn’t have to be here requesting special restrooms just because some people are uncomfortable and feel strange seeing me enter the restroom that corresponds to my gender, the women’s restroom.”
So what’s the outcome for De la Rosa telling her story and making the ask for gender neutral restrooms? According to Montana, the San Diego City Council is “sending it to the Human Relations Commission to get the policy written.”
Well, we’ll see if this year ends with San Diego being the second city in California to require all of its restaurants, businesses and other public places with single occupancy restrooms designated as gender neutral restrooms.
And for a whole bunch of reasons beyond trans people’s public bathroom use, it’s really not a bad idea.
