EUSA introduces gender-neutral toilets

In order to tackle gender policing, EUSA has created gender-neutral toilets on campus.

EUSA aim to re-assign “two thirds of EUSA venue toilets as gender neutral spaces” due to trans people being regularly harassed for using the wrong toilets. A trans student introduced the policy, called Stop Taking The Piss, at a student council meeting in December.

There may be some difficulty introducing gender neutral toilets in venues licensed to sell alcohol, due to current licensing laws, according to Urte Macikene, Vice President for Services.

A major part of the policy involves the removal of binary signage as it’s “exclusionary and offensive to those who are neither.” According to EUSA, “Toilets should instead be labelled by their contents, e.g. “Stalls and Urinals”, “Stalls Only”, “Stalls, Showers and Changing Facilities” – or iconography with equivalent indications.”

Third-year Robin said: “It’s a good thing, no doubt about it – we’re all so weird about gender and sex because we’re socialised that way. It’s time we got over it. Everyone needs to go to the toilet anyway.”

Second-year Joshua added “Yes, they’re experimental. But if there is anywhere to try experimental things, why not at a university where people are constantly testing new ideas and questioning norms?”

Because sanitary dispensaries are only located in women’s toilets, “men and non-binary students who menstruate are required to misgender themselves and risk being outed in order to access those dispensaries.”

EUSA also notes that there are “non-binary students and women who may wish to stand to urinate, and as such the requirement that gender neutral toilets contain no urinals leads to these students being disenfranchised, or forced to use men’s facilities.”

At the same time, a “strict zero tolerance policy” on gendered harassment and “gender policing” in all bathrooms and changing facilities will be established by EUSA.

However, EUSA will continue to provide women-only spaces for self-defining women as “women experience gendered harassment within the context of structural oppression (see previous motion: “EUSA recognises structural oppression”), in a way that men simply do not.”

The Tab has contacted Andy Peel, the sabbatical officer in charge of the change, for more details and comment.