A group of university students proclaimed an SFU washroom liberated from “gender policing” for a short time Wednesday.
The students – transgender, gender-variant and allies – staged a “shit-in” at a men’s washroom in the Academic Quadrangle at the Burnaby campus.
Their aim was to raise awareness about the need for gender-inclusive washrooms and to collect signatures for a petition urging university officials to act on the issue.
“There’s no shitting involved,” co-organizer Bonnie Thornbury told the NOW at the event.
Thornbury and other demonstrators sat – pants pulled down to their ankles – in front of the washroom holding signs that stated “Say No to Gender Policing” and “Support Gender Inclusive Washrooms.”
Other volunteers handed out flyers, directing passing students to the online petition.
That petition, which had 173 signatures as of Thursday morning, calls on the university to convert all single-stall washrooms – those with icons depicting a wheelchair, a man in pants and a woman in a dress – into all-gender washrooms.
It also calls for a percentage of multi-stall washrooms to be converted into all-gender washrooms and for future building plans to incorporate such washrooms.
Thornbury said the icons of a man wearing pants and a woman wearing a dress reinforce outdated gender stereotypes that need to change.
“I personally don’t identify with a gender, and I don’t like having to choose a gender every time that I go to the washroom,” she said.
For more obviously gender-nonconforming people than Thornbury, gender-segregated washrooms also present a threat, said the demonstrators.
“A lack of gender-neutral washrooms is a major safety concern for trans and gender-variant students who are often harassed or assaulted for not meeting gender expectations,” third-year gender studies student Nathan Lyndsay stated in a press release before the protest.
Lyndsay went on to say SFU recently made positive steps towards a trans-inclusive campus by allowing students to use preferred names on student ID cards and class lists, and that addressing the washroom issue was the next step.
Shit-in co-organizer Theron Meyer uses neither men’s nor women’s washrooms.
“I can’t because I can’t enter a washroom without receiving at least three scrutinizing double takes,” Meyer said. “It makes me feel like a freak. It would make anyone feel like a freak.”
The gender studies student said there are not enough single-stall washrooms on campus, and it’s not fair that trans people have to search them out.
Besides the addressing the unfairness and inconvenience, however, Meyer said washrooms should be desegregated to promote equality among all genders.
“Because this is an issue that will affect everyone at the end of the day, I’m hoping we’ll get all kinds of people to talk about it,” Meyer said.
Response to the protest was mostly positive, according to Thornbury, except for a few negative comments on social media.
“Ultimately, one of our main goals is to get public education around this issue,” she told the NOW Thursday, “and I think we’ve achieved that goal.”
