Gender Neutral bathrooms

[jwg]

I'm a co-chair of the Cambridge GLBT Commission and one of the things we had been working on was having gender-neutral bathrooms in city buildings and public places. This week there was a City Council order asking for a study leading to a proposed ordinance and it was passed. One of the Commissioners drafted it and it was introduced by Denise Simmons, the councillor who originally got the Commission created.

Creating such places is really important for Transgender people but we point out that they are also important for parents of opposite gender children and for people with opposite gender aides who need to use a bathroom.

Not all press reporting is bad. Today the Boston Herald published an article about this. The reporter, Christine McConville, interviewed me by phone early in the afternoon. Later that afternoon I was over at City Councillor Henrietta Davis' house helping her with her campaign database and the reporter called Henrietta there. Then later in the evening she called me to go over what she had written and I got her to make a few changes.

Of course, if you read the comments they are mostly hateful as you'd expect. I suppose some people think that we mean that there would be no gendered bathrooms but that is not what is intended.

Comments

[drewan.livejournal.com]

Oh good lord, those comments were insane. It really demonstrates most people's inability to imagine living in someone else's skin.

[rsc.livejournal.com]

They demonstrate people's inability to read and reason. "Transgendered bathrooms"?

[maxauburn.livejournal.com]

I read all the comments; they were hateful and ignorant. No big surprise there. :(

I wish there were public bathrooms where gay men can feel safe. I've been threatened in public bathrooms many times. I want to shit and pee. I don't want to feel my life is in danger just to do so.

[paulintoronto.livejournal.com]

That's crazy man! If you have gender-neutral bathrooms in public buildings, before you know it, people will be forced into using gender-neutral bathrooms in their own homes! Imagine how awful that would be.

[keyne.livejournal.com]

You should totally post that in the comments.

(Having encountered far too many ignorant 'phones in the Globe's comments, there's no way I'm even peeking at the Herald's.)

[come-to-think.livejournal.com]

I read, once upon a time, that in the Massachusetts capitol the conference rooms were named after the counties of the state, and that as a consequence there were consecutive doors labeled Men, Women, and Middlesex.