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The designers of our built environment have created public facilities that are segregated by gender, such as public restrooms, locker rooms, jails, and shelters. Reliance upon gender segregation in our public spaces harms transgender and gender non-conforming people. This paper employs a minority stress framework to discuss findings from an original survey of transgender and gender non-conforming people in Washington, DC about their experiences in gendered public restrooms. Seventy percent of survey respondents reported being denied access, verbally harassed, or physically assaulted in public restrooms. These experiences impacted respondents' education, employment, health, and participation in public life. This paper concludes with a discussion of how public policy and public administration can begin to address these problems by pointing to innovative regulatory language and implementation efforts in Washington, DC and suggests other policies informed by the survey findings.
The concept of two separate and opposing genders - men and women - is entrenched in our society and reflected in our built environment. Public spaces throughout the United States are constructed with gender-segregated facilities, which serve to determine who is and is not allowed to use a particular space. Gender segregation is commonly found in public restrooms, locker rooms, dressing rooms, homeless shelters, jails, and prisons and is intended to provide safety, order, modesty, and security in these facilities. However, the concept of gender that underlies the design of these facilities ignores people who do not fit into a binary gender scheme, particularly transgender and gender non-conforming people. Traditional beliefs about gender are being challenged now more than ever and we must address the inadequacies of our built environment to meet the needs of all people regardless of gender.1
Restrooms in particular are an integral and necessary part of the built environment for our daily lives. All people share the real human need for safe restroom facilities when we go to work, go to school, and participate in public life. Since the need is universal, one would think that it would be a priority of our society to make sure restrooms are safe and available for all people. Yet, the way gendered public restrooms are designed and constructed harms transgender and gender non-conforming people, some of whom may not conform to reified expectations of how men...