Gender-Inclusive Bathrooms: How Pandemic-Inspired Design Imperatives and the Reasoning of Recent Federal Court Decisions Make Rejecting Sex-Separated Facilities More Possible

Abstract

This article suggests that the moment may be right to rethink the societal need for sex-separated bathrooms, and to consider the harmful ways in which they perpetuate a problematic gender binary. Architectural innovations for public restroom design, inspired by the need to increase social distancing during the pandemic, align well with designs that have already been proposed for gender-inclusive bathrooms. At the same time, recent federal cases have confronted the tortured logic of those insisting on policing the gender binary that sex-separated bathrooms represent. The responses in these decisions, which uphold the rights of transgender students to have access to the bathrooms that align with their gender identity, are shown to undermine the logic of the gender binary in general and the rationale for sex-separated facilities in particular.

Keywords: gender-inclusive, transgender, bathroom, restroom, binary