{"id":62990,"date":"2014-07-01T09:00:32","date_gmt":"2014-07-01T14:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=62990"},"modified":"2014-06-19T22:54:25","modified_gmt":"2014-06-20T03:54:25","slug":"gender-neutral-bathrooms-solving-the-sign-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2014\/07\/01\/gender-neutral-bathrooms-solving-the-sign-problem\/","title":{"rendered":"Gender Neutral Bathrooms: Solving the Sign Problem"},"content":{"rendered":"

“But what would you put on the door?!\u201d said a facility manager at an airport, his concern echoed by an administrator at a university: “When people are looking for a restroom, they look for the \u2018man or woman\u2019 icon. It\u2019s what we know to look for that means restroom.\u201d<\/p>\n

We can’t have gender neutral bathrooms, you see, because there’s no symbol for it… or is there?<\/p>\n

This is the symbol used at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs. \u00a0Sam Killermann<\/a>, the\u00a0social justice activist at which the above statements were aimed, doesn’t prefer it<\/a>. \u00a0“Even if you\u2019re familiar with gender identity and diversity,” he writes, “the literal interpretation of this image (a half \u201cman\u201d half \u201cwoman\u201d) is a disconcerting representation of ‘gender neutral.’\u201d<\/p>\n

\"1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

So, what is there to do? \u00a0Killermann has an innovative solution. \u00a0“I had this breakthrough moment,” he says, “where I was like, ‘If I was urgently in need of a toilet, what visual cue that a room contained a toilet could I use?'”<\/p>\n

Tada!<\/p>\n

\"1a\"<\/a><\/p>\n

“It’s really not that hard.”<\/p>\n

Killermann wants us to replace all the man and woman signs on\u00a0one-person, private public restrooms with this one — or with the British-inspired W.C., which he has decided stands for “who cares.” Print yours here<\/a>.<\/p>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“But what would you put on the door?!\u201d said a facility manager at an airport, his concern echoed by an administrator at a university: “When people are looking for a restroom, they look for the \u2018man or woman\u2019 icon. It\u2019s what we know to look for that means restroom.\u201d We can’t have gender neutral bathrooms, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":62991,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[55,293,23622],"class_list":["post-62990","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-gender","tag-social-construction","tag-social-construction-symbols"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2014\/06\/112.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62990","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62990"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62990\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62994,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62990\/revisions\/62994"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}