by J. Curtis Main
Inside R Out? White? Male? Feminist? YES.
Vagina vs. Penis: Bathrooms, Dorms, & Sports Women’s and men’s bathrooms. Co-ed dormitories. Men’s and women’s sports. These are just some of many of the current and powerful segregations based in sex and gender that occur in most colleges and universities. Many people might find separating people by their genitalia and gender identity as completely normal and even preferable. I find it dangerous and strange. The deep normalcy that still exists in the US in maintaining binary sex and gender can be found almost anywhere with anyone. The purpose of my column for this issue is to explore options for us to break away from these potentially harmful divides, specifically in higher education. Maybe you are not convinced there is an issue? Maybe gender and sex divides are ok with you and work well in your life? Many people feel this way. Consider the issue in another way. What if our college sports teams were separated by race?
What if we had the brown and yellow team and the white team? Like the sexes (from a dominant paradigm), physical differences may arise in patterns between ethnicities and “races,” such as average height, melanin amount, hair color, to name some. But do these patterns outweigh the vast differences inside the genders and races we have created, so much that we split them into teams, bathrooms, and living situations? Or, we could split bathrooms between heterosexual and LGBTQ . Certainly, many people could find reasons why this would be a good idea, and how it would benefit everyone needing a bathroom. Justifications are often easy to make if we limit ourselves to stereotypes, defining “others,” and ignorance. Maybe with dormitories we could separate, per floor or suite or room, students by their religious beliefs, or their class levels, or their grades? Sometimes understanding the harm of