create new barriers based on culture and/or linguistic knowledge (or repertoire). There are (at least) two key factors: * communicating neutrality/inclusivity right (rather than “either of two options”); * minimising the amount of cultural and linguistic knowledge required to understand the meaning. At Everyday Cissexism (@CissexismDaily) we conducted a poll via Twitter. I put together a graphic with four common and alternative options (the image at the beginning of the article)1 then we asked which of the four was preferable via a poll (results below). The poll was totally loaded (based on sound sociopolitical reasoning, of course), but the results and the discussion on both tweets are clear and conclusive: people hate the half one, half the other or “both” options and prefer visual reference to gender to be taken out altogether, favouring either a toilet or a toilet and/or urinal corresponding to what’s inside the room. I’ll cover some of the reasons why as I discuss these and other options below.
1: Half one, half the other or “both” Advice: avoid The issue here is that these do not visually represent neutrality/inclusivity: they represent or at least evoke two genders. Having two distinct figures, typically read/understood in isolation to be representative of “female” and “male”, essentially re-articulates the binary. Splitting the two figures down the middle and sticking them together is problematic in the same way, but it can also – by association – lead to a highly problematic reading of non-binary people being half one, half the other. Whilst most non-binary people would probably get the intended message behind these signs, using them doesn’t provide confidence that those putting them up really get, or have thought about, what gender-neutral toilets are all about – or one of the key reasons why they’re necessary (non-binary people exist!). This option is represented by option A in the poll – see the image at the beginning of the article. 2: Trans symbol Advice: avoid This fails on two counts. Firstly, it’s not easy to work out what the symbol represents – you need to be told or introduced to it in the context of learning about trans stuff. If you’d never seen it before and didn’t know there was a trans symbol, it wouldn’t be obvious what it means. I doubt even the binary gender symbols (♀ and ♂) have a high level of awareness on a global level, and – unlike the body figures – they bear no relation to stereotypes of gendered presentation (they are symbolic, not iconic