Why Gender Neutral Bathrooms are Important

Delaney Iddings staff writer

Gender neutral bathrooms are seen as a safe, accepting place for students who don’t feel comfortable using the women’s or men’s bathroom. Students at Sheldon should feel comfortable when using bathrooms that are provided and the gender neutral bathroom is a way that all students are supported in their identities and have a safe place to use the bathroom. Students shouldn’t have to be scared when they go to use the bathroom; they should feel safe enough in their identities. Students should not have to be harassed every time they decide they need to use the bathroom, they shouldn’t be scared to use their safe bathroom space, and they should feel that staff and students, as a community, support them within their identity.

Senior Sage Pomlee-Solar painted the gender neutral bathroom in the main building last year. Pomlee-Solar painted the restroom to make it feel more welcoming to people so they chose to do blue instead of the beige color it was before. They added a mini mural and put their hand print on it as a signature but then started to add more handprints on the walls because the bathroom is everyone’s space.

Pomlee-Solar feels very strongly about the use of the gender neutral bathroom and feels that anyone should have access to it; however, because Sheldon only has one here, during passing periods it’s hard to use it. Pomlee-Solar said, “During the passing period, if I needed to use the bathroom, I would have to wait in a line of four people and there’s not an alternative to that. However, it is safer to use than any other place on campus for students.”

Pomlee-Solar does not feel that they are a target when it comes down to using the restroom, however, they have seen it happen: “Personally I’m known enough around the school as the person who painted the bathroom and someone who uses the bathroom regularly, so I haven’t gotten that, but I have seen it. People make comments like: ‘They’re waiting to use the gay bathroom’ and I will shut it down.” Throughout the past two years there has been a lot of abuse done to this restroom and people have graffitied the bathroom many times.

Pomlee-Solar said, “I think people who don’t see it as a safe haven see it as something to exploit by graffiti and the people who do drugs in this bathroom. However, this does happen in all of the bathrooms. I scrub the wet toilet paper off the ceilings and I scrub off the graffiti in the bathroom.”

Sophomore Bee Looper believes that they are safe in their identity when they use the gender neutral restroom: “I feel like having a place to go when you don’t identify yourself and are neutral in your gender identity is an easier place to use and you don’t have to explain yourself.” Looper used to use this restroom a lot their freshman year when they were figuring out how they identify themselves, but have stopped using it since then. Looper said, “I’ve only used it for the first and once I started figuring myself out racking when people are around but restroom.”

Senior Kai Zollman, who exclusively uses the gender neutral bathroom and believes this is a safe place for him to use during school. Zollman said, “The bathroom has definitely been great for me, ever since coming out and dressing more like a ‘typical’ man.” However, Zollman has had an experience that made him feel unsafe using this restroom: “On Halloween people were banging on the door and kicking the door and when I walked out it was a big group of people crowing the door. I had to push past them to get through but it was weird because they didn’t say anything and none of them went into the bathroom.”

This restroom has continuously been misused by students of all grades and it has been more prominent last year and some of this year. Zollman said, “The people abusing the bathroom aren’t even the people that need them; it’s usually students (cisgender) who use it to take shots for fifteen minutes during passing periods or to vape and stuff are getting in the way of people like me who really need to pee and go back to class.”

graphics by Natalie Kaiser