What about gender neutrality for bathrooms?

By Abbie Wong

Renaissance College is a school that prides itself on the diversity in its student body. Whether it be in culture, identity, religion or any other factor, it’s hard to say that this pride isn’t justified. How the school caters to these diverse backgrounds is also going strong, with events like the International Evening that welcome and teach about the global culture in the RCHK community.

Recently though, Renaissance College has taken another step in promoting diversity throughout the school by implementing gender neutral signage for bathrooms.

This change was integrated sometime after the Chinese New Year holidays, which re-labeled the disabled access bathrooms, once recognised as “Staff Only” bathrooms into “Gender Neutral Bathrooms.” For those unfamiliar with this concept, gender neutral bathrooms are bathroom facilities unrestricted by gender or sex, as opposed to the traditional male and female bathrooms present universally.

The purpose of implementing gender neutral bathrooms is generally to support the non-binary community, and by extension the transgender community as a whole, who have a plethora of reasons to not use the male or female bathrooms. For example, a non-binary person would most likely avoid using the male or female bathrooms as the non-binary identity defines “people who feel their gender cannot be defined within the margins of the gender binary” according to the LGBT foundation. A transgender person may also not want to use the bathroom of their identified gender in fear of being verbally or physically harassed.

Inside of the gender neutral bathroom in Island School. (Photo by Marcus Yeung)

As a cis (identifying with one’s assigned sex at birth) girl, the new gender neutral signage does not impact me as I have always used the female bathrooms at school except for the one time I sobbed in one of the now gender neutral bathrooms for five minutes. And yes, I use the school bathrooms for more than just washing my hands, don’t crucify me. Jokes aside, the gender neutral bathrooms will, however, absolutely impact the trans and non-binary community at RCHK. While said community may seem non-existent to some, they’re definitely there as one trans student stated he was “glad to see the school is trying to become more aware of its trans community and anyone who benefits from gender neutral bathrooms.” He still felt that the school could improve their response to similar issues, saying “the school feels quite performative as a whole in regards to LGBT issues.”

A 2015 study published by the University of Massachusetts Amherst found that there are over 150 American universities with gender neutral bathrooms out of 5300, which makes around 2.9%. I am willing to assume this percentage has risen above 3% within the six years between the publishing of this study and the time this article was written, thus Renaissance College has taken this extra step in favour of LGBTQ+ inclusion ahead of most American universities. While this is most likely because of the unfortunate transgender discrimination prominent across the States, it may be because universities try to build brand new bathroom facilities when the school just taped paper signs over the pre-existing “Staff Only” signs. In comparison, one of the most expensive public bathroom projects cost USD 4.7 million and printing a couple sheets of paper costs no more than $10 with school printers. If you take the tape into consideration, that’s an additional $100 or less. Lengthy explanation aside, the point is building new bathrooms is more expensive than making signs and taping them over the old ones.

This budget-friendly method of creating gender neutral bathrooms didn’t come without downsides though, as people found the unprofessionalism of the new signage laughable. And for one person, it led them into thinking the new signage was a prank. “I thought it was a joke, because it’s [...] paper. I thought [someone] printed it out and did it as a joke,” she said.

Yes, this picture was taken in Renaissance College. 2019, to be exact. (Photo by Stephanie Cheng)

So what is there to be said about the implementation of gender neutral bathrooms in Renaissance College? As the well known meme states, it’s not much but it’s honest work: an easy change that didn’t eat at the schools’ budget, while having a strong impact on one of the less recognised communities in the school. It’s also a change that isn’t exclusive to Renaissance College, as Island School also has gender neutral bathrooms. Although debatably, the school should’ve gone all in and built new bathroom facilities to prevent scenarios like my friend’s. But I suppose the bathrooms at school have equally as significant priorities as being able to welcome the trans and non-binary community ….