Gender neutral washrooms wanted in Kitchener

KITCHENER — If you need to use the bathroom at Kitchener City Hall, just off from the main-floor rotunda, there’s a bathroom for women, one for men, and a single one for families.

But a transgender woman may not want to use the men’s bathroom, may worry about the reaction she gets if she used the women’s bathroom, and she doesn’t constitute a “family.”

“Why not just call it a washroom?” says Jeremy Steffler, cochair of the Rainbow Community Council of Waterloo Region. “That sort of labelling makes other identities invisible. It’s not acknowledging that there are people who neither fit into our concept of male or female.”

The City of Kitchener is working with the rainbow council to see if there are ways to make the city — and its public bathrooms and change rooms — more inclusive for members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning (LGBTQ) communities.

The city’s safe and healthy community committee, a citizens’ committee that advises city council, invited the rainbow council to talk to the committee about how to make the community more inclusive.

The council’s ideas include everything from having city staff sit on the rainbow council, improving training on gender variance and barriers the LGBTQ community faces, and converting single-stall washrooms to be gender inclusive.

It’s also recommending that the city develop a policy on genderneutral change rooms. Change rooms generally don’t offer private stalls, Steffler said; people usually shower and change in and out of bathing suits in an open area. “That can be intimidating,” he said.

Steffler stresses that having gender neutral change rooms and washrooms would benefit a wide group of people, not just transgender people — people with concerns about body image, or people with medical conditions, for example.

The council recently did a comprehensive survey of more than 500 LGBTQ people in Waterloo Region. The survey, which included responses from more than 100 transgender people, found that 57 per cent avoid using public washrooms.

Steffler said that number didn’t surprise him. “Every time you have to do something as basic as using a washroom, you run the risk of being confronted, of having to explain to people. It can wear you down.”

“I am fully in support of having more gender-inclusive washrooms,” said Coun. Sarah Marsh, who sits on the city’s advisory committee.

Kitchener has more than 50 “family” washrooms at 35 different facilities such as arenas, libraries and community centres,

but they’re not labelled as specifically gender neutral. “To be more proactive about it would demonstrate our commitment to be a welcoming place for all,” Marsh said.

Kitchener’s strategic plan includes a commitment to diversity, Marsh noted. The city’s Youth Action Council, for instance, organizes a Pride Prom for LGBTQ youth.

Some institutions, such as the University of Waterloo and Wilfrid Laurier University, have converted or are in the process of converting single-stall washrooms to be gender-free. Spectrum, a community space for the LGBTQ community, has mapped more than 100 gender-neutral public washrooms in the region on its website.

“It’s still a relatively new conversation in the municipal world,” said Jana Miller, Kitchener’s executive director in charge of customer service. Kitchener can learn from cities such as Hamilton, which earlier this year instituted a policy to protect transgender rights, she said.

“It’s important to have that conversation. We’re a public institution. Our mission is to serve all of our citizens.”