Some local restrooms outpace politics
Restaurants, UH Downtown offer unisex facilities shared by everyone
The restroom of the future is taking shape before our eyes.
At The Pass & Provisions restaurant, men and women share a common wash station surrounded by five private stalls. The University of Houston-Downtown uses a restroom sign that shows a traditional male stick figure, a female stick figure, a figure that combines the two, and a wheelchair.
There’s even an app that helps transgender people find safe facilities.
Three days ago, the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance went down in defeat, in what opponents dubbed the “bathroom ordinance.” Although voters expressed considerable unease at the thought of a transgender woman in a woman’s bathroom, Houston restrooms are way ahead of politics.
No Houston establishments are required by law to offer unisex bathrooms, yet some already do. Restaurants, universities and businesses have found creative solutions to an issue that has pushed its way to the forefront in national conversations about discrimination in general, and gay and transgender
rights, specifically.
As other cities across the country approve ordinances requiring unisex, single-occupancy restrooms — Austin and Santa Fe, N.M., among them — the writing on the wall couldn’t be clearer. The restroom signage might say All Gender, Gender Neutral, Unisex, or something more whimsical. The signage might say nothing at all, offering an image to explain what words cannot.
80-year-old ladies and Texans
At North Italia restaurant on Post Oak, three of the five private restrooms are marked Either/Or.
At The Pass & Provisions, two restaurants under one roof in the Fourth Ward, “We’ve had little 80-year-old ladies washing their hands next to Texans players,” said chef/owner Seth Siegel-Gardner.
Two of the stalls are labeled “Men” and three are labeled “Women,” Siegel-Gardner said, but “they’re marked with chalk, so I guess they’re all optional.” The restrooms weren’t designed with gender or politics in mind; it was just the arrangement that “made the most sense, designwise.”
“No one has ever complained to me about it,” Siegel-Gardner added, but there’s another option for anyone uncomfortable sharing the common space. “If someone wants to walk all the way over to the bar, there’s a single stall there.” That restroom is labeled simply “WC.”
For some transgender people, finding a single-toilet restroom is like finding an oasis in the desert.
“I plan my outings around bathrooms,” said Kaylee Grundy, a transgender woman who lives on the west side of Houston and works downtown with Houston Unite, the pro-HERO group.
As part of the HERO campaign, Grundy, 32, spent time at Alief High School training students in the gay-straight alliance to run a phone bank. Because she wasn’t sure what the school’s restroom situation would be, she planned ahead, acutely aware that she looks like a man in women’s clothing.
“I stopped drinking water about six hours beforehand to make sure I absolutely didn’t have to pee,” Grundy said.
The Restroom Refuge app is a big help. It shows many more restrooms in places like New York and San Francisco, but Grundy tries to add as many as she can for Houston.
“I love Cinemark,” she said. The theaters have “family” restrooms, and most H-E-Bs are accommodating.
Grundy has never had a problem at a restroom. “I’ve spent my life being cautious,” she said. Still, she fears someone will yell at her for being a man in a woman’s restroom — or worse.
UHD opened a single-user restroom on its third floor last year, after reaching out to transgender students to ask about their experiences on campus. John Hudson, director for the school’s Center for Student Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, heard that students traveled to other floors where a professor would guard the door while they used the restroom. One student refused to use any of the campus restroom facilities.
Work in progress
The single-user restroom also provided a place for student parents to go with their children, as well as privacy for students and staff with medical issues.
“And, of course, transgender students and staff can go there and be free of harassment,” Hudson said.
Language and signs are still a work in progress, both in Houston and around the nation. UHD specifically avoided use of the phrase “family restroom,” Hudson said.
“We felt if we were trying to meet the needs of transgender students then we shouldn’t hide behind that phrase, which some might find heterosexist,” he said.
The UHD stick figure sign is “imperfect,” Hudson said, “but we thought it was still a bold statement that let transgender students know, ‘We’re aware of you, and we want you to feel safe.’ ”