Holly Yan, a reporter/writer/editor for CNN Digital, wrote the article titled “South Dakota Could be First State to Ban Transgender Students in Some Restrooms” focusing on a bill South Dakota is trying to get passed forcing transgender students to use the restroom of their biological gender rather than the one they identify with. This bill was put in motion in order to ” protect the physical privacy of students from having to expose themselves, or be exposed to others, when in a state of undress or nakedness while at school or school functions,” according the bill’s author State Representative Fred Deutsch. “The state Senate passed the bill Tuesday, February 16, in a 20-15 vote, after the state House approved it 58-10 last month. The measure now goes to Republican Gov. Dennis Daugaard’s desk.” This news article is useful for anyone needing an example when doing research on architectural discrimination or the exclusion of the transgender community in 2016.
Jon Campbell, an Albany reporter who has covered New York state Government for Lohud and the journal news wrote an article titled “No food stamps for steak or lobster, bill says” covering a story that highlights statelaw makers attempting to “block the use of food stamps for ‘luxury’ items like high-end stakes, lobster and junk food.”
Justifying this by using America’s overwhelming obesity epidemic as a scapegoat for a specific attack on lower class minority families. In the bills memo it states’ “…it is critically important that taxpayer-funded programs help low-income consumers make wise and healthy food choices.”
Jeremy Saunders, co-executive director of Vocal New York, feels as though this is none other than, “…a Republican attempt to make it appear that poor people use tax dollars to buy steak and lobster.” This current event can serve as a supportive clause for anyone writing on legal discrimination and the new form of racism in 2016.
Suzanne Tick‘s “His & Hers: Designing for a Post-Gender Society” is an article that focuses on our post modern society and the changes in architecture that need to be made to accommodate all Americans. Tick points out how it’s no longer black and white with female and male sexual identities, now there are actually “five billion people in the world and five billion unique sexual identities.” Therefore Suzanne feels as though, “Designers,who should focus a critical eye on society’s issues, need to work within this discourse and help promote acceptance and change.”
According to Tick the fashion and beauty industry has taken that first step into evolving for it’s updated clientele. For instance, ” Alexander Wang’s women’s coat from Fall 2015 has masculine tailoring with a military look, while Annemiek van der Beek’s Primal Skin makeup line has been designed to be appealing to the male buyer.” This is that first step that we need in order to begin our acceptance process as a nation.
Tick also mentions in certain colleges students are not marking their gender on their applications because that don’t want to be identified as one or the other. These small but significant changes are leading to the development of unisex bathroom by big companies such as Google. The purpose is “… to allow all individuals to feel comfortable, safe, and included—and not have to choose a gender while in the workplace.”
‘Accommodate’ can have a compulsory aspect — it’s a word that involves moving over to make room for other people, whether you want to or not.
Emily Bazelon‘s “Making Bathrooms More ‘Accommodating‘” is an article that articulates and brings to question the basis of the Public Restroom System we have in place in America. Bazelon informs us that “Transgender people, most prominently, are asking society to rethink all of this, from signs to design to who gets to enter where.” In the 19th century states began to require sex-segregated restrooms on a discriminatory premise, much like racial segregation, yet we still implicate this irrational division as a social norm in today’s society. Bazelon goes on to say similar to the Americans With Disabilities Act, there should be a small alteration to the original design to accommodate for all individuals. “For people with disabilities, reasonable accommodation is about a bar next to the toilet and a button that opens the door. For transgender kids, it’s showering near your peers in your own stall, and then maybe getting dressed behind a privacy curtain.” Bazelon emphasizes.
To strengthen her argument Bazelon mentions an incident involving a “transgender high-school student that identifies as a female who was undergoing hormone therapy and asked to change in the girls’ locker room.” located in the suburban Illinois. The school district refused the teen her rights stating that, “Privacy concerns required sending her to a separate room down the hall.” This resulted in a civil rights complaint from the teen’s family soon ending with an intervention from the United State Department of Education asking the district to “give her the right to shower and change in the same locker room with her female peers.” Bazelon suggested a privacy curtain could be added in order to serve as a compromise for both the transgender teen and those of which have concerns about privacy rights.
To recap, Emily Bazelon published this article in hopes that it would bring awareness to the general public about the urgent need of reform in the architecture of public restrooms in America due to our accelerated evolving nation. Americans have to stop being so afraid of change/the unknown and welcome the evolution. The United States of America was created with the intent to promote freedom and equality for all; while our founding fathers had a good intent, they could not have possibly predicted what life would be like in 2016. With that being said, in spirit of Bazelon’s words it’s time we begin to make these necessary changes to accommodate all Americans and not just the masses.
The main entrance of Grady Memorial Hospital, located at 80 Jesse Hill Jr Dr SE, Atlanta, was built in downtown Atlanta in 1892.There are three sets of stairs that are perpendicular to Jessie Hill Jr. Drive, yet I noticed that everyone seems to flow down the 1 ramp. A few feet away from the doorway is one bench.( I could remember thinking all of this vast space clearly promoting large groups of personnel to enter and only one bench outside of the main entrance.) Was this meant to discourage strangling? There were also a series of potted plants at the end of each stairway along side of a few trees there isn’t much plant life around the facility.
In addition I noticed that the pathway is paved leading towards the ramp, subconsciously choosing the direction for the pedestrian. This pathway ends at the McDonald’s which is connected to Grady’s parking deck persuading visitors to indulge in the unhealthy fast food which contradicts what doctors tell their patients they should be eating. As a whole Grady appears as this newly constructed facility that promotes healthcare and cleanliness despite the fact that it sits in the heart of Atlanta with countless homeless patients going in and out and even living/panhandling on the outskirts of the property. In my opinion this facility is designed to attract minorities and keep them in the position, health wise, that they will have to keep coming back.
Professor Megan-Jane Johnstone , an international healthcare ethicist, wrote the article “The spectrum of ‘new racism’ and discrimination in hospital contexts: A reappraisal” to bring attention to fact that, “Despite the universal right to health, people of minority racial and ethnic backgrounds experience commonplace and significant unjust inequalities in their health and health care.” Johnstone discuses this new form of racism that is unrecognizable for even those with racist intentions do to its “changing face”.
As evidence Johnstone presents three case scenarios conducted by “an Australian research study investigating cultural competency and cultural safety in health care (Johnstone & Kanitsaki, 2005).” Case one being about the staffs hospitality towards an Arabic woman who’s son required monthly treatment at a hospital due to his serious medical condition. Soon After the terrorist attack on 9/11 this woman noticed a “significant and soul-destroying change in attitude and behavior toward her by hospital staff.” She went on to say, “… they rejected, shunned and avoided her, and ultimately became inattentive and indifferent to her plight.” This type of discriminatory treatment was unfair in so many ways. Americans were so hurt with the unfortunate tragedy that happened that they just wanted to take it out on anyone with even the slightest resemblance of “the enemy”. Johnstone also included a quote from the Arabic woman’s sister about a conversation they shared with one saying, ‘Sometimes I want to say, “We’re not terrorists, we’re not liars.” I said, ‘No you don’t have to explain yourself. They can see you are a mother caring for your own son, you don’t have to say that.’ Regardless of the events people in America should be able to see that she is the same woman she was before 9/11 occurred.
Scenario two involves the experience of a health interpreter that had several years of experience with hospitals. This anonymous interpreter witnessed first hand a nurse putting “non-English speaking patients ‘at the bottom of the pile’ because of concerns they had that the patients would get ‘preferential treatment’ on account of an interpreter being booked for a specific time.” This has even led to interpreters having to leave their patients before they actually have been seen by their doctor because of other commitment.
Megan-Jane Johnstone wrote this article to bring the new form of racism and discrimination into the lime light to unmask the ugly truth and promote a change in order to make, “…hospitals safe havens where people who are ill and injured can go for care and treatment without prejudice.” When going to a hospital a patient should expect that when receiving care they should be treated in a “non-discriminatory manner” and will be treated with the same respect as that of the staffs’ own family. This article would be useful for anyone writing about discrimination or racism in society today.
The discrimination of modern architectural designed against the disabled. (Simone Becchetti via Getty Images)
Clark Miller, Claire Gordon. “Disabled by Design.” How a lack of imagination in technology keeps the world inaccessible to huge numbers of people.N.p., n.d. Web.
Clark Miller, the associate director of the Consortium for Science, Policy & Outcomes at Arizona State University teamed up with Claire Gordon, a researcher of the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education to write “Disabled by Design”, an article that is primarily focused on the concept of “technology’s patterns force people to design their own bodies to fit in—or those patterns exclude people from participation when they don’t fit.” Miller uses Regan Brashears’s film Fixed to show that in society today ” the most common response is to call for technology to fix disabled bodies– Rather than designing the world so that a diverse population can function and thrive within it.”
(U.S. Air Force photo by Master Sgt. Paul Gorman/Released)
One of the supporting arguments given is the research conducted by the Claire Gordon on the U.S. Black Hawk helicopter. In this study Gordon informs her audience on the architectural exclusion of the U.S. Black Hawk. Gordon states “while the engineers used conventional standards to construct the design of workstations and equipment in the cockpit, it only fits 90% of the users. Within these percentages there is even a smaller amount of female minorities able to use this equipment, “– in the general Army population, more than one-third of female soldiers and almost three-quarters of Hispanic female soldiers physically did not have the right size or shape body to fly a Black Hawk. ”
“Disabled by Design” was written to influence the thought of the citizens and to hopefully become “The citizens guide to the future.” This would be useful for any researcher looking for a credible source with scholarly accredited studies to support the theory of discrimination within architecture towards certain groups, specifically the disabled.
