Making Bathrooms more accommodating has been an issue for a while , because bathrooms are not really accommodating. ‘‘Accommodate’’ comes from the Latin for ‘‘to make fitting.’’ It means to adapt, to bring into agreement or harmony, to furnish with something desired or needed, to favor or oblige(Bazelon 2015).Women and men are “use to” the requirements of bathrooms and are forced to give up certain freedoms because of their physical appearance. According to Bazelon , Bathrooms are worried spaces that people are forced to feel defenseless.Society has raised awareness about segregation with color, people with disabilities, and social classes ; However , they are blind to the segregation of bathrooms. Bathrooms force men and women to go in a certain space that they may or may not feel comfortable in. These spaces uses physical appearance to dictate who goes where. Using physical traits to separate people can become a concern of transgender people.Transgenders often conflict with picking a designated bathroom. Should a transgender man go to the women bathroom because he partially meet the physical criteria of being a women or should they be judged off original gender? I am sure these questions play a big role to transgender people when they are deciding to pick a certain space they are comfortable in. Even though transgenders often struggles with the inconvenience of sex-based bathrooms , it causes problems for regular men and women. Imagine waiting in line for a open stall in your designated bathroom while the opposite sex bathroom is vacant.One shouldn’t be inconvenience because one doesn’t meet the physical criteria. Furthermore one shouldn’t feel have to feel uncomfortable because the people that share common women/men features makes them feel like they don’t belong. In addition , bathrooms are another example of how built environments controls an community. From Bazelon’s perspective , Accommodating bathrooms only accommodates a particular group which can causes involuntary segregation. In male bathrooms , there are bathroom urinals that accommodate men , but if a young lady was in a hurry to use the restroom but the ladies room was full she will be forced to wait until she was able to urinate in the “women stalls”. So when we look back on the definition “accommodating” it doesn’t adjust to to everyone needs. In conclusion bathrooms can’t accommodate society by labeling certain spaces based on physical identities.The problem is that this vastly oversimplifies the experience of transgender people and the biology of chromosomes, which can appear in other combinations. There is a spectrum of male and female, and no one definition of accommodation (Bazelon 2015). Bathrooms can’t accommodate one group without inconveniencing the other.In addition , to eliminate the problems that sex based bathrooms causes is to have private unisex bathrooms.There is a spectrum of male and female, and no one definition of accommodation. Some people, transgender or otherwise, like single-stall bathrooms that are unisex (or all-gender, the word that’s lately in favor)(Bazelon 2015).In conclusion bathrooms shouldn’t make people choose a certain identity , it should be a space where one shouldn’t have to feel vulnerable nor feel like they don’t belong because they don’t meet the physical appearance.
Work Cited
Bazelon, Emily. “Making Bathrooms More Accommodating.” New York Times Magazine.17 Nov 2015. Web. 18 Feb 2016.