The New York Times Magazine recently published an article, “Making Bathrooms More ‘Accommodating’”, by Emily Bazelon, which analyzes the controversy of women and men’s personal spaces. Transgender people question society about the design of where they can accommodate their personal space. People have opinionated perspectives to the association between masculine and feminine cooperation. In recent times, voters in Houston denied a broad equal rights ordinance, which secured against discrimination in shelters, public spaces and employment, including race, age, gender and sex orientation. The rejecters referred to this law as “bathroom ordinance”, and created t-shirts and TV ads about men threatening girls in a stall. This “No Men in Women’s Bathroom”, plan frightened many voters. Many schools have allowed transgender students to join any sports teams, but the decision on where they can change and shower is an issue.
A transgender high school student in Illinois requested to use a girl’s locker room, but the district proposed that she uses a different stall due to the “privacy concern”. The family retaliated with a civil right complaint, which benefited her by the United States Department of Education’s request. A privacy curtained could be used for privacy. Bazelon explains the word “Accommodate” which means, “to make fitting”, to adjust a situation with compassion, bring about an aspiration and to require. The word also means to make adjustment for more room for other people in any circumstance. To accommodate people, the Congress in the 1960’s granted workers the right to their religious customs. The same happened in the 1990’s with the Americans With Disabilities Act proposing a right for people to freely use the bathroom without having worked there. Many activists opposed to the idea of accommodations because it conveyed a perception between the natural and the different. The co-founder and director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, Mara Keisling indicated that the word accommodation is like a two-way street and that relationships demand accommodations.
Bazelon provides many examples about how the male and female gender issues are colliding. Sex-segregated bathrooms have also created complications between workers and students. For men utilizing the bathroom is much easier than for women who must wait for the stall. The dispute among the transgender and women creates a controversy of accommodation because women cannot portray the transgender as women. Bazelon compares people with disabilities to transgender kids where the disabled people have all the accommodations for their need while the transgender kids must hide and secrete their bodies. The Transgender Law Center offered a guide for transgender, “Peeing in Peace”, which gave solicited advice. Bazelon asserts that people must speak up and be confident of who you are. This article articulates the idea of transgender equality in public spaces. Transgender people deserve to have their own private, public space and feel the comfort that normal individuals feel. The architectural designers should consider the diversity of people and create a balance. This article presents the under looked people just like homeless people, which provides a better understanding of the divergence in the community all around.