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my name is Andrew Coate and I'm going to my second year at the Boston University
School of Theology
i'm serving as the young adult caucus worship coordinator at General Assembly
2013 in Louisville, Kentucky
and today I am talking a little bit about the Gender Neutral bathroom
situation
that people are either confused about or concerned about
or confused about why people are concerned about it.
I don't think anyone is claiming in this conversation that we don't need
gender-neutral bathrooms a general assembly
I don't think anyone who even claiming that we don't need more gender-neutral
bathrooms
what I see people being concerned about is that they feel there aren't going to
be appropriately gendered spaces for them if they feel that's what they need.
I hear a lot of people ask me
why we need these large, multi-stall gender neutral bathrooms instead
of keeping the single private bathrooms as the
gender-neutral spaces
and maybe all of the multi-stall bathrooms gendered.
The biggest reason i see is that ostracizes trans folks and says you need
to be shut away or sheltered.
I'm not afraid of bathrooms I'm afraid of how people will treat me in gendered spaces
By making these multi-stall bathrooms gender neutral it's stay pretty loudly
you don't have to be separate from everyone
A HUGE part of general assembly is socialization
we socialized when we walk
to and from workshops and plenary and worship
but when you have to run from a workshop on the second floor to the back hall of
the fifth floor
to find a gender-neutral bathroom before heading down to the ground floor
for plenary it
means you're spending all of your time riding around bathrooms instead of just DOING
general assembly like everybody else
it's also an accessibility concern
the gender-neutral bathrooms are almost always the same as the accessible
bathrooms
for people with disabilities or mobility concerns
this means that
those bathrooms are often left crowded and not acceptable for people with
disabilities
and it means that trans people are often criticized for using them
because they're perceived as not having disabilities and to be taking that space
away from people who do need it
bathrooms are one of those awkwardly necessary things that most people don't
ever think about unless they need to
unfortunately it's something that many trans people spend far too much time
thinking about and i'm so impressed and proud
that the UUA is taking this huge step towards accessibility