If you’re reading this, it may be because I suggested that the world would be a better place if we saw fewer gendered toilets at your conference. I’d like to explain why.

For the longest time, we’ve lived in a world where we put people in boxes, and the most common of those boxes is a thing called “gender”. The traditional thinking has been that there are two genders, and everyone fits into one or the other.

Unfortunately, the traditional thinking is pretty darn awful; it makes the world significantly more uncomfortable for anyone who doesn’t fit clearly fall into our ideas of binary gender. That can include anyone born with genitals that don’t match the traditional thinking, anyone who isn’t happy with the gender they were assigned at birth, anyone who doesn’t fit our gender stereotypes, anyone who doesn’t want a gender, anyone who’s gender is fluid or ambiguous… It includes an awful lot of people.

Living in a world that enforces a gender binary is uncomfortable if you don’t fit neatly into it, and gendered toilets go a long way to contributing to that. If you’re currently transitioning, which facilities do you use? How will other people react to that choice? Will you even be safe? That’s something a lot of people never have to worry about, but if you’re trans, fluid, agendered, or queer, then it’s something you might have to worry about. Every. Single. Day.

And it sucks.

Gendered toilets are a form of discrimination against anyone who doesn’t fit the traditional views of gender. Often they exist not because any harm is intended, but just because there was no thought of arranging things any other way. I dearly hope that your conference is a place where people can feel comfortable being themselves, where they can exchange ideas, where they can be creative, where they can do great things and make the world a better place.

By all means, indicate if sanitary disposal facilities are available; but please help your conference be a place where we can celebrate diversity of gender, rather than a place which unconsciously suppresses it.

~ Paul