All Gender What?!?

 Ten years ago, our Homeschool PE co-op that had been operating for decades ended due to the YMCA's new policy about allowing people to use the locker room they most identified with. Our little girls seeing naked men change next to them was only one of our major concerns with this policy and after pursuing every possible means to find a mutually agreeable solution, we ended up having to dissolve our group's long-standing relationship with the Y. It was a tragedy for my kids who had been going to the Y for sixteen years for everything from Toddler Gym to swim team. 

 So, with this background, seeing the sign above in front of the ALL the bathrooms in the D terminal at the Seattle- Tacoma airport this weekend made me a little anxious. I'd seen lots of all gender side rooms, and that seemed like a good solution to me, but to be fair, I'm not their target audience. The building our Primary Care Physician is in has restrooms that were previously standard (one has a urinal in it), but are now signed as All Gender, but they also have the option of locking the door if you don't want to share. For various reasons I won't get into here, I feel uncomfortable using the toilet next to a strange man. Let's be honest, I'd be uncomfortable using the toilet if a man I know, other than my husband, was in the room with me. So I thought it might be helpful to you guys if I shared my experience using the new All Gender restrooms at the airport. 

 Entering the restroom, there is a wide, open hallway with no doors that close behind you. That made me a little more comfortable as I felt like I had a clear exit route. When you come around the corner into the main restroom, you'll encounter a familiar sight with a wall of stalls on one side and sinks on the other. 

 The difference is, these stalls don't have the partial walls we're used to with the bottom portion open on the front and sides. With these, each one is it's own, self-contained room with floor to ceiling walls separating you from the person next to you. The doors are also equipped with dead-bolt style locks that change color on the outside from green to red when they lock, indicating which stalls are available. These are much nicer than the sliding locks that *sometimes* work on traditional stalls. The stall itself was quite adequate and certainly offered me sufficient privacy to feel comfortable and safe. I, personally, have no issues with washing my hands next to another person of any gender after doing it dozens of times at the hand washing stations outside cruise buffets, so this aspect was just fine. I would say my first visit to an All Gender airport bathroom was relatively successful. 

 My husband went after me and when I asked him about his impression of the stalls, he told me he had used the urinal and hasn't seen inside them. That made a red flag go up for me! I hadn't seen urinals when I went into the bathroom, and I would certainly be uncomfortable walking into a room full of men standing up peeing! I sent him back on what was for him as very uncomfortable reconnaissance mission where he obtained these "You saw them here first!" pictures. The first one shows an automatic sliding door that leads to the second, a separate room full of urinals. 

 You won't catch me hanging out in this room, and I appreciate that it's separate with a door between them, but it's presence did make me a little uncomfortable.  That's probably just me though. Oh, and don't bother asking my husband for any more pictures of the bathroom, he said he's never doing that again 😂.

 So am I entirely comfortable with these new All Gender bathrooms? Not 100%. First it feels a little like an assault risk having a room full of dead bolt doors someone could be forced behind. Second, the stalls themselves are rather claustrophobia inducing, even for those not prone to it. Finally, people aren't always perfect about remembering to lock stall doors and while I've inadvertently walked in on a few women in the bathroom, I feel like this very awkward situation would be exponentially worse if I walked in on a man. 

Here's the Thing: The world is changing. All Gender restrooms are probably an inevitability that we'll all have to get used to, and years from now we might look back and be surprised that we even had an issue with it. But I'm slow to change, and some things are harder than others. This one won't have me kicking and screaming as I'm dragged into it, but I might be more inclined to bring someone to the bathroom with me. Oh, and I'll wear a shirt under my jumpsuit (IYKYK)!