Transgender Good Practice

Gender Neutral Toilet Campaign

This webpage was written and collated by Jess Dowson, Trans and Intersex Welfare Officer 08/09 at Edinburgh University's BLOGS LGBTI Society.

The content of this webpage is based upon the NUS trans guide 'Under Construction: Building our Movement'. You can read in full this excellent NUS guide at http://resource.nusonline.co.uk/media/resource/Trans%20guide.pdf


"However others react to them, they have the right to use toilets in the same way as anyone else"
from 'Under Construction: Building our Movement' a guide for Trans Students written by Ruth Pearce (NUS Women's Committee 2008/9)

Over the past 3 years, gender neutral toilets (GNTs) have gone from a fringe issue to one right at the forefront of many students' minds. The Universities of Bath, Manchester, Leicester, Sheffield, Liverpool, Staffordshire, York & UCL have put policies in place to create GNTs. The four important points to keep in mind are:

• Adding GNTs does not necessarily mean refurbishing a current set of toilets or building a new set, you just need to change the sign on the door from "Male/Female" to simply "Toilets".
• Forcing a trans person to use a disabled toilet simply because they fear using the gendered toilets is discriminatory and incorrect.
• GNTs don't just help trans people specifically. GNTs help anyone who does not present strictly within the gender binary (for instance some butch women or feminine men).
• Whilst some trans people and others would wish to use gender-neutral toilets, other trans people are happy with using male/female designated toilets and should therefore not be prevented from doing so.

Harri Weeks and Ruth Pearce of NUS LGBT have been active in propelling this issue across England & Wales over the past few years. Jennie Killip has also been instrumental in helping give momentum to this campaign from her work to place GNTs in the University of Manchester in 2007/8.