Gendered Spaces

As part of our coursework in Feminist Community Organizing at the University of Manitoba we experienced two campus tours.  The first tour was created by all members of our class - we each supplied a suggestion of a space to visit on campus that was significant to us, whether for good or bad! 

The second tour was the official tour that new students would get, and many of us found that we did not relate too closely to the spaces shared on the official tour.

The outcome of these tours was a better understanding of how important our environment is, and how many spaces are gendered.  An obvious one, is washrooms - you might be thinking, "Duh! Of course - there's men's and women's".  Well, it's not that simple - what about men who express themselves in a "feminine" way and women who identify as "masculine"?  And what about trans people?  A couple of our class members who self-identify as queer have encountered bullying, rude remarks, whispering and staring when they use women's washrooms. 

It's even more disturbing that these women trek thousands of yards out of their way to use gender-neutral facilities - there's one on the fifth floor of Tier and one on the third floor of the Frank Kennedy Rec Centre, we've learned as part of our tour assignment. For those of you that know the U of M - it's a big campus with thousands of students, so you can imagine how hard this is for these students.  If you know of any other gender-neutral washrooms at the University of Manitoba, please share with us - thank you :)

To add some more perspective on this topic, here's a link to a great article by  Ivan Coyote  - an update to an earlier article she wrote about her "interesting" experiences in female washrooms:
http://www.xtra.ca/public/Vancouver/Bathroom_bullshit_redux-11107.aspx