University College Dublin has announced plans to re-designate 170 campus toilets as gender-neutral facilities. To talk more about the changes, Ray D’Arcy was joined by the University’s Vice-President for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, Professor Colin Scott and one of UCD’s non-binary students, Sam Brophy.
Sam explained that non-binary people don’t identify as male or female.
"We refer to those as ‘binary genders’...because they’re the two options that you’re given. Like, when you’re born you’re male or you’re female.
"And then kind of like, when I was around 13 or 14, I was like ‘Well, wait. This doesn’t work quite well for me’…it took a while to find the right term but that’s the one I hated least."
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Sam is aware that some people might not see "the need" for the gender-neutral toilets.
"Unless you’re living that life, then you don’t notice it. You don’t notice that, like, it’s a constant thing. Every time I want to go to the bathroom I have like a moment of like, ‘Well, which one am I going to go to?’
"Because like, going to the female one, it’s not good for me emotionally. It makes me feel bad and…wrong. But then going to the male bathrooms, there’s a constant fear of like, harassment or confrontation."
Professor Scott says the decision is part of a wider strategy on gender identity.
"We’ve adopted a broader policy on gender identity and expression and one dimension of it is providing gender-neutral bathroom facilities so that we’re inclusive of all our students on the campus…[if] people feel that they don’t have a toilet facility they can safely use, it’s a really significant health problem."
You can listen to the piece from RTÉ Radio 1 in the video above.
