In her new book Queering Bathrooms: Gender, Sexuality and the Hygienic Imagination (University of Toronto Press, 2010), Cavanagh, a queer theorist, explores how the gendered nature of public washrooms has become a source of anxiety and political controversy in recent years.
“While talk about public facilities is often designated as out-of-bounds and not to mention crude and impolite in everyday conversation, these places condition ideas about gender and sexuality,” says Cavanagh. “Bathrooms have always been places where we segregate folks on the basis of gender, sexuality, class, disability and race.”
This segregation has a long history in North America, and Cavanagh says that in the not too distant past there were racially segregated bathrooms and water fountains in the American South. Today, people with physical disabilities are often desexualized by unisex facilities. “When you are physically disabled, your gender doesn’t seem to matter and you are desexualized in the built environment,” says Cavanagh.
She points out that separate bathrooms for the chamber maid or hired help were also built into many of the homes of the bourgeoisie classes. “In Toronto, bathrooms of today are often designated for ‘customers only’,” she says. “People who are homeless or street active or sex workers are frequently denied access to public facilities.”
