Undoing Gender in the Restroom

In general, toilets are divided into three categories, namely male, female, and accessible. There has been an increasing demand for gender-neutral toilets at the campus of the Erasmus University Rotterdam. Conceptually, this raises the question of how students who do not fall into these mentioned categories cope with gendered restrooms. To put it differently, it raises the question of how genderqueer people navigate the toilets. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with genderqueer students at the Erasmus University Rotterdam, this paper analyzes the way in which genderqueer people deal with the binary gender system. This paper demonstrates the toilet trouble marked by the experiences of those individuals. Furthermore, this paper analyzes the strategies for picking a restroom and the strategies within the restroom. Those strategies apply to motives to enter a restroom, but also to specific practices while being inside a gendered space. Some strategies involve the desire to adapt one’s appearance, other strategies heighten the toilet trouble. In so doing, this paper makes a theoretical contribution to the notion of how gender influences one’s practices and embodiment of gender. Finally, this paper makes a social contribution, that is to the understanding of how gender is shaped in public space.