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CALLING ALL RESTROOM REVOLUTIONARIES!

Simone Chess, Alison Kafer, Jessi Quizar, and Mattie Udora Richardson

Calling all Restroom Revolutionaries: People In Search of Safe and Accessible Restrooms (PISSAR) needs you! We are a coalition of queer, genderqueer, and disabled people working toward greater awareness of the need for safe and accessible bathrooms on campus and in the dorms. Be a restroom revolutionary! Join PISSAR as we develop a checklist for genderqueer safe spaces and cre- ate teams to map safe and accessible bathrooms around campus.1

E veryone needs to use bathrooms, but only some of us have to enter into complicated political and architectural negotiations in order to use them. The fact is, bathrooms are easier to access for some of

us than for others, and the people who never think about where and how they can pee have a lot of control over how using restrooms feels for the rest of us. What do we need from bathrooms? What elements are neces- sary to make a bathroom functional for everyone? To make it safe? To make it a private and respectful space? Whose bodies are excluded from the typical restroom? More important, what kind of bodies are assumed in the design of these bathrooms? Who has the privilege (we call it pee-privilege)

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That's Revolting! : Queer Strategies for Resisting Assimilation, edited by Mattilda Sycamore, Soft Skull Press, 2008. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/wisc/detail.action?docID=478886. Created from wisc on 2018-09-17 15:21:18.

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of never needing to think about these issues, of always knowing that any given bathroom will meet one’s needs? Everyone needs to use the bath- room. But not all of us can.

And that’s where People in Search of Safe and Accessible Restrooms (PISSAR) comes in. PISSAR, a coalition of UC-Santa Barbara undergrads, grad students, staff, and community members, recognizes that bathrooms are not always accessible for people with disabilities, or safe for people who transgress gender norms. PISSAR was formed at the 2003 University of California Student of Color Conference, held at UC-Santa Barbara. During the lunch break on the second day of the conference, meetings for the disability caucus and the transgender caucus were scheduled in adjacent rooms. When only a few people showed up for both meetings, we decided to hold a joint session. One of the members of the disability caucus mentioned plans to assess bathroom accessibility on the campus, wonder- ing if there was a similar interest in mapping gender-neutral bathrooms. Everyone in the room suddenly began talking about the possibilities of a genderqueer/disability coalition, and PISSAR was born.

For those of us whose appearance or identity does not quite match the “man” or “woman” signs on the door, bathrooms can be the sites of violence and harassment, making it very difficult for us to use them safely or comfortably. Similarly, PISSAR acknowledges that, although most buildings are required by the Americans with Disabilities Act to provide accessible bathrooms, some restrooms are more compliant than others and accessible bathrooms can often be hard to find. PISSAR’s mission, then, is threefold: 1) to raise awareness about what safe and accessible bathrooms are and why they are necessary; 2) to map and verify existing accessible and/or gender-neutral bathrooms on the campus; and 3) to advocate for additional bathrooms. We eventually hope to have both web-based and printed maps of all the bathrooms on campus, with each facility coded as to its accessibility and gender-safety.2 Beyond this initial campaign, PISSAR plans to advocate for the construction or conversion of additional safe and accessible bathrooms on campus. To that end, one of our long- term goals is to push for more gender-neutral bathrooms and showers in the dormitories, and to investigate the feasibility of multistall gender-neu- tral bathrooms across the campus as a whole.

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As it turned out, we weren’t the only restroom revolutionaries on campus. We soon joined forces with a student-run initiative to stock all campus tampon and pad machines, a group called, appropriately enough, Aunt Flo and the Plug Patrol. Aunt Flo’s goal is to use funds garnered from the sale of tampons and pads in campus bathroom dispensers (blood money, if you will) to support student organizations in a time of tremendous budget cuts. We liked their no-euphemism approach to the bathroom and the body and joined their effort to make the campus not only a safer and more accessible place to pee but also to bleed.3 We also expanded our focus to include issues of childcare, inspired in part by one of our members’ experiences as a young mom on campus. PISSAR decided to examine whether campus bathrooms featured changing tables, a move that increased our intersectional analysis of bathroom access and politics.

By specifically including the work of Aunt Flo and concerns about childcare access, PISSAR challenges many of the assumptions that are made about genderqueer and disabled bodies. Why shouldn’t every gen- der-neutral restroom have a tampon/pad machine? Putting tampon/pad machines only in women’s rooms, and mounting them high on the wall, restricts the right to menstruate conveniently to those with certain bodies. It suggests that the right to tampons and pads is reserved for people who use gender-specific women’s rooms and can reach a lever hanging five feet from the ground. This practice reinscribes ideas about disabled bodies being somehow dysfunctional and asexual (as in, “People in wheelchairs get their periods too?”) and perpetuates the idea that genderqueer folks are inherently unbodied (as in, “Only real women need tampons, and you don’t look like a real woman”).

So how exactly does PISSAR work? Picture a team of people taking over a bathroom near you. They’re wearing bright yellow T-shirts stenciled with the phrase “free 2 pee” on the back. They’re wearing gloves. They’re wielding measuring tape and clipboards, and they’re looking very disap- pointed in the height of your toilet. What you’ve seen is PISSAR in action. We call this a PISSAR patrol, and it’s our way of getting the information we need in an unapologetically public way. We gather this information with the help of the PISSAR checklist, a form featuring questions about

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everything from the height of a tampon dispenser to the signs on the door, from the number of grab bars beside the toilet to the presence of a diaper- changing table.

From the information garnered in the PISSAR patrols, we are in the process of making a map that will assess the safety and accessibility of all the bathrooms on campus. The map is vital to our project because it offers gen- derqueer and disabled people a survey of all the restrooms on campus so that they can find what they need without the stigma and frustration of telling a possibly uninformed administrator the details of their peeing needs. For people who have never had to think about bathrooms, the map’s detailed information suggests the ways in which our everyday bathrooms are restric- tive and dangerous. Thus the map also functions as a consciousness-raising tool, educating users about the need for safe and accessible restrooms.

PISSAR patrols aren’t simply about getting information. They’re also a way to keep our bodies involved in our project. PISSAR is, after all, a project about bodies: about bodily needs, about the size and shape of our bodies, and about our bodily presentation. The very nature of our bath- room needs necessitates this attention to the body. So it makes sense that when we tried to theorize about what a safe, respectful restroom might look like, we realized we needed to meet in the bathroom. Because the bathroom is our site, and the body in search of a bathroom is our moti- vation, we recognized early on the need to be concerned with body and theory together. PISSAR’s work is an attempt at embodying theory, at theorizing from the body.

We do this work partly through our name. The name PISSAR avoids euphemism and gets right down to business. We are here to talk about peeing and shitting, and what people need in order to do these things with comfort and dignity. Both PISSAR’s name and the goals of the group come down to one unavoidable fact: When you’ve got to go, you’ve got to go. The name endeavors both to avoid abstraction and to highlight the embodied experiences that make bathroom accessibility so pressing when one needs to pee. PISSAR’s name isn’t an accident, it’s a tool. We use our funny name to demand attention to our basic and critical needs. We warn with our name: We’re about to talk about something “crude.” We take it seriously—you should, too.

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Our concern with body/theory is also evident in our insistence that bathroom accessibility is an important issue for a lot of different people. Everyone should be able to find a bathroom that conforms to the needs of their body. Everyone should be able to use a restroom without being accused of being in the “wrong” place. Everyone should have access to tampon dispensers and facilities for changing diapers, regardless of gen- der or ability. Homeless folks should have access to clean restrooms free of harassment.4 Bathroom activism is, from the outset, a multi-identity endeavor. It has the potential to bring together feminists, transfolks, people with disabilities, single parents, and a variety of other people whose bathroom needs frequently go unmet. It creates a much needed space for those of us whose identities are more complicated than can be encom- passed in a single-issue movement. Viewed in this light, restroom activism is an ideal platform from which to launch broader coalition work. In PISSAR, we tend to think about “queerness” as encompassing more than just sexual orientation; it includes queer bodies, queer politics, and queer coalitions.

ON BODIES IN BATHROOMS: PISSAR POLITICS There is tremendous social pressure to avoid talking about bodies in bathrooms. First, such talk is not considered polite. We’re trained from an early age not to talk publicly about what happens in the bathroom; we don’t even have language for what happens in there; many of us still rely on the euphemisms our parents used when we were three. Second, the topic is not appropriately academic. For the most part, scholars do not tend to theorize about bathrooms and what bodies do in them.5 Bathrooms are somehow assumed to be free of the same institutional power dynamics that impact and shape the rest of our lives. Finally, bathroom talk is con- sidered politically dangerous, or at least irrelevant, because of a fear that it will be seen as a trivial issue, prompting the mainstream culture to not take us seriously. Political activism is supposed to be about ideas, the mind, and larger social movements, not about who pees where.

PISSAR is tired of pretending that these polite, academic, political bod- ies don’t have needs. We resist the silencing from mainstream communities

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that want to ignore our queerness and our disability, while simultaneously challenging the theories that want to pull us away from the toilet seat. We refuse to accept a narrow conception of “queer” that denies the complexi- ties of our bodies.

Keeping this focus on our particular bodies is no easy task. Mainstream culture, with its cycles of acceptance and disapproval of homosexuals (and we use this rather limited term intentionally), has always presented a rather narrow view of queer life. In order to be portrayed in the mainstream media, for example, queers must either fit into acceptable stereotypes of gay appearance and behavior, or be visibly indistinguishable from het- erosexuals. These positions are highly precarious and strictly patrolled: Mainstream gay characters can only exhibit limited amounts of “gayness,” a restriction epitomized in the lack of any sexual contact, even kissing, between gay characters. Those few gay characters that do exist in the mainstream media obey very strict norms of appearance. Unfortunately, this stance is becoming increasingly pervasive within mainstream gay cul- ture as well. One need only glance at the covers of magazines such as the Advocate to discover that members of the gay community are supposed to be young, thin, white, nondisabled, and not genderqueer. In fact, main- stream gay media has often contributed to pressure on the gay community, particularly gay men, to be hyper-able and gender conforming. Images of big, beefy, muscle-bound bodies decorate the ads in gay publications and the words “no fats or fems” frequently appear in gay personal ads. We believe that this disavowal of queers that are too queer—those of us who are trans-identified, genderqueer, too poor to afford the latest fashions, disabled, fat, in-your-face political—is the result of internalized shame.

The gay community has internalized the larger culture’s homophobia and transphobia, which has made us ashamed of our visible queerness, especially any signs of genderqueerness. We have internalized the larger culture’s ableism, which has made us ashamed of our disabilities and ill- nesses. This shame has marginalized many trans and genderqueer folks and many people with disabilities, casting them out of the mainstream gay community. Internalized self-hatred, a distancing from the bodies of those who do not fit the idealized norms, an insistence on assimilation: All of these lead to and result from a sense of shame in our bodies—a shame

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that pervades our conversations, our relationships, and our politics. This tendency to move away from the body, to drop the experiences of bodies out of conversations and politics, is evident in many queer organizations.6

We lack the language to say what needs to be said; we don’t have the tools to carry on this level of conversation.

Because we lack this language, because of our internalized self-hatred and shame in our bodies, the politics of the bathroom—a potentially transgressive and liminal site—have not been given priority within the mainstream gay rights movement. This inattention has particularly strong real-life effects on disabled and genderqueer folks. The need for a safe, dignified, usable place to pee is a vital, but too seldom addressed, issue. It has gone unaddressed because it is so much about the body, particularly the shameful parts and shameful acts of the body. This shame, and the resulting silence, is familiar to many in the disability community. In striv- ing to assimilate to nondisabled norms, many of us gloss over the need for the assistance some of us have in using the bathroom. We are embar- rassed to admit that we might need tubes or catheters, leg bags or personal assistants—or that some of us may not use the bathroom at all, preferring bedpans or other alternatives. Particularly in mixed company (that is, in the presence of nondisabled folks), we are reluctant to talk about the odd ways we piss and shit. But this reticence has hindered our bathroom poli- tics, often making it difficult for us to demand bathrooms that meet all of our needs.

Queer bathroom politics have been similarly affected by this kind of ashamed reticence. Our reluctance to talk about bathrooms and bodies and our sense that discussions about pissing and shitting are shameful colors our responses to the potential violence facing many genderqueer people in the bathroom. Such acts aren’t to be discussed in polite com- pany because they occur in and around the bathroom, itself a taboo topic; because of homophobia and transphobia, these acts aren’t seen as worthy of conversation because “those kinds of people” don’t really matter; and because they conjure thoughts about public sex in bathrooms.

Indeed, public sex has often been the target of surveillance, and those implicated in such practices have been publicly humiliated, arrested, and abused. In 1998, several local news organizations around the country

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sent hidden cameras into public restrooms to film men engaged in sexual activities; these tapes were often turned over to local authorities, many of whom used them as the basis for sting operations. A station in San Diego, for example, justified its use of this stealth tactic in campus restrooms at San Diego State University by stressing the need to protect students from these deviant activities. The prevalence of these kinds of news stories and the presence of surveillance equipment in campus restrooms serve to police sexual behavior: Threats of public exposure and humiliation are used to enforce “normative” sexuality. At the University of California in Berkeley, this policing was taken a step further when some bathrooms on campus were locked in an effort to eliminate public sex. Only certain people were given keys to these restrooms, literally locking out some bod- ies and behaviors. These practices, privatizing public spaces and placing them under surveillance, demarcate the boundaries of appropriate and permissible behavior, thereby policing both bodies and bathrooms.

This surveillance of deviant bodies and practices in bathrooms all too often takes the form of brutal physical violence. Genderqueer and trans- identified folks have been attacked in public restrooms simply because their appearance threatens gender norms and expectations. This issue of bathroom violence is consistently delegitimized in both queer and non- queer spaces as not important or sexy enough to be a “real” issue. In many gay activist circles, there seems to be a pervasive sentiment that no one (read: no straight people) will take us seriously if we start talking about bathrooms. Additionally, there is tremendous cultural shame around the violence itself—either you should have been able to protect yourself or you must have deserved it or both.

In the genderqueer community we know how often our bodies cause anxiety and violence. We have been systematically and institutionally discouraged from talking about that violence or from linking it to these bodies. When a woman in our local community was attacked by strang- ers because of her androgynous appearance, local police insisted that she was injured in a “lesbian brawl.” It was easier for them to talk about (and assume) her sexuality than to admit that it was her queer body, her race, and her confusing gender that led to both her original attack and the sub- sequent neglect of local law enforcement, who failed to follow protocol

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in her case. Internalized shame about her body led our friend to take on responsibility for her attack, to allow the police to mistreat her and make false assumptions, and to feel that she had no right to talk about how her attack was based in her refusal of racial, sexual, and gender norms. She was ashamed to talk about her body, about the violence done to it, and about how its needs were ignored. The community felt the impact of our own shame. We stood beside her, outwardly supportive, but unable to gather enough energy to mobilize a collective demand that her story be heard and that the police investigate the crime.

Sadly, as this story illustrates, our shame isn’t always directed out- ward, toward the society and institutions that helped create it. It often drives wedges between communities that might otherwise work together. And it is precisely this kind of embodied shame—the shame that we feel in our bodies and the shame that arises out of the experience and appear- ance of our bodies—that drives the divisions between queer and disability communities. PISSAR initially had trouble bridging this gap, in that some of our straight disabled members worried about the political (read: queer) implications of our bathroom-mapping work. Indeed, many queer disability activists and scholars have drawn attention to the ableism that thrives within queer communities, and the homophobia and heterocen- trism that reside within disability circles.

Due to the fact that disabled people are discriminated against on the basis of our disabilities, some of us may want to assert our “normalcy” in other aspects of our lives, including our sex lives. Although this impulse is understandable in a culture that constantly pathologizes our sexuality, this assertion in some cases takes on a homophobic/transphobic quality. Heterosexuals with disabilities may thus distance themselves from dis- abled queers and transfolk in an attempt to facilitate their assimilation into an ableist and heterocentric culture. Similarly, because of the ways in which queer desires, identities, and practices have been pathologized, cast as unnatural, abnormal, and most importantly, “sick,” some LBGTIQ- identified people may want to distance themselves from disabled people in an effort to assert their own normalcy and health. As a result, queers and people with disabilities have been set up by our own communities as dia- metrically opposed, a move that has been particularly problematic—and

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painful—for queers with disabilities. For all of us balancing multiple identities, this kind of thinking enacts a dissection, first separating us from the realities of our bodies through shame and a lack of language, then fur- ther cutting apart our identities into separate and distant selves.

We suggest, however, that bathroom politics can potentially lift us out of this polarization. Advocating for bathroom access and repeatedly talking openly about people’s need for a safe space to pee helps us break through some of this embodied shame and recognize our common needs. It is through the process of going on PISSAR patrol while wearing bright T-shirts and reporting on our findings in loud voices that we begin to move beyond a shamed silence.

Our attention to the body (the pissing and shitting body) and our insis- tence that we talk about the specificities of people’s embodied experiences with humor rather than shame challenges the normalizing drive found within both queer and disability communities. Rather than mask our dif- ferences or bolster our own claims to “normalcy” by marginalizing others as shameful and embarrassing, we insist on a coalition that attempts to embrace all of our different needs. PISSAR is built around queerness, but a queer queerness, a queerness that encompasses both sexually and medi- cally queer bodies, that embraces a diversity of appearances and disabilities and needs. The PISSAR checklist—a manifesto of sorts—models queer coalition-building by incorporating disability, genderqueer, childcare, and menstruation issues into one document, refusing single-issue analysis. It entails a refusal to assimilate to the phantasm of the “normal” body by explicitly incorporating the allegedly abnormal, the freakish, the queer. The body evoked in the checklist is a real body, a menstruating body, a body that pees and shits, a body that may not match its gender identity, a body subjected too often to violence and ridicule, a body that may have parts missing or parts that don’t function “properly,” a body that might require assistance. Bathroom politics and organizations such as PISSAR resist the normalization of “queer,” striving to acknowledge and embrace all these different bodies, desires, and needs that are too often ignored, obscured, or denied out of shame and internalized self-hatred.

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RAISING CONSCIOUSNESS AND DOING THEORY ON THE PISSAR PATROL The disability access-related activities required by the checklist, such as measuring door widths, counting the number of grab bars, and checking for visual and auditory fire alarms, train PISSAR patrol members in different people’s needs, a training that extends far beyond concepts of “tolerance” and “acceptance.” In stark contrast to “disability awareness” events that blindfold sighted people so that they can “feel what it is like to be blind” or place people without mobility impairments in wheelchairs so they can “appreciate the difficulties faced by chair users,” the PISSAR patrols turn nondisabled people’s attention toward the social barriers confronting people with disabilities. Rather than focusing on the alleged failures and hard- ships of disabled bodies—an inability to see, an inability to walk—PISSAR focuses on the failures and omissions of the built environment—a too-narrow door, a too-high dispenser. The physical realities of these archi- tectural failures emphasize the arbitrary construct of the “normal” body and its needs, and highlight the ability of a disabled body to “function” just fine, if the space would only allow for it. This switch in focus from the inability of the body to the inaccessibility of the space makes room for activism and change in ways that “awareness exercises” may not.

Although disability “awareness” events are touted as ways to make nondisabled people recognize the need for access, we have serious doubts about their political efficacy and appropriateness. Sitting in a wheelchair for a day, let alone an hour, is not going to give someone a full under- standing of the complexities and nuances of chair-users’ lives. We think such exercises all too often reinforce ableist assumptions about the “diffi- culty” of living with a disability, perpetuating the notion of disability as a regrettable tragedy. They reduce the lives of people in wheelchairs to the wheelchair itself, distancing the bodies of chair-users from those without mobility disabilities. PISSAR, by virtue of its coalitional politics, focuses attention on the ways that a whole variety of bodies use restrooms and the architectural and attitudinal barriers that hinder their use or render it potentially dangerous.

The educational experience of being in the bathroom on PISSAR patrol, of imagining what different kinds of bodies might need to fully utilize a

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space, extends beyond the issue of disability access. Just as measuring the width of doors enables nondisabled people to recognize the inaccessibility of the built environment, going on bathroom patrol facilitates an awareness among non-trans and non-genderqueer folk of the safety issues facing gen- derqueer and trans people. As we began instituting our bathroom patrols, we had to make a variety of decisions in the interest of safety: PISSAR patrols would consist of at least three people; there would be no patrolling after dark; at least one member would wear a yellow PISSAR shirt, thereby identifying the group; and each group would ideally consist of a range of gender identities. Through this decision-making process, all of us—par- ticularly those of us who are not genderqueer or trans-identified—increased our understanding of the potential dangers that lie in not using a restroom “properly.” As empowering as our patrols sometimes feel, we have also experienced stares, some hostility, and a general public bewilderment about what our business is in that protected space. Being in groups on “official” business probably mitigated most of those risks, but the experience of enter- ing bathrooms that we might not ordinarily enter helped us recognize the need for safety in these public/private spaces.

Thus, one of the most revolutionary aspects of the checklist is its func- tion as a consciousness-raising tool, particularly within PISSAR’s own ranks. It was not until we first began discussing the need for a group like PISSAR that one of our nondisabled members realized that the wider- doored stalls were built for wheelchairs. Another acknowledged that she had never realized how inaccessible campus and community buildings were until she began measuring doors and surveying facilities; going through the PISSAR checklist caused her to view the entire built world through different eyes. Many nondisabled people stopped using acces- sible stalls, realizing that they might be keeping someone with a disability from safe peeing. By the same token, one of our straight members with disabilities had always ridiculed the push for gender-neutral bathrooms until he began to understand it as an access issue. Realizing that gender- specific signs and expectations for single-gender use are barriers to some genderqueer and trans people’s use of a space—because of the ever-pres- ent threat of harassment, violence, and even arrest—enabled him to make the connection between disability oppression and genderqueer oppression.

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A space for multiple identity organizing was forged. The PISSAR check- list allowed all of us to understand the bathroom in terms of physical and political access; people with disabilities and transfolk are being denied access because of the ways in which their/our bodies defy the norm.

Now picture this: a boardroom at UC-Santa Barbara, filled with the chancellor and his team of advisors. We’re talking about gender, and we’re taking about bathrooms. We’ve been talking about gender for quite a while, and no one has asked for any definitions or terms. Now, with the reality of bathrooms on the table, the chancellor needs some clarification about the differences between sex and gender. What he is saying is, “What kinds of bodies are we talking about here?” PISSAR and the PISSAR checklists facilitate an open and impolite conversation about pissing, shit- ting, and the organs that do those things, right there in the boardroom. Because PISSAR is talking about something concrete—bodies, bath- rooms, liability—administrators want to understand all the terms. They start to learn the issues: what exactly is preventing this otherwise acces- sible bathroom from being fully accessible (often something simple—and inexpensive—like moving a trash can or lowering a dispenser); why do genderqueer folks need unisex bathrooms, and what does that even entail (again, often something simple—and inexpensive—like changing the signs or adding a tampon/pad dispenser). And they learn the issues in a way that makes sense to them and that works for us politically. They are being trained by a group of folks devoted to the issue, they are being given specific details and facts, and all the work is being done on a volunteer basis by folks committed to the campus and the causes. What’s more, because the realities of bathroom needs and restroom politics forced this table of administrators to ask about gender, sex, disability, barriers, and so forth, the administrators are now better equipped to tackle more abstract issues around trans and disability inclusion on campus and in the larger UC community (for example, when adding gender identity to the nondis- crimination clause happens at the state-wide level, we’d like to think our chancellor will be on board . . .)

Through the PISSAR checklist, we bring both the body and the bathroom into the boardroom. We challenge the normalizing impulse that wants to ignore conversations about attendant care or queer-bash-

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ing or inaccessibility. We refuse the expectation that chancellors’ offices are places for polite topics of conversation and abstract theorizing, rather than discussions about who does and who does not have the right to pee. We demand a recognition of the body that needs assistance, the body that is denied access, and the body that is harassed and violated. And we insist on remembering the body that shits, the body that pees, the body that bleeds.

Where will you be when the revolution comes? We’ll be in the bath- room—come join us there.

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PISSAR CHECKLIST

Type of bathroom (circle one): Men’s Women’s Unisex

Location of Bathroom: Bldg__________ Floor_____ Wing (east, west)____ Room

#_____

Does the bathroom open directly to the outside, or is the entry inside the building?____

____________________________________________________________________

If the bathroom is inside a building, please give the closest entrance or elevator to the

bathroom____________________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________________

Your Name & E-mail Address____________________________________________

____________________________________________________________________

DISABILITY ACCESSIBILITY 1. Is the door into the bathroom wide enough? Give width. (ADA = 32 in)_________

_______

2. What kind of knob does the door have? Circle one: Lever Round knob Handle

Automatic push-button Other (specify)________________________________

_______

3. Are there double doors into the bathroom? (i.e., do you have to open one door and

then open another door to enter the bathroom?) Yes No

4. Is the stall door wide enough? Give width. (ADA = 32 in)_____________________

__________________________________________________________________

5. What kind of latch is on the stall door? Sliding Latch Small turn knob

Large turn knob with lip Other (specify)______________________________

__________________________________________________________________

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SIMONE CHESS, ALISON KAFER, JESSI QUIZAR, AND MATTIE UDORA RICHARDSON

6. Does the stall door close by itself? Yes No Is there a handle on the inside of

the door to help pull it closed? Yes No

7. Measure the space between the front of the toilet and the front wall_________. If

the stall is wide, with open space next to the toilet, measure the space between the

side of the toilet and the farthest side wall____________. If the stall is a skinny

rectangle, measure the width of the stall in front of the toilet. __________________

__________________________________________________________________

8. Are there grab bars? Yes No First side bar is _____long, _____

high, begins _____ from rear wall, and extends _____ in front of the toilet. Second

side bar is _____ long, _____high, begins _____ from rear wall, and extends _____

in front of the toilet. Back bar is ___long and ____high.

9. Facing the toilet, is the grab bar on the right side or the left side of the toilet?

Right Left Both sides

10. How accessible is the toilet paper holder? Height______ Is it too far from the toilet

to reach without losing one’s balance? Yes No

11. Describe the flush knob. (Is it a lever? If yes, is it next to the wall or on the open

side of the toilet? Is it a center button?)___________________________________

_________________________________________________________________

12. How high is the toilet seat? (e.g., is it raised or standard?) (ADA = 17–19 in)_____

13. Is the path to the toilet seat cover dispenser blocked by the toilet? Yes No

How high is the dispenser?__________________________________________

14. How high is the urinal?_______________How high is the handle?___________

15. If a multistall bathroom, how many stalls are accessible?_____________________

16. Is there a roll-under sink? If so, are the hot water pipes wrapped to prevent burns? (ADA = counter top no higher than 34 in)________________________________

_________________________________________________________________

17. What kind of faucet handles does the sink have? Lever Automatic

Separate turn knobs Other (specify)______________________________

18. Is there a soap-dispenser at chair height (ADA = you have to reach no higher than

48 in)?___________

A dryer / paper towel dispenser?_______________________________________

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19. Is the tampon / pad dispenser at chair height? (ADA = you have to reach no higher

than 48 in) ________________________________________________________

_________________________________________________________________

20. Is there a mirror at chair height? (ADA = bottom of mirror no higher than 40

in)____

21. Is there an audible alarm system? Yes No A visual alarm system (lights)? Yes No

22. Is the accessible stall marked as accessible?_______________

23. Is the outer bathroom door marked as accessible?_______________

24. Are there any obstructions in front of the sink, the various dispensers, the accessible

stall, the toilet, etc.?

Please specify.______________________________________________________

_________________________________________________________________

GENDER SAFETY 25. Is the bathroom marked as unisex? Specify._______________________________

_________________________________________________________________

26. Is it in a safe location? (i.e., not in an isolated spot)_________________________

________________________________________________________________

27. Is it next to a gender-specific restroom so that it serves as a de facto “men’s” or

“women’s” restroom? _______________________________________________

________________________________________________________________

28. Does the door lock from the inside? Does the lock work securely?_____________

_________________________________________________________________

AUNT FLO AND THE PLUG PATROL 29. Type of machine in the bathroom (circle one): Tampon Pad Tampon &

Pad

30. Does it have a “this machine is broken” sticker? Sticker No sticker

31. Does it look so rusty and disgusting that even if it works, you doubt anyone would

use it? Yes No

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32. Is the machine empty? (look for a little plastic “empty” sign) Yes No

33. Does it have a new full-color “Aunt Flo” sticker? Sticker No Sticker

CHILD-CARE 34. Does the bathroom have a changing table? (Specify location)__________________

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