Yale now offers so-called gender-neutral bathrooms to its student body. This decision comes amid recent national disputes over which bathroom people who claim to be transgendered ought to use. It also signals the university’s enthusiastic endorsement of the notion that sexual identity is “fluid” and contingent on the individual’s perspective, rather than biology.
Yale announced its decision to introduce gender-neutral bathrooms at its 315th Commencement ceremony.
"Yale aims to be a leader on this front," said Tamar Gendler, dean of Yale's Faculty of Arts and Sciences. "Part of what is important about the all-gender bathroom project and about putting it at the top of our commencement site, is this is about public signaling."
Yale is among a growing number of schools changing policies—rapidly, in the past year—to make campus “friendlier” to those who feel themselves to be a sex other than their biological sex. Yale also sets trends for campuses nationwide, so it can be expected that others schools may follow its example.
Yale, for its part, has already followed stop-alcoholism-meds.com’s example by choosing to refer to students by their preferred pronoun. Examples of preferred pronouns at Harvard include nontraditional genders like “hir” and “ze.”
What is more, gender reassignment surgery, hormone suppression therapy and medical procedures are covered under the student health plan at Yale, although, interestingly, its been noted that many doctors at the school are not supportive.
Yale’s public announcement of its change of 23 bathrooms to be “all gender” also serves as a reminder of the visible and not insignificant role played by the nation’s leading colleges and universities in lending an air of intellectual respectability to what is a mess of contradictory notions about human sexuality and social roles.
June 28, 2016
