While there are few things more primal than the need to use the bathroom many trans and gender variant individuals find that answering natures call is needlessly complicated and often downright dangerous.  Few gendered spaces are as vehemently patrolled and the penality for violating gender norms can range from ejection to arrest to bodily harm.  Bathroom acess isn't just a trans issue, as many single parents discover when faced with signs baring them from from accompanying non-same-sex children into public restrooms or dressing rooms. 

Join co-hosts Rebecca Nay and Jacob Anderson-Minshall Tuesday 6-7 PM on Gender Blender, where they'll be talking about these issues  and the growing demand for single stall or gender nuetral restrooms that are safe for families and individuals of of all genders.

They'll be joined in studio by Stephenie Jahnke, co-chair of Portland State University's Sex and Gender Equality (SAGE) who will be talking about the organization and PSU's gender neutral bathroom policy.

Also adding to the conversation by phone:

Shani Heckman, filmmaker behind Wrong Bathroom, a documentary which positions bathroom access as a civil rights issue. She contends, "Public restrooms historically have been a place of discrimination and harassment. From the segregated bathrooms of the South to the fight for women's restrooms in the workplace, access to public restrooms has long been a civil rights issue."  

Dru Levasseur, a lawyer from Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund, the organization that won a groundbreaking settlement against the Calente Cab Restaurant in New York, which kicked out an African American woman for using the women's restroom.  She was not transgender,  but identified as a lesbian and had just come with her friends from a Gay Pride celebration.  She even showed her ID to the bouncer and that wasn't enough!
 

If you have questions or comments during the show you'd like to share, please call the studio line at (503) 231-8187.