Around the Toilet / Postcards for Toilet Campaigns

Are you campaigning for a gender-neutral toilet in your school, campus or workplace? Against closures to public toilets in your town-centre? For you workplace to improve the accessibility of its toilets?

You’re in luck. Recently Action for Trans Health has collaborated on the Around the Toilet project, with campaigners from the Greater Manchester Coalition of Disabled People, Queer of the Unknown, and researchers from Sheffield Hallam, Sheffield Uni and Leeds Uni. Throughout this project we have been collecting people’s stories of using public toilets. Some of these stories have been illustrated by Smizz, a fab graphical artist, and turned into postcards.

We have a limited number of postcards which people can use for campaigns to improve access to toilets for trans, queer, and/or disabled people. We recommend writing your own stories / ideas for improvement on the back and sending them to whoever is in charge of making decisions: your headteacher, your estates manager, your local councillor. This would make a great co-ordinated campaign for LGBT society, trans youth group, or trans support group. Don’t forget to take a photo of your stories and send them to us too! (via twitter or email)

Have a look at the postcards below. If you want some for use in campaigns, give us a shout with how many of each postcard you want via email info@actionfortranshealth.org.uk. We have a limited supply so we will try to do our best to send you want you want. Priority will be given to groups who have affiliated to Action for Trans Health. Please consider donating to cover the cost of postage and maybe a little extra 😉 The donate button is at the end of this blog.

Here are the postcards!

Gender Divisions:

why do we have gender divisions in toilets?

 

 

This happened at uni:

"No this is your toilet"  This happened in my first year at uni

 

 

What makes toilets accessible?:

 

What makes toilets accessible?  "I cant drink when I go out wearing a dress, as I dont want to have to use the toilet. It really affects me not having access to non gender toilets" Gender Differences: 

Only baby changing facilities in the female toilets... but not in the male toilets

 

 

Who should public toilets be for?:
"Who should toilets be for?"  "err... the public?"  "yes, but the public is not a homogenous mass"

 

Choosing journeys:

We choose places and journeys based on the accessibility of disabled toilets

 

Sleeping Rough: Once, I slept rough as I had no money for a hotel / hostel so I slept for 30 mins in a public toilet. I'm wondering what homeless people would do if public toilets werent there

 

Toilets in Film:"I think the revealing thing is that people dont go to the toilet at all in films"

Hypersexualized Culture: "My mum ended up slutshaming me?!"

Hand dryers:"I'm not going in there... the hand-dryers scare me!"

 

Why are toilets funny?:"Why are toilets funny?"  "Barriers to access are not funny, but it shouldnt all be serious" "Toilet noises are funny"

Toilet Paper Unravelled: 
What did we used to get told about public toilets as a kid?

The toilet revolution!: The toilet revolution!  Western culture sees private toilets as being more civilised, but is it? To donate to costs of postage and other costs please click the link below:

Help us to provide access to essential healthcare today.

 

 

Launch of Around the Toilet Project

The toilet is often thought to be a mundane space, but for those who lack adequate or accessible toilet provision on a daily basis, toilets become a crucial practical issue which can create and reaffirm feelings of exclusion and regulation. Disabled people, for example, frequently report that ‘accessible’ toilets are not accessible enough, while other studies show that diminishing numbers of public toilets can prevent older people leaving the house. Toilets can also present a stark visual and material enactment of a gender binary in ways that can be problematic for trans and gender variant people. Thinking around toilets and their function as material as well as socio-cultural environments presents an opportunity to consider forms of identity in multi-faceted ways.

Around the Toilet is a cross-disciplinary, arts-based research project exploring the toilet as a place of exclusion and belonging. Action for Trans Health are proud to be collaborating on this project with activists from Queer of the Unknown and the Greater Manchester Coalition of Disabled People, as well as researchers from Sheffield Hallam University, University of Sheffield and University of Leeds. This project is funded by the AHRC Connected Communities programme. Below is a short animated PowToon video which gives more background information to the project.

The project consists of a series of art and performance workshops and public debates in Manchester over the summer, with the aim of telling trans, queer, and disabled people’s experiences of public toilets. This work will then feed into a brief for architecture students at Sheffield Architecture School and culminate in a public installation. All events will be wheelchair accessible and BSL translated. If you want to participate in the artistic and performance projects please get in touch at info[at]actionfortranshealth.org.uk

If you can’t make to the workshops, you can always share your toilet stories or photos with us via twitter by using the hashtag #cctoilettalk. You can keep up to date with the latest Around the Toilet events here or by following the project on twitter