Investigating All-Gender Bathrooms in Ontario Schools: A Multi-Sited Case Study
Abstract
This integrated article thesis presents a multi-sited case study that investigates how the space of the all-gender bathroom is constructed by trans-affirmative policy, education stakeholders, and students. Specifically, through four interconnected articles, I draw primarily on trans-informed theoretical frameworks and scholarship to address questions about how the all-gender bathroom is constituted and written into policy discourse, which is subsequently enacted (or conversely, not at all) by education stakeholders in one school board. I conduct a paradigmatic and instrumental multi-sited case study which details specific policy analysis and entails interviewing a policymaker, administrators, educators, and students to engage numerous perspectives about the possibilities and limitations of trans inclusivity vis-à-vis the space of the all-gender bathroom in schools. I examine the extent to which trans-affirmative policy and education stakeholders fail to confront broader systems of cisgenderism, which ultimately affect the liveability and viability of transgender and gender non-conforming students in schools, regardless of the presence of an all-gender bathroom. Ultimately, the findings highlight the need for more intentional confrontation of these oppressive cisgenderist systems that would ultimately minimize the necessity of trans students advocating for their own rights to ensure their liveability and conceivability in the education system.