Next fall, the University of California, Berkeley will open a new resource for its transgender and gender-nonconforming students: a gender-inclusive locker room. Nestled in between the men’s and women’s locker rooms, the new 4,500-square-foot space in the on-campus gym will have private changing rooms, individual showers, and bathroom facilities open to people of any gender.
The only gender-neutral changing facility in Berkeley’s existing gym is a single-stall bathroom meant for campus staff, and the only way to access the gym’s swimming pool is through either the men’s or women’s locker room, where trans or transitioning students may not feel safe. Trans people already face harassment in multi-stall bathrooms, where pants are only dropped behind closed doors and no one has to take their shirts off. Locker rooms, which often require gymgoers to change and shower in open spaces, are more dangerous for students with gender-nonconforming bodies. A trans Berkeley alumnus told the San Francisco Chronicle that the men’s locker room at the current gym has no private shower facilities or curtains in changing areas. He opted to pay to use an off-campus gym rather than subject himself to the risk of violence or insulting questions.
Trineice Durst, senior associate director of Berkeley’s Department of Recreational Sports, says conversations about building an all-gender locker room began in 2012. “At the time, I think higher ed was just starting to understand the necessity and the impact that these types of facilities could have,” she says. When she and her colleagues got back from a conference organized by the National Intramural-Recreational Sports Association, which has publicly advocated for better support for trans athletes for years, they were motivated to look at their own policies for trans inclusion.
The renovation will take some space from both the men’s and women’s locker rooms, with the expectation that trans and non-binary students won’t be the only ones who want a gender-inclusive facility. Families and students with disabilities may also feel more comfortable in a more private, ungendered space. When the University of Arizona announced plans to build an all-gender locker room in its campus gym last year, officials noted that it would also be a welcome option for faculty members who’d prefer not to change in front of students.
Colorado State University also added gender-inclusive locker rooms when it renovated its recreation center in 2010. Durst says university administrators all over the country are considering adding these kinds of spaces when it comes time to renovate major recreation facilities. What makes Berkeley’s forthcoming space unique among UC schools and most other U.S. universities is its size and the breadth of its amenities. At UC San Francisco, for instance, gymgoers have access to gender-neutral changing stalls, but no gender-neutral showers.
California already has several laws in place that protect residents’ rights to gender-inclusive facilities in public spaces. In March, a law mandating that all single-stall bathrooms be gender-inclusive went into effect, three years after the University of California system became one of the first in the country to institute a similar policy. Since 2013, state law has required that K-12 students be allowed to use whichever set of gendered restrooms and locker rooms match their gender identities.
A gender-neutral, extra-private locker room offers an even better solution that accommodates people with disabilities and those who don’t identify with either gendered sign on the existing locker rooms. “We want to try to eliminate as many barriers as we can to wellness, because studies have shown that [physical] wellness has a tremendous impact on student experience and student wellbeing,” Durst says. “It really just came down to needing a bit more privacy in order to feel safe and welcome.”
