On Saturday (March 26), the National Academy of Legal Studies and Research (NALSAR) announced that it has introduced gender-neutral washrooms and designated spaces within its campus. The public law school is located in the Shamirpet suburb in Hyderabad city of Telengana.
In a tweet, the varsity informed, “We are pleased to share that in our endeavour to make our campus a truly inclusive space, the ground floor of GH-6 has been designated as a gender-neutral space with rooms allotted to students self-identifying as members of the LGBTQ+ community with plans to move towards a gender-neutral hostel in due course.”
NALSAR stated that the toilet, located on the ground floor of the academic block has been transformed into a ‘gender-neutral one’. The varsity pointed out that it also has an interim policy for addressing concerns of ‘inclusivity’ by the LGBTQ+ (Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Queer) community.
gender-neutral hostel in due course. The washroom on the ground floor of the academic block has also been designated as a gender-neutral washroom. The University already has an interim policy in place to address inclusivity concerns of the LGBTQ+ community, and is in the
— NALSAR University of Law (@NALSAR_Official) March 26, 2022
While ‘woke’ experiments such as gender-neutral toilets in campuses have already been tried and tested in foreign schools and universities, it is the first time that a public State University has chosen to mould its policies for the ‘gender non-conforming individuals.’
Bar and Bench reported that the idea behind the gender-neutral washroom was conceived by NALSAR Student Bar Council and NALSAR Queer Collective, with help from Vice-Chancellor Professor Faizan Mustafa, Assistant Professors Akanksha Singh and Prerna Bijay.
While speaking about the development. Akanksha Singh informed about the varsity’s future plans to take inclusivity to the next level. “We are working towards the possibility of having a gender-neutral hostel. This is not something that would materialize this semester, but by the next semester.”
She further added, “People come with different baggage, so this is just as a safe space that exists on campus where people could freely be who they are. It is intended to be a space where students who are non-conforming feel safe to be themselves and where they can uphold their privacy which they would otherwise not enjoy in cis-gendered hostels.”
Gender-neutral toilets, politics and an impending disaster
Earlier, OpIndia had reported about an NCERT teachers training manual that had proposed gender-neutral toilets and puberty blockers for children in Indian schools to promote ‘gender inclusiveness’. After a massive uproar, the NCERT document was removed from their website. Child rights body NCPCR had called the NCERT document ‘a conspiracy to traumatise school students’.
In November last year, it was reported Scottish schoolgirls had refused to use gender-neutral toilets after boys wreaked havoc in the toilets. Misbehaviour included waving sanitary pads like flags, urinating in the sanitary bins, and playing with tampons.
A councillor had admitted that several girls did not use the unisex toilets due to vandalism by the male students. The introduction of unisex toilets was attributed to minimizing costs, creating more space and diversity and building an inclusive environment.
Implementing gender-neutral toilets are one of the first steps in the gender identity politics that are now taking over the public discourse across many nations. Trans activists and gender equity activists claim that separate toilets for men and women promote inequality and are not inclusive. They refuse to acknowledge safety concerns and the need for girls of a vulnerable age to have their privacy protected.
