Mixed reviews for Seattle’s new multiuser all-gender airport restrooms

Two weeks ago, Julie Barrett’s 17-year-old daughter checked in at the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport for a flight to Minnesota. She headed to Concourse D and made a beeline for the restroom, and likely didn’t notice the different signage outside. Once she walked in, she was surprised to see several men inside and texted her mom in all caps, “DUDE THEY DON’T HAVE WOMEN’S RESTROOMS IT’S ALL GENDER.”

Barrett, founder and president of the Conservative Ladies of Washington, had never heard of the new restrooms and told her daughter to ask a ticket agent to help her find a women’s toilet facility. But the teen, traveling solo and too shy to ask, decided to wait until she boarded the plane and used the single-use restroom there.

Last month, the Seattle airport debuted its first multiuser, all-gender restroom, a move it says will improve its public amenities. The airport, owned by Port of Seattle, is the busiest in the Pacific Northwest region. But the mixed gender idea is already getting mixed reactions.

The new construction opened to the public in mid-July as part of an estimated $62 million restroom renovation project. It includes 10 locking, single-person stalls separated by floor-to-ceiling walls, two wheelchair-accessible rooms, a separate urinal area obscured by frosted glass, and a shared sink area.

The airport chose the new design primarily for accessibility, said Perry Cooper, spokesperson for the Port of Seattle. The traditional single-sex stall model couldn’t meet the needs of the diverse types of travelers coming in, he explained. A physically disabled man needing the assistance of his female caretaker, for example, would not be able to use the handicapped stalls in the single-sex restrooms. Moms might not feel comfortable sending a son into a restroom alone.

“It’s really a tangible way to try and serve as many people and give a positive experience for as many people that come through our airport,” Cooper said.

Single-use family restrooms fit these needs, but they aren’t always available. Back in June, a mother was reportedly kicked out of a New Jersey movie theater after she took her 15-year-old autistic son into the women’s restroom.

Airport administrators from the Seattle-Tacoma region were the latest to add a multiuser all-gender restroom to its airport, following the lead of a few other major American airports like San Francisco, Newark, and Kansas City.

Steve Soifer, co-founder and former president of the American Restroom Association, praised Seattle’s design, adding that his group has advocated for an all-gender model like this for decades. Private, unisex rooms afford more privacy, save space, and aren’t as pricey as people assume. A 2016 WORLD Magazine article reported that private rooms with floor to ceiling walls and shared sinks would only be 26 percent more expensive than traditional single-sex stalls. And if done right—with proper maintenance and security checks—Soifer says the model can meet everyone’s needs.

“I personally believe it’s the design of the future—it’s trendy now,” he said. “It may take awhile, but in a generation, we’re going to see that transformation toward that single occupancy, all-gender design in a lot of places.”

In a 2019 TEDx talk, Soifer said that all-gender restrooms provide a “simple and elegant solution” for people who identify as transgender.

But Barrett, the mother of the 17-year-old, expressed concern that the term “all-gender” conveyed a falsehood that people can be another gender besides male or female.

“There’s two genders,” she said. “It is an effort to get buy-in of this transgender movement and to put people all together and I think it’s very risky. It puts women and children especially at great risk for sexual predators.”

I brought these concerns to Cooper, who said that everyone, including travelers and the employees at the Port of Seattle, will need time to adjust. He said they’ve added signage to direct people to the nearest single-sex restrooms (a two-minute walk away).

The airport has also tried to make this restroom look different in subtle ways. Instead of the conventional stick figure of a man or woman directing visitors to the appropriate single-sex stalls, the all-gender restroom has a black and white toilet and a sign that says it “is a safe space for you, regardless of gender identity.” The entrance is also decorated with art from LGBTQ artists.

Still, Cooper admits, not everyone notices signs, especially if they’re dashing to the restroom.

He emphasized that the all-gender restrooms are additions, not replacements, to traditional single-sex restrooms.“We’ve got 120 different public restrooms,” he said. “It’s not about reducing this all to, ‘Everybody has to use it in the same way.’ It’s just another choice.”

Cooper told me LGBTQ and faith leaders were consulted on the issue and mutually agreed on this concept.

One of those faith leaders, Steve Wilhelm, a Buddhist, told me he recalled a pastor from the United Church of Christ and a presiding elder from the African Methodist Episcopal Church among the Christian representatives. WORLD could not confirm whether any evangelical Christians were consulted. I asked Wilhelm what the group thought about the term “all-gender” or the religious implications of such a restroom. He said, “I think there was some awareness that it might seem a little odd to some people. But if I remember right, there weren’t any red flags.”

Wilhelm said he encounters these types of restrooms in other Seattle-based establishments already, so he has no qualms about using one at the airport. His wife, on the other hand, disagrees. “She just would prefer not to use a bathroom that guys have been using,” he chuckled.

Putting men and women together in one facility will introduce needlessly awkward, uncomfortable, and potentially unsafe situations, said Brad Payne, policy and government affairs director for the Family Policy Institute of Washington state. Payne asked six local women for their thoughts, and all six said they wouldn’t use it. One said she adjusts her undergarments and touches up makeup in the restroom and wouldn’t feel comfortable doing either around a man. Two others worried that men would take advantage of size differences to harm or harass women.

Payne said these women were all aware of single-sex alternatives, but they still didn’t like the idea of mingling strangers of the opposite sex together in what has traditionally been a segregated space.

“I think they were all adamant that they don’t want that to become a norm,” he said. “That’s not something that they look forward to, a time when everybody goes to the bathroom, are mingled, and nobody gives it a second thought.”