Sanitary Bins in the Men's Restrooms

After well over a year of work, on March 4th, 2022, sanitary waste bins were installed (pun intended) in every stall in the men's restrooms at CCI.

There's a set of restrooms on each of the three floors CCI covers at 3675 Market street. Each men's room has three stalls. In total, nine total waste bins were installed. It's really crazy that it took over a year of work for nine bins. The impact of those bins is well worth the effort.

I have a lot of issues with gendered restrooms that I could go on a very long tangent about, but the biggest issue is the lack of resources available in each. It is very common for men's restrooms to not have baby changing stations. Men's restrooms typically do not include any resources for people with menstrual cycles. Most women's rooms in public contain a vending machine dispenser where you can purchase pads and tampons for a quarter. Every women's stall has a sanitary bin for disposing of used products as they can cause massive plumbing issues. Men's rooms almost never have these resources.

Most people in the men's room don't get a menstrual cycle, so they have no use for these products, so they don't exist. Though, most people don't have a wheelchair and there is a wheelchair accessible stall in almost every restroom. Most women don't have babies, but there is still a baby changing station in almost every women's restroom. It's monumental that we were able to get these bins installed at CCI because I have never seen them at any public men's room I've ever been in.

It has always been my plan to transition medically to some extent. A medical transition can include many different types of surgery or hormone therapy to have one's appearance match their gender. Many trans people choose not to go through a medical transition or only choose to go through certain parts of it. There's many reasons to want a medical transition or not want a medical transition, all of them are valid and don't affect the validity of a person's gender. My transition was delayed due to accessibility and safety concerns.

During this delay, I socially transitioned which means I used he/him pronouns, changed my name, and presented myself in a more "masculine" way. I presented masculinely enough where using neither gendered restroom was entirely comfortable. I was too masculine for the women's room and too feminine for the men's room. I chose to accept others' inevitable discomfort and used the men's room for my comfort. This became an issue when I would get my menstrual cycle and had no place to dispose of the used products.

I could use the women's room, but this causes safety concerns depending on how other people interpret my gender. If I use the men's room, this causes sanitary concerns because I'd have to carry the products to a trash can outside of the stall. The alternative would be flushing the products, which will cause expensive plumbing damages. The safest, cheapest, and easiest option is to install the sanitary bins in the men's room.

This project did take a very long time. It took well over a year of emails to contact the 3675 Market management (the building is not owned by Drexel) about the bins, order the correct bins from the Drexel supplier, have them delivered to the wrong building without delivery notification, have the wrong product delivered, contact the supplier about picking up the incorrect product and delivering the new product, the delivery then was delivered to the wrong building again, then needed to be sent to our building for installation. There were a lot of set backs, but I'm very proud of the systemic change we created here at CCI. These bins will exist as long as this building exists and will genuinely help so many trans people.

I cannot take full credit for the work done. I worked with incredible people in CCI administration who deserve so much more credit than they get. I owe everything to Marie Fazio, Assistant Dean of Operations & Faculty Affairs and Diversity Officer, Melissa Englund, Associate Director of Academic Operations, and Brenna Martin, Associate Director, Operations and Faculty Affairs.