Comfort station
You thought the Ally McBathroom was controversial? While such progress is, in many parts of the US, stalling, the BBC reports that the Kampang Secondary School in Thailand — a country known for its tolerance, if not warm fuzzy embrace, of men who dress and live as women — is now providing its student body with girls’, boys’, and transgender bathrooms. (See super-keen sign at right; call it the international symbol for “adolescence just got a liiiiittle bit easier.”) Kampang is not the first Thai educational institution to set up such a system, though it may be the first secondary school to do so, reports FOX. This news has stirred not controversy but discussion in other schools now wondering if they should follow suit.
As for Kampang itself, head teacher Sitisak Sumontha estimates that “in any year between 10% and 20% of his boys consider themselves to be transgender.” (No word, it should be noted — and perhaps explored in a complicated socio-cultural dissertation — on girls who roll as boys.) He explains that the boys who desire to be girls are uncomfortable in either girls’ or boys’ restrooms, and that often, the girls and boys are uncomfortable there with them. So perhaps there’s still room for some diversity education, but at least in the meantime, these boys will be that much freer to heed the call of nature.