Speak Up- KōrerotiaAccess to bathrooms16 November 2016

Male This programme was first broadcast on Canterbury’s community access radio station Plains FM 96.9 and was made with the assistance of New Zealand on Air.

Female Coming up next conversations on human rights with “Speak Up” – “Kōrerotia”, here on Plains FM.

Sally E ngā mana,E ngā reo,E ngā hau e whāTēnā koutou katoaNau mai ki tēnei hōtaka: “Speak Up” – “Kōrerotia”.

Tune in as our guests “Speak Up”, sharing their unique and powerful experiences and opinions and may you also be inspired to “Speak Up” when the moment is right.

Nau mai haere mai, welcome to “Speak Up” – “Kōrerotia”. I’m your host Sally Carlton and this show is based in Christchurch. Today’s topic is “Access to bathrooms” and we’ve timed this show to coincide with World Toilet Day which is on the 19th November. Yes it’s one of those things that when you start to research you realise there really is a day for absolutely everything. What’s the point of World Toilet Day? Well it seems like the idea is to try and raise awareness of the importance of sanitation particularly to try and get people starting to think about and talk about the importance of sanitation and toilets and some of the stats are 2.4 billion people live without a toilet; one in ten people still defecate out in the open rather than in a toilet. So I think we’re going to be looking at slightly different issues as they occur in New Zealand but nonetheless this is sort of the grander context in which this is taking place.

In terms of guests today we’ve got Anne Nicholson. Anne, welcome back! Thank you, you were a guest on our “LGBTQI+ rights” show in March 2016 so it’s nice to have you back again.

Anne Thank you.

Sally Anne, perhaps you could just fill us in a little bit on what it is that you do.

Anne I’m the educator for Qtopia Youth Group so we support queer and trans young people around the support and access that they need to live full lives.

Sally And we’ll be hearing a lot more, I’m sure, about how that works in terms of bathrooms as we go through the show.

Anne Absolutely, bathrooms can be a massive barrier for lots of young people.

Sally And we’ve got Brian Poole as well who is a Trustee of the Crohn’s and Colitis NZ… Is it a society or a foundation or something, Brian?

Brian We’re a charitable trust.

Sally Would you mind telling us a little bit about the organisation?

Brian We were set up in 2010, nearly seven years ago in response an unfulfilled need where 20,000 people in New Zealand had a particular medical condition and they were not represented at a national level. There were one or two support groups but we decided that we needed a national voice and hence we’ve now set up the charitable trust.

Sally For people who might not know, could you fill us in on what are these diseases that you are representing?

Brian The two diseases I represent are Crohn’s Disease and ulcerous colitis better known as inflammatory bowel disease or IBD. It’s probably one of the fastest growing diseases in New Zealand or certainly has the highest rate of the disease in the world. About one in 300 New Zealanders now has a form of Crohn’s Disease or ulcerous colitis so it is actually quite a big call out there. Certainly more patients have Crohn’s Disease than diabetes Type 1 but we don’t figure in publicity very often.

Sally Do you have a sense of why those numbers are growing?

Brian Researchers are working very hard on this. I think as they’re understanding more about the disease - they’re finding more and more answers - but at the moment it’s the disease with no known cause and no known cure. But it can be managed - and can be managed very well - but we’re only in the very early stages of doing that. It’s a disease unfortunately which affects a lot of our young people so it’s a lifelong condition which requires management right throughout a person’s life.

Sally I think it’s going to be interesting as we’re going through the show talking about different issues around this idea of access to bathrooms - so Brian you’re coming from a health perspective and Anne you’re coming more from an identity perspective - but I’m sure we’re going to see quite a lot of fusion between what you’re both advocating for.

Brian I hope so.

Anne Yes I think there’s a lot of crossover.

Sally So I guess the first question is we’re talking about bathrooms, in the sense of this show how are we defining them? Any ideas?

Brian Well a bathroom has got various names hasn’t it? Americans call them restrooms, I understand them as toilets or conveniences but bathroom is

a nice word to use.

Sally And I guess when you’re talking about them, Brian, in your work are you particularly talking about public bathrooms?

Brian I guess so, often people without disease unfortunately… Particularly when a disease is in full flight - or ‘flare’ as we call it - and a faecal urgency up to 20 times a day, often people cannot leave their homes. But when their disease is perhaps less in a flare state they may choose to go out and this is why we work hard to make available information about the availability of public toilets in New Zealand and that’s why we established our Toilet Map and indeed gave our members a toilet card which they could also present at a business or something like that, calling on the good nature of a company to let them use their public toilet otherwise our members just can’t get out when they’re particularly sick. One of the first things when we started our organisation in 2010 was to build a Toilet Map and we had a sponsor, one of the pharmaceutical companies Abbvie assisted us in doing this and we’ve now got around about 10,000 public toilets listed on the map. It really is a service to our members and indeed any member so when they travel around New Zealand they can find a public toilet using electronic aids etc. You can get the app or whatever but it helps you plan your journey.

Sally Do you have a sense of how many toilets are on your map?

Brian About 10,000. I just took a print of the usage and the last month for example we’ve had about 1,500 people use it and 75% of them are returning visitors and 25% are new. And quite a few people around the world access it as well and I don’t know why but I suspect it may well be that they’re planning trips to New Zealand and they want to know where a public toilet might be as part of their travels. It’s a curious thing but 15% of our users are outside New Zealand.

Sally Interesting! I think Anne’s going to add in a comment around the work that she’s doing which is not necessarily around public toilets - and I think that makes an interesting comparison here.

Anne A lot of what we’re doing for schools, helping schools especially around the rebuild in Christchurch to ensure that their spaces are safe for non-binary identifying people and for young transgender people who are either part way through or haven’t yet started transition because toilets can be a major issue for them. We have our young people report to us that it is such an issue that they will fail a paper at school if it’s held in the afternoon because there’s nowhere safe for them to go to the toilet so they will leave school at lunchtime or try and take papers that mean that they don’t have afternoon classes, that sort of thing, so that they can sneak home for the afternoon and don’t need to go to the toilet. So we advocate for our young people and we support schools and workplaces around developing toilets or just making their toilets non-binary to help our young people have somewhere safe to go to the toilet.

Sally I’m really looking forward to hearing more about it as we go through this discussion. And our third guest: Olivia.

Olivia Hi, how’s it going? So I’ve just finished my Bachelor of Law at Canterbury University and for one of my research papers I chose to research on the lack of access to bathrooms. I found my experience and a lot of friends and colleagues, they really struggled to have access to bathrooms and so this can go from people from truck drivers to nurses to even people working in call centres, it’s such a wide problem that hasn’t really been touched on in our jurisdiction that needs to be narrowed I feel in our legislation.

Brian Olivia, are you aware of the Restroom Access Act in America?

Olivia No I’m not.

Brian There’s a famous case of this 14 year old girl called Ally Baine where she was a 14 year old girl with Crohn’s Disease and she went to a shopping mall in Chicago with her mother and she had a flare with her Crohn’s Disease which means she needed to use the toilet urgently and her mother asked the shopkeeper or one of the shop store owners whether they could use an employee restroom but they were denied and this resulted in an embarrassing and public accident for poor Ally. The mother was very upset about this but she took it to the Governor of the state and said this is just unacceptable as a human right and my daughter should have been able to have access to a toilet and as a result many states in America now have the Restroom Access Act - it’s now known also as Ally’s Law - and if you have a particular condition you are entitled to have access to a company’s toilet.

Olivia That’s really interesting.

Brian I thought that was quite something and I would like to have that here.

Olivia I agree with you, so would I, I think it would help many people.

Brian And we in fact have been communicating with Government and trying maybe to even get a private members bill to put it up for us so any support you can give us would be wonderful.

Olivia Most certainly and it was exactly what I was thinking as well and I think that’s what it’s going to take is for it to privately go through first. It’s definitely something that needs to be touched on and coming from New Zealand - a beautiful country that we are, so developed - it did surprise me when researching into the legislation that we do have a lack of in this area.

I must say I’m not a lawyer so I’ve only studied so I’m not a professional so any legal advice anyone needs or if they find they’re in a predicament

where they feel like they’ve been perhaps impeded up – their rights when it comes to this they should definitely seek legal advice.

Sally OK well we’re going to have our first break, we’ve got Anne’s song ‘Pauvre diable’ and the group is Via Con Dios.

MUSIC BY VIA CON DIOS – PAUVRE DIABLESally Nau mai hoki mai, welcome back to “Speak Up” – “Kōrerotia” here on

Plains FM 96.9. We’re with Brian Poole of Crohn’s and Colitis New Zealand, Anne Nicolson of Qtopia and Olivia Clarke who is going to be talking about some of the legal elements of access to bathrooms. We finished off just touching on some of the legislation, we talked about the transgender issue, we talked about health issues and I think for this segment one thing that would be great to talk about is trying to get a sense of who exactly are most affected when it’s difficult to access a bathroom.

Anne I can kick it off if you want to? We have a whole population of young people coming through our society and an increasing population of young people who identify as non-binary - so basically they don’t identify as male or female. For them, they are incredibly affected by a lack of non-binary toilets, it’s not a fact that they want a non-binary toilet, it’s the fact that they often appear quite androgynous or can appear as a gender that they don’t necessarily fit the bathroom that they’re supposed to use. And everyone will be aware of the American legislation where you are now forced to go to… In some states, you are forced to go to the toilet in the same toilet that you were born in, so basically if you’re a transgender man so you now identify as a man but you were born as a female you are supposed to use the female toilets which can be an incredible barrier. Here in New Zealand we don’t have that law and we’re very, very thankful for that, it is a protection that trans people have. But for lots and lots of people when they’re transitioning you do not appear as one or the other gender and there is a belief that having a trans person in the opposite toilet will be dangerous for small children and vulnerable women. The reality is that it’s actually dangerous… The statistics show that it’s dangerous for the trans person and the level of assaults on trans people and the level of harassments that happens in toilets is incredibly high and our trans community is full of really upsetting stories of people who have had very, very unpleasant experiences trying to access toilets where there’s nowhere non-binary for them to go.

Sally And do you have a sense of any kind of numbers of how many young people we’re seeing who don’t identify with either male or female?

Anne Within the transgender community we’ve got 1% to 2% so that’s 1% to 2% of the population identify as transgender. It’s probably considerably… We don’t have statistics on the gender diverse people who identify outside of the binary but it’s probably significantly higher. Within Qtopia there’s a very high population of young non-binary people so it’s an area that’s growing significantly at the moment as we develop our language

and our culture around diversity and as it’s a considerable growth area for New Zealand it’s something that we’re seeing as increasing problem.

Sally And I’d love your opinion on this but I get the sense that kind of growing awareness and growing recognition, growing debate is encouraging people to perhaps be more comfortable coming forward?

Anne Yes definitely and we’re seeing some massive shifts especially within groups like the Ministry of Education and in some of the DHBs [District Health Boards] in their redevelopments. So they are starting to look at it and saying OK, well do we need binary toilets at this spot? Can we just have a toilet? - which is what we absolutely support: individual toilets with hand basins so they are safe for all users. The shared use toilets where you are all washing your hands at the same basin and things like that are the most unsafe. The best option and best practice is each toilet has its own full length door so there’s complete privacy, no more cubicles and there’s hand basins and a mirror in there so that you can do everything you need to do, look good, come out feeling confident, alone and safe and then go about your business.

Sally Are you getting opposition? Is there opposition around… I can’t even imagine but I can imagine there might be some.

Anne There is, there’s perceived opposition, perceived issues but they are perceived. There’s no evidence to back up that anybody ever got attacked in a toilet by a trans gender person so it is perceived risk. People fear and it’s usually people in positions of power - often people who live within privilege - who don’t actually understand the issues and don’t understand why it’s significant for quite a highly deprived community. So we definitely do see some issues and the issue is that people believe that small children and vulnerable women are going to get viciously attacked in these toilets by men dressed up as women which just isn’t a reality at all.

Sally In addition to people who don’t choose to identify as one gender or the other, I can imagine that needing to access a toilet is probably more necessary for females than males. And this is opening it up for a discussion for potentially another group of people who need to access bathrooms - and I’m thinking here pregnant women for example, women who have got their period - there’s all sorts of reasons why women might need to access a bathroom more regularly than men.

Olivia You’re totally right there and I agree with you and this is one thing as well that I find concerning is that while women may need to use a bathroom more times during the month than say men there is no legislation or there’s no common law - which essentially is judge-made law; so you have legislation which is made from Parliament and then you have common law which is made by judges - and there’s nothing which I’ve stumbled across which indicates there is an entitlement per say to access that to a bathroom.

Sally Olivia you came to me talking… Actually that’s why we organised this show, was the idea of timed toilet breaks for workers.

Olivia Yes. So there’s no such thing as a timed toilet break for workers legally so people don’t necessarily have to go to… don’t have access to a bathroom. So if as you say I work at a 9-to-5 job and it’s written in my contract that I have two entitlements, I have a morning tea break and afternoon tea break and essentially a lunchtime break. Now my employer has the right when making that contract to take away that right of accessing… they’re 15 minute breaks, right, but in-between that the contracts generally say - and this is what the Employment Relations Act says as well - is that individuals should be given a sufficient amount of time, a reasonable amount of time to access a bathroom to refresh themselves. However that does not state whether that is to eat or whether that is to use a toilet so if an employer is deciding to take away from your contract that right to have that rest break then essentially they are taking away that right to access a toilet because at the end of the day if they want to say to you no you have a duty on your job. Let’s just say you look after machinery, for example in a factory, and the machinery must be handled by you at all times you - technically can’t access a bathroom because if you leave it you’re seen to leaving your job, your dropping your duty essentially. So I feel like that area there really needs to be looked upon. And especially in America there was a case… and Feel free to check out my Wikipedia page, it’s called Lack of Access to Restrooms.

Brian That was the one I referred to.

Olivia Oh really.

Brian Ally’s Law.

Olivia Essentially in the page I do mention, you look at Australia, New Zealand and America, I looked at three different jurisdictions - and more than happy to look into any other jurisdiction as well if anyone needs any help in certain jurisdictions that they’re curious about - but there is one man who actually got fired because he used a bathroom when he was working on machinery even though he asked his manager to go to the bathroom at the time, he was actually let go and it went all the way to the courts and essentially they said that well this is essentially for Parliament to look at which I would imagine is going to something that would happen in New Zealand as well. So what I think: Let’s come together and let’s just legislate and let’s narrowly say that individuals are allowed to access bathrooms for a certain amount of time, that’s my thoughts anyway. Like I said I’m not a lawyer, certainly not, so no-one act upon my advice, do seek legal advice if needed.

Brian The Office for Disability Issues are currently refreshing the New Zealand Disability Strategy, are you people aware of that?

Sally Yes in fact we did a show on that in July, Brian!

Brian Oh good, well that’s excellent. One of the things we pointed out was under the UN Convention which New Zealand signed there is a definition of the rights of persons with disabilities and it’s very wide reaching and I think a lot of the cases we talk about would come under that definition.

Anne And there seem to be many areas of that Convention which aren’t currently being met by New Zealand.

Sally Brian, from a health perspective, what population groups are we talking about in terms of needing to access bathrooms?

Brian Well under our sector we’re talking about 20,000 people ranging from newborn babies through to the elderly but predominantly young people. We probably have 1,000 children in this country with the disease, the incident rate has doubled over the last ten years and it’s now about 40 per 100,000 and it’s a growing concern which we need to bring to the Government’s attention and it’s something we’re working very hard on but because it’s an invisible disease it’s very hard to show that people have these problems. But it’s a continual and constant problem and we call it faecal urgency and people can often get compromised in the least likely time and people have entitlements to access public toilets and that’s something we’re very keen to get Government to recognise.

Sally Thinking as well as people with Crohn’s or colitis, there must also be issues around for example incontinence and that increasing in older people particularly.

Brian Well there is a similar condition called IBS, irritable bowel syndrome which is quite a different disorder but it certainly comes under the same umbrella where there is urgency. Someone with this sort of urgency can need to go to the toilet 20 times a day; well, that’s quite a big demand on your trying to get quality of life.

Olivia Yes most certainly and I’d also imagine that would impact as well if you were going to apply for a job.

Brian Yes and there’s a lot of ignorance in the employment market and it’s an invisible illness and it’s shrouded in silence and we’re trying to change that.

Sally That’s one of the reasons we thought it might be a good topic for discussion as well, try and bring it out into the open a bit more.

Brian And we certainly would like help in bringing some legislation on this topic.

Sally We’re going to have another break now and we’ve got a song that was chosen by Lisel O’Dwyer who we were hoping was going to join us from

Adelaide and she chose - and I guess this is a bit of sense of humour coming through - The Beatles’ ‘She Came In Through The Bathroom Window.’

MUSIC BY THE BEATLES – SHE CAME IN THROUGH THE BATHROOM WINDOW

Sally Nau mai hoki mai – welcome back to “Speak Up” – “Kōrerotia”. We’re with Olivia, Anne and Brian talking about access to bathrooms. Now this is a real human rights issue but it’s not often discussed and I guess one question for you guys is why do we correlate access to bathrooms with human rights?

Anne It comes down to that basic human need, you can’t not go to the toilet. Simple as that. It absolutely has to be a human right.

Brian Well we all want a quality of life and I think that is a human right, it may not be quantity of life but certainly quality of life and we have a duty to maximise opportunities for people to have a quality of life and often it’s just a very simple thought that can make all the difference. We run camps for teenage children with Crohn’s Disease, we make sure there are dozens of Portaloos available for these kids because when they see other children having to need Portaloos they actually feel normal, it’s an extraordinary thing and that’s part of what we’re trying to do is demystify and normalise the disease and make life more liveable for these children.

Sally It also comes down to what is an incredibly basic human right, just dignity.

Brian Dignity absolutely.

Olivia And an absolute necessity, accessing a bathroom is an absolute necessity which… Let’s just go back 1000 years ago, we all needed to use a bathroom in one form or another . And so it is really ridiculous how there’s no clear law around this and that certainly needs to be changed and exactly what you were saying about the normality, we need to normalise this in our society that accessing a bathroom is normal and there certainly shouldn’t be time restraints put onto this.

Anne And our belief that bathrooms need to be gendered in anything other than the home is concerning, and in my eyes quite archaic. It definitely ensures that a large population can’t access any sort of services so I think it’s definitely something we need to start addressing.

Olivia And just what you’re saying about how bathrooms aren’t gendered in the home makes me think, well our bathrooms are not gendered in the home when we have our family over, we have friends, we have parties, do we really have a certain male and female bathroom? No. I don’t know anyone that does. And I put it forward to anyone out there who does know anyone that does. So why should this be any different for the public? At the end of the day we’re all humans, we’re all the same and I’d

really like to put it out there what really separates us? We were born the same way so why should there really be a bathroom which separates us? In fact it’s not really normal is it? By having these gendered bathrooms.

Anne I don’t feel… When I walk into a women’s bathroom as a non-binary person I kind of feel like, well where am I on this little sign? a) I don’t exist; and b) am I going to be comfortable in that environment? Because I do quite often get looks and the best one I actually quite enjoy is as I walk in or as I walk out I’ll often see people walking in and they glance twice at the door to make sure that they’ve got the right toilet. I giggle but other people don’t. But the reality is for a lot of our people it’s just not safe and there is a very quiet network of young people who tell each other where safe toilets are . And one of the best ones is new cafes, lots of the new schools - the Ministry of Education is doing a great job - so lots of the new schools are being built with accessible diverse toilets and that means that it’s not in the gym open between 10am and 12pm on Monday and Thursday otherwise you have to go ask the secretary for the key. It means an actual toilet or toilets that are accessible for everyone in a non-binary way. And cafes! I’m loving what I’m seeing: more and more cafes around town are cottoning onto this and just having toilets, it’s awesome.

Brian One of the things I’ve noticed when you go to a place like MSD [Ministry of Social Development] they pointedly don’t have public toilets available for the public and I find that grace on dignity. If you do have a need they say well go to the building next door, they don’t provide it for people. Are you aware of that?

Olivia No.

Sally No that seems bizarre.

Anne Wow.

Brian And this is one of the showcase departments of the Government and I think they should be doing that.

Sally Is that in their new building, Brian?

Brian We know that they’ve had problems with people but that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t provide toilets.

Anne That are easy to find and you shouldn’t have to ask a caseworker or somebody on front desk please may I go to the toilet.

Brian Yes and it should be a right.

Sally And while we’re talking it should also be accessible. I noticed you mention that, there’s no excuse these days to be making toilets that

aren’t wheelchair and otherwise accessible.

Olivia It sounds like it all goes back to gender inequality, as well, looking at the heart of it. Male and female that are free… Only having access to your gender per se, it’s a societal-made issue isn’t it, gender inequality? And I think now is a really good time to be tackling this issue and the fact that we are starting to become more gender equal - and I said more gender equal not gender equal because we are certainly quite far away from becoming equal in that area - but I think it’s a really good idea if we all come together and I challenge people out there who are listening as well to get on the back of this and just put your ideas forward and feel free to support the notion of gender equality through non-gender bathrooms. It seems like such a silly idea yet it is so essential.

Brian It’s a human right.

Olivia It certainly is.

Anne And if you’re down in Christchurch, go to the toilet at the bus exchange. From every angle those toilets are brilliantly designed; they are a big open corridor with glass doors so you walk straight in, there are cubicles which are floor to ceiling. You walk into your own room, you do your business and then you leave. They are safe for everyone and you can see right in through the bus exchange into that little area, it’s not somewhere you sit there and stare at because it’s just another part of the building but it really is safe and accessible and follows some really good principles around urban design.

Sally We’ve touched on this idea of safety particularly for transgender people. What are some of the other consequences of either not being able to access a bathroom or accessing a bathroom that’s not appropriate for you?

Anne I touched at the start, I think it was before Olivia came in, about if you don’t have access to a toilet you can end up failing school and things like that. We did have young person gave an interview once which was very interesting where they talked about the fact that they used to go home at lunchtime rather than stay at school. As a result they spent most of their Year 11 in detention because they weren’t at school in the afternoon, they were truant. The only reason they were leaving was so that they could go home to go to the toilet and if it was safe they would sneak back into school. Often they were also facing big bullying issues for being different so they wouldn’t sneak back into school and then they’d be done for truancy. That young person also wouldn’t drink at school and wouldn’t eat, so effectively they weren’t learning at school and I don’t feel that they had an opportunity at school and they dropped out at the end of that year as a result.

I think the other issue that we are seeing is safety in the toilets so lots of our young trans people are very, very unsafe. Assault rates are

exceedingly high and bullying rates are exceedingly high in toilets. So those are probably the two major barriers that our young people are facing.

Lisel Hello my name is Lisel O’Dwyer, I’m a social scientist who has been researching access to public toilets for several years now. I first became interested in the subject when I was working on age-friendly cities and the subject of toilet access and availability came up very frequently in the focus groups that we were conducting. I’ve only just been able to join this conversation due to technical difficulties.

Sally What are some of the other social consequences? And Lisel you might be a good person to jump in here.

Lisel I think the issues of safety apply to everyone really because I’ve had people, particularly mothers with children who don’t want their small children, going into a toilet block of the opposite gender just because of the risks associated with being small and vulnerable and also obviously not being able to be seen by the parent. And I think also the issue of safety comes up with people who are drug users and we had a case in Adelaide quite recently of someone who overdosed in a cubicle and she collapsed onto her baby and the baby suffocated and died and it was very difficult to get the door open because she as slumped against the door. So just very basic issues like which way the door hinges are put on and how much there is available for helpers to get in and out makes a huge difference.

Olivia Interesting. Lisel? Hi, it’s Olivia here.I have a question for you just in regards to what you were saying about mother’s being concerned about their children entering perhaps opposite sex bathroom. Do you think that could be tackled in itself by having one non-gender bathroom and a bathroom separately for mothers and their children so that at the same time they’ve got more room to change nappies?

Lisel I think that’s a great solution. Of course the main obstacle we come up against there is the cost of building a third or a fourth bathroom for a particular group but I think that is obviously the safest solution. And of course fathers are equally able to use such facilities; it shouldn’t just be restricted to mothers.

Anne We have also talked, Lisel, a few minutes ago, about giving everybody individual spaces so no more long cubicle toilet blocks and things like that so that people have access to their own space with their own hand basin and doors which are floor to ceiling and open the correct way and that sort of thing which helps to eliminate a lot of those issues that you’re talking about. And we’ve got a couple of really good examples in the rebuild of Christchurch where they’re starting to do that.

Sally Brian, how about some of the… I guess the isolation issues that arise when people don’t feel confident leaving their homes because they might

not find a bathroom when they need one.

Brian I was going to mention that there’s a new product on the market which was designed by two Kiwis and they wanted to spend all day on the ski field and they designed this undergarment which allows an all-day use of a garment without the need to - particularly for incontinence - and so this product is now on the market and it’s an excellent product and I’ll give you the name if you like, it’s Confitex and it’s a very practical garment and it’s one I found of use personally and just another tool available to us for leaving the house, driving and things like that. So that’s just one comment I’d like to add. I have no shares in the company! But you can get that on the website.

Sally Thanks Brian. And Lisel, I know in your article that we read you mentioned social isolation as being a fairly major issue resulting from people not being able to access bathrooms.

Lisel Yes it’s particularly the case for people with chronic illnesses and urinary incontinence-related illnesses, also faecal issues. And also for people with dementia who have carers, they find it quite difficult particularly if the carer is of the opposite gender to the person that they’re caring for, they can face public shaming for entering the bathroom of their non-assigned gender. And I came across an instance of someone… It was a husband caring for his wife with dementia and he was able to take her to the door of the complex, she went in and unbeknown to him when she came out there was another exit at the other end and she went out and got lost and that just wouldn’t have happened if there had been some way for him to be with her the whole time.

I think not only the difficulties for people caring for people with dementia but also just the practical difficulties of dealing with soiled continence products, particularly for men who don’t tend to carry handbags around like we women do. Sometimes they don’t even have bins that they can dispose of these things of in the public toilets.

Sally I think it might be time for our third and final song. Brian, we’ve got your choice which is ‘Only the Lonely’ by Roy Orbison. What was the reason behind this choice?

Brian It was just simply to recognise that Crohn’s, ulcerous colitis, inflammatory bowel disease is a lonely disease if you don’t get a handle on it and too many of our patients are lonely and part of our role as a charity is to empower these people and their families to own the disease and to step out and be part of the real world and not to cower at home.

Lisel It also comes down to the social issues surrounding basic bodily functions, we find it difficult to talk about these things yet they’re something that everyone obviously has and just the lack of being able to say that you have X condition can be isolating in itself.

Brian Very much so, public knowledge remains very low.

Lisel That’s right.

Sally Here it is: ‘Only the Lonely.’

MUSIC BY ROY ORBISON – ONLY THE LONELYSally Nau mai hoki mai, welcome back to “Speak Up” – “Kōrerotia” on Plains

FM 96.9. We’re with Anne, Olivia and Brian and we’ve finally managed to get Lisel in over Skype and we’re talking about access to bathrooms. We’ve just been talking about some of the social, health and other consequences of not being able to access a bathroom or only having access to a bathroom that’s not appropriate for you and I guess I’d like to focus this last segment on looking forward. What would we like to see moving forward and any suggestions on how that might be done?

Olivia I’d like to see the general public challenging this notion of access to bathroom perhaps not existing in your workplace whether that be through policy or obviously just a lack of law. One way I’d recommend doing it - not recommend necessarily but if you would like to do this - is talk to your local employment lawyer and see what they say because you know you can always challenge laws, laws are there to be challenged as such. So I’d say challenge it or even create a local community group where you can get together and talk about policies, your work policies because that’s the way our culture and our society is going to change is through talking. We have to communicate with each other, we have to talk about this until it does become a public issue where the public are starting to see: OK, access to bathrooms, this is a problem, it needs to be looked and we need to view it. So that is something that I’d recommend doing.

Lisel I would have to agree 100 percent. And I think the solutions are not going to be high-tech ones. It seems that we always look to the internet and high-tech developments to solve social problems but this is a problem where basically it’s common sense and the idea that we all have an app on our phones showing where the nearest toilets are is all well and good but that solution doesn’t work for everyone - and we all know that technology fails us from time to time, especially when it comes to the internet. So I agree that discussing the issue and making it more of an everyday conversation and everyday topic that everyone should be concerned about is a huge step in the right direction.

Anne I would love to see us working with you, Brian, on helping to get your app to show non-binary toilets as well.

Sally I think that would be awesome.

Brian I don’t think there would be any problem in doing that, we certainly show… Have you looked on our website?

Anne Yes I have and I really liked it, the app is so easy to use.

Brian So if you can supply us with the names or the locations I’m sure that can be done, that’s just a technical thing but we have no issue in that regard.

Lisel Can I just clarify what I said a minute ago about the technology? I was thinking particularly of older people who don’t tend to use the internet and have mobile phones as much as the rest of us and it is precisely that older group who are the largest growing group with accessibility issues with toilets. For example my dad refuses to have a mobile phone at all and he’s only just learnt how to use the answering machine on his landline so the idea of him ever using an app is never going to happen. I just wanted to make that a little bit clearer.

Anne I think that probably plays into my second point which is where we all start committing toilet sabotage and start taking down the gender signs. I would encourage everybody to commit toilet sabotage: remove the gender signs from toilets from time to time especially if they’re not necessary. Doctors, surgery, waiting rooms often have two toilets. One is marked female and ones marked male, they’re identical. Take down the signs, we do it once a week at our place where we have our meetings, we have signs which say this toilet has been liberated from the binary which gets very confusing for some people, everybody finds a toilet in the end.

Brian If you’re travelling on an aeroplane there’s only one toilet.

Anne That’s a very good point.

Olivia I’ve never had a problem on the aeroplane using a non-gendered bathroom, has anyone else?

Brian No!

Sally The other interesting thing, I think, is about signage. There’s some really cool creative new signs that are coming out around not even having a women figurine and a man figurine next to each other which is one way of doing it but having some kind of created symbols that are combining everything together.

Anne Or there’s this amazing little word called “toilet”.

Sally It’s not that difficult, is it?

Anne No it’s not rocket science.

Sally Brian, any last comments from you?

Brian Well I would just like some help in pushing ahead with this public access legislation in New Zealand so I think Olivia you’ll be very good at doing this, I’ll be very interested to read your research paper.

Olivia Very good, thank you Brian. Just another point I have there as well for any company owners perhaps that are listening to this, I do challenge you to just look over your policy - or even your unwritten policy because it’s seldom ever going to be written, is it? - and how much access you offer your employees to use a bathroom? So whether that be three minute unspoken to bathroom, twice a day, whether it’s even a cultural challenge, whether there’s a challenge no-go to use a bathroom after a certain time because I find that a lot of companies from what I’ve heard from friends and family to use a bathroom more than twice a day over three or four minutes, they start getting their managers coming up to them and asking them where they are. So company owners I do ask you to challenge that, even managers. Just have a look at your teammates and what your colleagues are doing so we can reassess this and come into our common sense, really.

Sally And I think I’d just add to your comments: Everybody, keep the conversation going. We need to start talking about these sorts of issues.

Well I want to thank you all. It’s been a little bit technically difficult, this show, but I think it’s been really informative and I’ve certainly learnt a lot and I hope that our listeners have as well. Kia ora and thank you very much for coming in. Thanks also to Lisel O’Dwyer from Flinders University who unfortunately due to technical issues we only had available with us for a short amount of time but Lisel anyway, thank you very much.