Mundanity,fascination and threat: Interrogating responses to publicly engaged research in toilet,trans and disability studies amid a ‘culture war’

Introduction

We are all here, like this is a workshop about toilets, someone could write a comic about it in the Daily Telegraph and all they’d have to do is say: ‘it’s like sitting around in a circle and asking what each other’s pronouns are and talking about toilets for an hour’. It’s literally a joke in other people’s minds because it’s so ridiculously out there that that could be a thing that needs to change. But the reason why at least it’s beneficial to carry it on is because it benefits those people. It continues patriarchy, it continues transphobia and those are not situations that don’t benefit people. Like every single cis person benefits from transphobia. Every single man benefits from the patriarchy – like as much as they are disadvantaged by it as well – but they are also advantaged by it. So it’s sort of like humourised in order to discredit it as an area of study. (Participant in research workshop, 2015)

The opening quote was taken from the first participant workshop of Around the Toilet (AtT) – the collective name for a series of research projects which examine what makes a safe and accessible toilet space. It was late spring 2015, and we had invited people that were trans, queer and/or disabled to come and share their experiences of trying to access toilets. During the day, one participant reflected, not on their own experiences of toilet access, but on how the UK press would react to the workshop. The workshop was held two years before a consultation on the Gender Recognition Act 2014 (GRA) resulted in a heightened backlash to trans visibility and rights that we are still very much living through today (Pearce et al., 2020). Through such backlash, those calling themselves ‘gender critical feminists’ have positioned trans people’s rights as in opposition to those of (cis) women; often siding with Conservative Christian and right-wing organisations and commentators to raise their profile (Phipps, 2020a). As one of a few gender segregated spaces, toilets have been in the spotlight within these debates (Jones & Slater, 2020). As a trans-inclusive public-facing and publicly engaged research project focusing on toilets, AtT too has gained media attention – sadly, often in the ways predicted by the participant quoted above. This article will contextualise and reflect on these experiences.

The affront to trans people has not happened in a vacuum but is part of what has been labelled a wider ‘culture war’. The populism and authoritarianism of Brexit and Trump has encouraged increased group conformity through a fear of the Other (immigrants, ‘foreigners’, people of colour, LGBT+ people, etc.) (Norris & Inglehart, 2019; Phipps, 2020a). As such, the culture war has been ‘framed mostly around identity’ (Riley, 2021, p. 6). Through a rhetoric that is anti-expert and anti-intellectual, universities have been positioned as places of anti-nationalist liberalism, and become a key culture war battle ground (Norris & Inglehart, 2019; Riley, 2021). As Phipps (2020a, p. 22) puts it, ‘[e]ducation is seen as the nerve centre for indoctrination into progressive politics and/or LGBT identities’. The culture war has included arguments that free speech is being curtailed when the invitation of racist and/or transphobic speakers is protested (playing out most readily in students unions and university campuses), and attacks on the teaching of critical race theory (Riley, 2021). In 2021 in the UK (where I write from), the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill (at ‘report’ stage at the time of writing) attempted to ensure that ‘the use of higher education and student union premises could not be denied to any group or individual on the basis of their ideas, beliefs or views’. Whilst the Bill makes little sense without context (most people are never given a public speaking platform at a university), it threatens to punish universities who listen to students and staff about how to maintain university campuses as safer places for marginalised people to work and study.

With the above as its context, this article reflects on some of the social, media, academic and institutional reactions to research on trans, queer and disabled people’s access to toilets through AtT (the wider findings from which can be found elsewhere: Jones & Slater, 2018a, 2020; Jones et al., 2020; Slater & Jones, 2018, 2021; Slater et al., 2018, 2019). AtT initially ran between April 2015 and February 2018 to examine the extent to which toilets provide a safe, accessible and comfortable space for everyone, whilst centring the experiences of disabled, trans and queer people. The project later evolved to include people who were not queer or disabled but had other experiences of toilet exclusion to share. In the most recent phase of the research (2020–21), focus turned to worker precarity and cleaning labour during the COVID-19 pandemic (Wellcome Centre, 2020).

AtT has been public-facing from its outset, aiming to: (1) remain committed and useful to the grassroots community, campaigning and arts organisations with whom we have worked; and (2) work with design professionals to try and influence toilet design. Whilst these principles come from our political commitments to and backgrounds in feminist, disability, queer and trans politics, it would be naive to think that they had not also been shaped by higher education policy. Impact agendas – the move to ‘bureaucratically assess the social, cultural and economic impact of research’ (Kidd et al., 2021, p. 149) – have resulted in increasing pressure for academics to be public-facing (Yelin & Clancy, 2021). Indeed, most of the project’s funding was from a stream specifically designed for public-facing, community-engaged research. The project team has received many positive responses to the research, including winning an award for public engagement, influencing institutions such as sectors of the NHS, museums and universities, and grassroots, community and activist organisations using our outputs for discussions of toilet access. The research also formed an impact case study about toilet access in REF2021. Yet, doing the work – both inside and outside the academy – has become increasingly difficult and sometimes dangerous; not all the ‘impact’ has felt positive to us as researchers. Moreover, as I will show, the personal and political risks that we take in doing such work are rarely recognised or supported institutionally.

This article, then, explores my experiences, as a trans person, of doing trans-inclusive, public-facing academic work during a culture war. It will argue that the project is at once positioned as too mundane (a waste of taxpayers’ money), a fascination (particularly our work on trans people’s toilet access), and a threat (leading to attempts to silence and ridicule the work). Through her historical analysis of public toilets, Penner (2013, p. 22) reminds us that toilets are often ‘bitterly contested spaces’ because they enforce ‘order and existing power relations’; this sentiment becomes clear as I explore responses to AtT in the first section of the article. Furthermore, Penner (2013, p. 20) writes that the concerns expressed over widening toilet access beyond a privileged few ‘do not always stem from real threats so much as from broader social anxieties’. Reactions to the research sit at an intersection: as well as illustrating the, often passionate, cultural responses that are evoked by a call for widening toilet access (and therefore access to public space more broadly) to marginalised people, they also demonstrate a partial view of how researchers, academics and universities are understood outside the academy. ‘The problem’, however, does not just lie outside of universities. I illustrate that the boundaries between inside and outside academia are blurry – with academics both fuelling and perpetuating violence. Furthermore, I explore the (often inadequate) institutional advice, guidance and support that I have been offered in relation to volatile responses. I close the article with suggestions as to how universities and related bodies could improve the ways that they support staff, particularly trans staff, but also those otherwise marginalised and working on identity-based and social justice projects.

The Around the Toilet project: Methodology, politics and theoretical perspectives

This article does not explore in depth the findings and recommendations that have been made from the Around the Toilet project (AtT), which can be found elsewhere through academic publication (Jones & Slater, 2020; Jones et al., 2020; Slater & Jones, 2018, 2021; Slater et al., 2018, 2019) and in more accessible formats (Jones & Slater, 2018a; Moore, 2017; https://aroundthetoilet.wordpress.com/useful-materials/). Nevertheless, before proceeding to further explore reactions to the project I share a brief methodology of AtT, alongside the politics and theory which shaped the research, as well as an explanation of how data are used in this article. This broad methodology is important as it contextualises the reactions which I go on to explore.

AtT rests upon the argument that toilets are deeply political, very much worthy of consideration, and fail for many people. The labels on toilet doors intentionally include some and exclude others, while the space, design and facilities themselves permit certain bodies, needs and actions, and forbid others. AtT used the toilet – somewhere that everybody needs to access – as a grounding space from which to have conversations, between different groups of people, broadly about accessibility, bodies, identity and who is welcome in public space. Whilst the research began with and centred the experiences of queer, trans and disabled people, it later included anyone who had a toilet story to share, as well as seeking out people with particular experiences (e.g. parents and carers, children and young people, lorry drivers and those whose faith shapes toilet use in particular ways).

The project team has been composed of early career researchers with different disciplinary backgrounds and research interests, including in architecture, English literature, education, childhood, gender, sex and disability studies. I, like other members of the research team, now additionally identify as working within the small disciplinary space of toilet studies. None of these disciplinary spaces are free from transphobia or the ‘culture war’. The team has also included those outside of academia, some of whom were representing particular organisations, and others working in an individual capacity. We have at no time claimed the project to be working from a neutral basis – we work from varying located personal and political positions. Whilst there is not one homogeneous political understanding shared amongst all that have guided the research, the project has been explicit throughout in aiming to consolidate commitments to feminist, queer, trans and disability politics. Some anti-trans advocates have argued that feminist, and indeed, disability politics, are in tension with trans rights. Yet, there was an intuitive and necessary connection between these movements for many of us, who – in some cases – had personal experience of multiple marginalisation across these axes (for further exploration of these arguments see Hines, 2020; Jones & Slater, 2020; Pearce et al., 2020; Slater & Liddiard, 2018).

The AtT methodology is akin to what Phipps (2020b) calls a ‘composite ethnography’: the piecing together of various different research encounters over a period of time. Between 2015 and 2018, 30 people in the north of England participated in data collection methods (including one-to-one interviews, film making, group storytelling, sculpture and performance workshops), largely focused around the question of ‘what makes an accessible toilet space?’ Scoping research and dissemination also took place with children and young people in formal and informal education settings. In 2020–21 our focus turned to worker precarity and cleaning labour, through which 21 hospitality workers were interviewed about their experiences of managing toilets in hospitality during the COVID-19 pandemic. ¹ Yet, research has been wider than these more formal research encounters. Many people who took part in interviews and workshops had some form of sustained participation, such as attending multiple activities, collaborating in later research design, joining advisory boards, becoming co-investigators, and/or participating in data analysis. As AtT has been consistently outward facing, more people continue to engage with the project internationally through social media, writing for project publications (e.g. Jones & Slater, 2018a; Jones et al., 2020) and through a host of public events which to date are estimated to have reached over 800 people. Accessible project outputs have allowed for the ongoing sharing and discussion of data with diverse audiences, which in themselves generated more data. Framed by our wider research encounters, we have also conducted textual analysis of various news, comment pieces and forums discussing toilet access (Slater & Jones, 2021; Slater et al., 2019), and we have written for and been interviewed by media outlets (e.g. Anderson, 2021; Jones & Slater, 2018b). Ethical approval for the above was granted through Sheffield Hallam University, University of Sheffield and University of Exeter.

The methodology

The data analysed in this article consist of media coverage of the project in national, local and LGBT+ specific press, comments on the media articles and tweets and public Facebook responses to the work. Unlike is often the case when collecting social media data, these data were not ‘scraped’ but collated, over the duration of the project, originally for the purpose of writing a REF impact case study. Ethical approval was then granted through Sheffield Hallam University to use the data to write this article. To protect the anonymity of those responding, different types of data are treated differently. Press coverage of the project is in the public domain on large and visible platforms. The same articles were often reprinted across several different news platforms; references to these platforms are therefore often general with specific illustrative examples. Public comments made on media platforms (e.g. the comments sections under news reports, or comments on the Facebook pages of media platforms) and the majority of tweets are anonymised – words quoted are changed in order to retain meaning but prevent search-ability. Townsend et al. (2016) suggest that an exception to anonymity can be made for ‘Blue tick’/verified accounts as these users are likely to realise that their comments are public. Whilst I have named some large or verified accounts, I have anonymised others to reduce the probability of facing further harassment on publication of this article. No data are taken from Facebook groups (private, hidden or otherwise). Analysis consisted of coding and grouping responses into overlapping themes, which are reflected now in the structure of this article: mundanity (those viewing the project as a waste of taxpayers’ money), fascination (those focusing on trans people’s toilet access) and threat (those working to intimidate the researchers and erase the findings of the project).

Mundanity, fascination and threat

Implications

So far in the article I have demonstrated how the AtT research – which focused on improving toilet access, and therefore public space, for marginalised people – has been construed as too mundane to be worthy of funding. This has, in part at least, been fuelled by a culture war rife with transphobia – responses to the project have regularly claimed that the project is ‘only’ about trans people, who are demonised through such discourse. The fascination with trans people’s toilet access has also meant that attention to other forms of exclusion – particularly disabled people’s lack of toilet access – have often been erased in media and public attention on the research. Furthermore, when responses are transphobic, they often come with ableist and sanist language (e.g. ‘The world’s gone crazy!’; ‘This is mad!’). An aim of AtT was to use toilets as a grounding space through which to explore how solidarities can be built between different marginalised people. In the current culture war – rife with transphobic discourse – focusing on the research’s trans politics is an easy way to delegitimise both trans people’s lack of toilet access and any broader conversations about a lack of public toilet accessibility (which generally impacts more heavily on marginalised people, including disabled people, homeless people, women and so on; Slater & Jones, 2018).

Many responses to the research have been violent; some of which have been aimed directly at researchers through networked harassment, often fuelled by other academics. I am not alone in my experiences. Sikes (2008) details how media misrepresentation led to media hounding and personal attack. Savigny (2019) cites her own and others’ experiences to argue that women are disproportionately affected by negative experiences of public engagement. Pearce (2020) reflects on her experiences of trying to survive academia as a trans woman researching trans health, situating these experiences within a context of academic precarity. Yelin and Clancy (2021) share the challenges that they have faced as feminist academics doing impact work. And I know numerous other – usually marginalised – academics who have dealt with similar issues. Wånggren (2018, p. 105) writes that ‘the effects of the neoliberal university are . . . felt more by some bodies than others: women, people of colour, disabled people, LGBTQ+ people, and colleagues of working class background or in financial precarity’. Whilst, as a project team, we hold various axes of privilege – not least our positions as a majority white group – as a group of early career researchers ⁶ of marginalised genders, some of whom are precariously employed, some of whom are disabled and some of whom are trans, we have experienced what Marwick (2021) finds in her research: that these attacks have made us wary about the ways in which we share our work. Public engagement has, if anything, been even harder during the COVID-19 pandemic, as transphobia has intensified in the media, and events have also necessarily moved online to spaces where abuse can happen in a more faceless form.

Whilst in this article I have focused on discussing responses to the project outside of what might be thought of as explicitly academic spaces, work within more traditionally academic spaces has also been difficult. As can be seen in our experiences with the Real Peer Review, the borders between inside and outside of the academy are murky. Furthermore, transphobia undoubtedly exists (indeed it is prolific) inside the academy (Pearce et al., 2020; Slater & Liddiard, 2018). Pearce (2020) suggests that for marginalised academics to survive in the academy, they will need both supportive communities of scholarship and an ethical responsibility towards the self. Whilst the institution has a duty of care towards its staff, the experiences outlined in this article illustrate that university workers are being made unsafe. As a project team we have developed practices to try and mitigate this within our own research. Here – drawing on Pearce’s (2020) work and in the spirit of growing our communities of scholarship – I share some of the ways in which we try to maintain an ethical responsibility towards ourselves. Whilst these examples may seem obvious to those already entangled in similar situations, I write them down because they are not necessarily easy things to do, and sometimes knowing that others are making similarly difficult decisions can be helpful. Furthermore – as these are broadly structural, systemic and institutional issues – I outline ways in which universities and those with degrees of institutional power could strive towards creating more sustainable environments for trans researchers and others impacted by the culture wars.

Conclusion

In this article I have reflected on my experiences of doing public-facing, trans-inclusive research within a culture war that has been in part fuelled by transphobia. As I have shown, toilets as a subject of research have been seen as too mundane to be studied: researching toilets is positioned as a waste of taxpayers’ money. Yet, there has been a simultaneous fascination around the work on trans people’s toilet access in particular – this is what has generated media headlines and heated online and offline discussion. Trans fascination is also what has led to the online abuse which we have spent huge amounts of time trying to mitigate as a project team, alongside dealing with the often less visible and public effects of transphobia within more explicitly academic spaces. Whilst often a trans fascination has been detrimental to trans people, it has also led to the erasure of the work that we have done around disability and other forms of exclusion.

As I have argued elsewhere (Jones & Slater, 2020), access to safe and comfortable toilets plays a fundamental role in making trans lives possible. Excluding trans people from toilet spaces therefore denies ‘trans possibility’ (Cox, 2017; Pearce et al., 2019). Our research project which argues – very simply – that all people, including trans people, have the right to use the toilet, has therefore been seen as a threat to a status quo, where toilet access being difficult, dangerous and violent perpetuates the marginalisation of trans people. The participant in the very first AtT research workshop (whose words opened this article) was aware of this when they highlighted that patriarchy and institutional power benefit from the continuation of the status quo. I argue here that the denial of trans possibility also makes being trans in academia and doing trans-inclusive research increasingly difficult. Whilst there are things which individual researchers can do to mitigate risk, I have suggested some ways in which those in positions of power, including those in research leadership positions and on journal editorial boards, can help to create supportive environments for trans researchers. Overall, institutions need to recognise, resource and mitigate for the extra burdens that trans and other marginalised researchers face, both when doing public-facing work and within wider academic contexts.