Artist Hopes to Flush Binaries with Gender-Neutral Bathroom Sign

“We Don’t Care” (photo courtesy EG Schempf)

Last month, North Carolina’s Governor Pat McCrory approved House Bill 2, implementing a statewide law that requires individuals to use bathrooms that correspond to the gender on their birth certificates. Discussions over a similar bill that would affect students in Tennessee are also underway. In response to these discriminatory measures known as bathroom bills, Kansas City-based artist Peregrine Honig has designed a gender-neutral bathroom sign as part of her greater vision for a non-binary future one day.

The acrylic works feature the familiar silhouetted figure, except this one merges the male and female bodies along its middle, and the blunt statement, “WE DON’T CARE.” Braille lettering also spells out the same words, making the sign ADA-compliant.

“I was reading trans and non-binary responses [to the bills] on social media and had the thought that there is something precious and intelligent about not caring,” Honig told Hyperallergic. “That eventually we will experience a generation of people who don’t care about where people go to the bathroom.”

Honig produced the notices with a local Kansas business specializing in manufacturing signs. They are available for purchase on her store All Is Fair In Love and Wear, a gender-fluid clothing line, with 10% of proceeds going towards the Kansas City Care Clinic, the second oldest free health center in the US.

North Carolina’s law is the first of its kind in the nation, but as the National Center for Transgender Equality notes, “a wave of anti-trans state bills is sweeping across the country.” The nonprofit social justice organization lists a number of states considering bills that restrict usage of single-sex facilities based on an individual’s biological gender, a roster that currently includes Illinois, Kansas, Massachusetts, Missouri, and South Carolina.

“I would like the sign to become standard until we simply remove gender from bathrooms completely,” Honig said. “Large changes take small steps.”