“They go to the toilet to go to the toilet.” More to squat them, or make them into no-rights zones reserved for gangs of boys with a certain ascendancy. The college students of Verfeilnear Toulouse, are finishing their first school year with the “mixed WC” option in the courtyard.
No more small corner for girls separated from that of boys, but two “genderless” toilet blocks, one for all 6th, 5th, the other for all 4th, 3rd. Of course, without a urinal. The water points to fill the water bottles have been moved outside, giving places their essential function “And the results are rather positive, they are cleaner and suffer less damage”, assures Jean-Philippe Monteil, the principal of the ‘establishment. He regularly tests the students on the subject, and if 58% of them are still resistant to this novelty, he notes with satisfaction that the rate of those who did not use them at all has fallen from “30 to 15%” .
The end of “saloon” type doors
“Degendering” the toilets did not flow naturally. Firstly because this choice of the educational team is materially more expensive. No more “saloon” type doors with large voids at the bottom and top and “thin PVC partitions”. It was necessary to “build”, with the agreement of the county council, of which it is the competence. And Vincent Gibert (PS), the vice-president of the community in charge of school affairs, does not regret his green light for “genderless toilet blocks”. “The experiment has been a success, he says, and we are in favor of all initiatives that can contribute to calming the school climate”.
The Jean-Gay de Verfeil college is only the pioneer of a long list. Very compact cabins are already a reality, which educational teams are free to use, in Saint-Jean, Villefranche-de-Lauragais or Anatole-France in Toulouse. And they now appear in all the specifications of the Departmental Council, whether for colleges under renovation, the eight under construction or the 17 already scheduled for the future.
Games with periodic protections
At Verfeil – “favoured college, with little social mix”, recognizes Jean-Philippe Monteil – it was also necessary to put a spell on misinformation. “When questions came to us at the board of directors, I ended up publishing photos of the toilets on the college’s website to clearly show that you couldn’t look into the cabin next door by climbing to the top of the the wall,” he says. He also confesses that the idea of toilets by level is not fully efficient. “Because a 6th grader can have the physique of a 3rd grader, or vice versa, and we can’t control everything.”
The arrival of the distributor of periodic protections in the mixed toilets was not done either without floating. The boys immediately started playing with them, poking them, getting them wet and puffing them up. They were treated to a “great discussion on what the rules are”, says the headteacher who does not intend to stop on the way to equality between girls and boys. By adapting the pedagogy with his team but also by ensuring, for example, “our not ordering only novels written by men” for the CDI.
After having banned ball games on the sports area when the teams are not mixed, he is preparing to supervise the work of the new court this summer. Visually less sharp and square so that everyone finds their place. The departmental council also wants to put an end to a “gender geography”, with, explains Vincent Gibert, “these courses where boys occupy 90% of the space and where girls are relegated to the sides”. The elected official should also soon formalize the arrival of distributors of free periodic protection in all the colleges of Haute-Garonne.