The TikTok series on gender neutral bathroom locations at Ohio State can be found on the TikTok page @osu_wgss_departme. Credit: Dalina Houangvilay | Lantern Reporter
Ohio State’s Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies Department is spreading awareness about gender neutral bathroom locations around campus — through humorous TikTok videos.
The TikTok series is posted to the department’s profile and locates various gender neutral and accessible restrooms across campus. Humor drives these videos as each restroom gets its own commentary regarding its accessibility or cleanliness.
Ali Alkhalifa, a gender and sexuality studies education program specialist, said that the idea for the TikTok series came from noting that the Ohio State bathroom map – that denotes gender neutral or accessible bathrooms – was not up to date.
“There are various regulations around public restrooms, and a real stigma around queer bodies in public restrooms,” Alkhalifa said. “So for us as gender queer people, to kind of be silly, to kind of destroy some of that anxiety and fear around restrooms, locating them and having conversations about them, was our way to do that in a more palatable way.”
In these videos, Alkhalifa and students walk through several buildings around campus and showcase where the gender neutral bathrooms are located while commentating. Each video is dedicated to its own restroom and the videos joke about concepts like the accessibility of the restrooms, the ease of navigation and the perceived quality of the spaces.?
An Ohio law enacted in 2024 requires individuals in public and private higher education and K-12 schools to use public restrooms based on their sex assigned at birth. Isa Vigil, Ohio State alum and former gender and sexuality studies social media intern, cited this legislation as a reason for starting the TikTok series.
“We thought, why not do this? Why not have fun with it? Why not poke fun where we can,” Vigil said “[Highlighting] that these are kind of bare minimum resources, but they are resources, nonetheless.”
Using the social media platform TikTok, Vigil said, was a way to broaden the audience for these videos and connect with the Ohio State community.
“In one way or another, even if you’re not on social media, you know about TikTok,” Vigil said. “It’s a good way to relate to students. I think that there’s a lot of distance between students and faculty sometimes. I think that this was just another way to kind of close that distance and be a little bit more relatable to students.”
They also said that having humor in the TikToks helps portray their intended message of highlighting gender-neutral and accessible bathroom locations and makes the content easier to digest.
“I just think that humor is a universal way of talking to people, especially young people,” Vigil said. “When you’re using a platform like TikTok, I feel like there has to be some sort of humor to it to even make it be relatable.”
The TikTok series’ main focus is to connect with students and give people the confidence to navigate around campus knowing the restroom locations they feel comfortable using, according to Alkhalifa.
“The hope of the TikTok series was really to just spread information and awareness as to where the gender neutral restrooms really are and normalize asking where they are when it’s not clear from a building map or from that online interactive map that the university provides,” Alkhalifa said.
Alkhalifa said that the series is not done and there are more videos to make. They said they consider this video-making both significant and meaningful.
“This issue is so important due to the various ways in which queer and trans bodies are being policed and surveilled in specifically the state of Ohio, but in the United States broadly,” Alkhalifa said. “So, to be confident, be a little outspoken, be a little silly and take up space, matters.”
