No Place to Go: How Public Toilets Fail Our Private Needs. This item is unavailable.No Place to Go: How Public Toilets Fail Our Private Needs

Gender inequality. Ableism. Transphobia.

One aspect of our daily lives highlights discrimination and inequality with shocking clarity: toilet access. In No Place to Go, Lezlie Lowe explores the political and exclusionary issues which are ignored by our politicians and city planners and tolerated by a suffering public.

Endless queues for the women’s toilet are more serious than a long-running joke; it means the built environment is designed with men in mind. We don’t embrace widespread gender-neutrality in public toilets; to do so would entail bigger discussions about gender.We don’t want to consider the consequences of being caught short if you are homeless or have a disability; that would involve engaging in political and social conversations, with potential economic ramifications.

Lowe tells us it is time we start having these discussions and recognize these problems because when the needs of women and children, the homeless, the disabled and the ill are not met, society suffers.

Lezlie Lowe is a freelance journalist and journalism instructor based in Halifax, Nova Scotia. She has been recognised for her long-form journalism by the Canadian Association of Journalists and the Atlantic Journalism Awards. She holds an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from the University of King's College, where she also teaches in the Journalism department. No Place To Go is her first book.