For people who do not identify as exclusively male or female,elemental aspects of life are not just complex, they take courage to confront. Marnie Hughes Warrington demonstrates one such challenge in the new essay in her series on building the new ANU. People who do not fit into M or F need toilets where they are not embarrassed, facilities, not prescribed by the “customary icon of a male and female figures divided by a line.”

And so the construction team built unisex toilets and members of the university community discussed how to identify them. They talked it through and worked it out because people felt comfortable and spoke up. “Inclusive bathrooms are a simple element in a wider landscape of words, wood and stone that welcomes. They remind us that the freest of speech comes when we choose to stop talking, to listen, and then act,” Professor Hughes Warrington writes.