In response to yesterday’s post about problematic bathroom divisions:
Dear Queerty,
So the point of your article is, “uh, yeah I understand that transgendered people have had their lives threatened and been beat up in restrooms, but some of us are just darned pee shy so that’s more important”?! Wow, shame on you for being no more enlightened than FOX News. You’re actually proud of that? I think its a shame that many of us spend 20 years IDing as gay and fighting for gay rights, but the minute we transition, we lose all support and apathy from our gay “brothers” and “sisters”. Your “pooping” rant is even worse than the “support marriage ban homosexual marriage” rant. [Ed. note: No it’s not. Our pooping rant was hilarious! James Dobson can only wish he were this funny! Sorry, back to the letter about why we’re terrible people…] The GLBT means we are supposed to stick together and make eachother safer and supported. You’re sounding like a Log Cabin Republican. Thanks for the fight to continue having transpeople unsafe when they use the restrooms, thanks for trivializing our safety.
So you’re saying if we remove the gender separations from all the communal bathrooms and make everything unisex, then thugs won’t beat up transsexuals in there anymore? Mmmmm…not convinced.
In all seriousness, despite the crazy post yesterday, changing the communal bathrooms to “unisex” will probably have no affect on anything. Everyone will just use whichever bathroom was originally intended for them anyway. They’ll peek in, see who’s in there, see if there are urinals on the walls (men’s) or not (women’s), and choose accordingly. Speaking from experience of being at colleges with unisex communal bathrooms, this is how these situations work out.
Legal accommodations should definitely be made for people who are transsexual, as well as people born without a definite gender (1 out of 10,000 babies in the US). Really, all people should be allowed to use whichever facilities they prefer, depending on how they identify, and everyone else should mind his/her own business. Since that’s not going to happen any time soon, so it’s best to protect them as well as possible.
How about we take this to the next level?
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But going into the University of Colorado’s Student Union and changing all the communal bathrooms to “unisex” is not going to protect anyone from getting beat up, as you suggest in your letter. Such a move is not going to educate anyone. Instead, it gives the trans-bashing thugs a chance to go harrass women while they’re on the toilet. The bigots aren’t mad that the transsexuals are in the “wrong” bathroom. They’re mad that they are transsexuals, period. It doesn’t matter where they are.
So what is the answer? Who knows… Providing a separate bathroom in the building somewhere for transgendered students sounds a lot like the days of separate drinking fountains, as if the trans person would be required to use that specific facility.
From the tone of your letter, it sounds like this issue hits close to home. If that’s the case, we’d appreciate hearing more of your perspective, or anyone else in a similar situation. Thanks for writing.
Erik
dang it. I holla’d at you all yesterday about this but now you’ve gone and changed things around and now I have to recompose the whole rant all over again. I don’t know if I’m up to it.
the gist of it was that unless you’re experienced in the provocation that using the ‘wrong’ restroom is in some areas of the US, you probably don’t realize that this very act is often used as an excuse by the ‘thugs’ to beat us up. it’s a little like the gay panic defense: in most cases you will get stared at if you don’t look like you belong to one gender or another, and if you hold it till you get home or an equivalently safe place, you probably won’t risk losing your life. but walk into the bathroom they don’t think you belong in, and all bets are off.
the similarity here between restroom violence and gay panic is that both involve situations where an otherwise simply tense moment explodes into a violent one as one too many traditional boundaries are crossed. this might come as news to one who has never traveled in non-urban areas as an ambiguously-gendered person, but using the wrong bathroom is often the match that sends the whole room up in flames. otherwise, you get stared at, you feel threatened, you beat it back to san francisco and never leave again. point is you get out alive and in one piece.
whether unisex bathrooms are the answer (personally I think unmarked one-holers with single locking doors are god’s gift to all who occasionally have to pee while out), it is in fact probably untrue that doing someting about the strict bi-gendering of public restrooms would not reduce violence against the transgendered. that people will beat us up anyway is not a particularly good reason not to do away with one of the primary excuses used for such beatings.
as for the pee-shy, well, I find them only slightly less ridiculous than fox news thinks transsexuals are (you do realize, don’t you, that that is why they editorialized this story, rather than out of any sophisticated reasoning as to how best to keep us from getting beaten.). having switched from women’s rooms to men’s rooms years ago, I only am amazed at how many grown men cannot pee if someone else is in the room. women do not seem to have this problem. what is up with this? do biomen need to read everybody poops again? when two people are in one room to do the same thing, wherefore the panicked undignity?
I simply don’t understand. but you know? I bet that the pee-shy could learn to hold it just like we do when we feel our lives might be endangered were we to take a whiz. of course, you’d just be holding it because you’re shy, but maybe the experience will still allow you some empathy for targets of anti-queer violence. weird that I’d be saying this to a queer website.
Max Valerio
I agree with the editor”s comments that creating uni-sex multiple use facilities is not going to cut down on violence against transsexuals, or transgender people in general. For all we know, it could even make it worse, creating a kind of lightning rod effect as people feel they have to change their intimate habits for the “rights” of a few. However, that is purely speculative. Most likely, it will have little effect. People need to work on their attitudes, fears and misconceptions — not change their bathroom arrangements. Until people who are not trans are more accepting of transpeople, it frankly doesn”t matter where we go to the bathroom.
Also, fact is — as transsexual, I don”t want to HAVE to use a bathroom facility specifically created for my “safety” or “comfort”. This option does feel like someone segregating me, and even if they think it is for my own good, they may as well be painting a giant “T” on my forehead. I transitioned from female to male to be a man — period, end of sentence. That means I have a right to, and wish to, use the Men”s room like all the other men, not use some facilitiy set aside for “not-quite-men” people. That would feel like an insult.
Frankly, I”m embarrassed that this is what some factions of the “transgender” movement are fighting for. While well-intentioned, changing single sex multi-use facilities into unisex or unigendered facilities is in the long term, a merely “cosmetic” solution to a deeper issue.
If someone, anyone, trans or gay is being beaten up or harrassed in any facility, bathroom or dormitory — the solution is to arrest the perpetrators. Or, in lieu of arrest, if the person is being verbally harrassed, to submit a complaint to campus authorities (in this case). Like any instance of homophobic behavior, racist or sexist behavior, the incident should be reported and dealt with directly.
(excuse my use of double quotation marks, my computer keyboard has seen it fit to malfunction!)
logan
I’ve only been to one establishment where they eliminated the male/female bathrooms and made them both unisex. It was at a busy diner in hippie Santa Cruz, California, and I thought it was an interesting experiment actually. I’m not sure whether it helped the trans community or not. But I think it made a lot of us not in the trans community really confront some hang-ups about gender and the body. Really, why can’t we all piss in the same room? The answer to that question could really inform our understandings of homophobia, sexism, transphobia, etc.
mister heathen
If you think it’s hard to take a crap when you’re worrying if the person in the other stall is a tranny, consider what it must feel like to be the tranny in the other stall, worrying if the person next door is a tranny-basher. However, I totally get where you’re coming from. As a lady, I don’t want men in the bathroom with me. I don’t really want women in there, either. In fact, I want to be all by myself, pooping like a queen, freely making all the noise and stink I need to. I don’t want to be stuck in some drum-circle of a bathroom where everyone is feeling really huggy about the full gender spectrum.
Since Erik has put it so eloquently, and Max has followed up very nicely from a different angle, I have only this to add: there is no need for the self-congratulatory big production in making safe and private bathrooms. Simply make a few single-occupant bathrooms for everyone to enjoy without all the fuss. Make them accessible to everybody: the transgendered, the disabled, the republicans, people with pursedogs, everyone. More importantly, let those private bathrooms have good lighting and a couple of full-length mirrors. Also, let them have locking doors that don’t unlock unless you’ve washed your hands for a full 30 seconds or more, with soap.
I’d also like to point out that the article said that some of the bathrooms would be multi-gendered. Not all. I think this is a good idea. Whether or not they put the big goofy ladyman cartoon on the door or not is up to them. Personally, I think it’s just taking up space where there could be another mirror.
logan
Why not just make unisex bathrooms with floor to ceiling stalls if necessary? Bathrooms that only accomodate one person lead to obnoxiously long lines (witness any Starbucks bathroom in NYC).
I honestly don’t understand why people have such an issue with this. Do you think you’re tricking the rest of us into believing you don’t piss and shit?
The only arguments I give any weight to are those around safety concerns. The fact that you feel uncomfortable pissing in public? Don’t piss in public then. Or, needing to piss badly enough will get you right over that.
Erica
People keep saying stuff like “don’t go in public bathrooms” – well, I don’t necessarily count dorm bathrooms as “public places” – If I stayed “home” for the day in college, that was the only place I could go!
This idea kind of amazes me – I guess I never worried about whether or not a transgendered male to female was in the next stall to me… but when I did live in a dorm room where the bathroom was not down the hall, but attached to my room and 3 others – all with their own outside entrances and the bathroom was used like a hallway between the rooms. I not only worried about if a guy walked in while I was on the potty, but if he was to walk in while I was getting out of the shower, without makeup, or without my bra (at my cup size, not something I was comfortable with).
I guess I agree with another poster – rather than separating out the bathrooms, work on people’s acceptance and attitudes…. Oh, and you could make the bathroom and shower stalls a heck of a lot more private!!! (I decided against one particular college because the showers were NOT private… just one big huge shower stall for everyone! Yippee (not)
alice
But I don’t want to poop in the same stall as some stinky dude!
starstattoo
Now, c’mon people, we all know that the men’s room is for peeing and cruising (women can pee in the one stall with a fag standing guard if needed), and the women’s room is for primping and doing drugs.
Unless there’s some sort of intestinal crisis, you poop at home.
Tyler
I think Eric is enlightening. Trans people deserve safety in public restrooms. I am comfortable with my self; thus, also comfortable with trannies, gender-queers, etc. This is a serious issue. Reducing violence of the trans community is first priority.