Dear cis women who are uncomfortable with trans women in bathrooms,
Hi, it’s us. Trans women who use bathrooms.1
We know that you’re not comfortable sharing a bathroom with us, even though all the nakedness happens behind a stall door.
And this might surprise you, but… yeah. We sympathize. We get it. There’s possibly a penis in the room, and that’s just wrong! Good God, the baggage! If you have to think about that, you’re probably going to end up picturing it (it’s like trying not to picture a pink elephant), and then you’ve got images on the view screen of your mind which you didn’t want when you’re alone in a room with your butt bared over cold water – men, deep voices, (danger), men taking up space, assuming your attention is theirs by right, (rape risk), men laughing at fart jokes and arguing about which woman was “the dog” in that national beauty pageant, (embarrassment — they’ll hear us peeing and all that), men smiling comfortably as they throw out a pickup line or a comment on our body, (where are the exits…), even the men we love in our lives just not getting it (don’t be silly, Joe’s a good guy…), and if we have the special privilege of inclusion in that large fraction of women who have been sexually assaulted,2 we may have the images, sounds, smells, whole-body revolted shudders from that whole massacre of our sense of self and safety.
We get it. There’s that penis in the room, and the whole entourage that can come along with those goddamn things.
We get it. Because when we go to the bathroom, there’s a penis in the room, too. Every time.
It’s right there in the stall with us.
And if we want to be hygienic, and quiet, we have to handle it. We have to aim it, and wipe the tip dry, and then strap it down tight so that when we step out, there’s no sign of it.3
So. We have some common ground.
We also have some differences. Here’s one: For you, when we walk out of the bathroom, so does the penis. All those unwanted, socialized, traumatized associations… they walk away, too — or at the very least, they step away and keep a greater distance.
For us, there is no distance. Not when we walk out of the bathroom, not ever. (Except through dissociation, for those of us who do that.)
There it is. Not just along for the ride. Attached. As always.
Now, certainly, as I use present tense, above, I’m referring only to trans women who still have penises — those of us who can’t get the money together, those of us who are contraindicated for surgery because of a heart condition, those of us who are trying desperately to hold together the marriage and wife and family and children we would die for but found that we can’t live as a man for, because we we tried and we aren’t good enough, strong enough, tough enough to man up and make it work — and whose wife has told us that genital surgery is a deal-breaker. 4
But even for those of us who no longer have penises — we used to. And those fucking things were right there in the room. Right there in the bed. Palpable when we were aroused.
And those of us who still have them, believe me, we’d love to fix that, and if we can, we’re working toward fixing that.5 Some of us are lucky enough to be able to work overtime. Some of us work five part-time jobs. Some of us sell our bodies because no one will hire us for anything but that.
Most of us, even the ones working overtime, burn with contained rage when our co-workers talk about how their health plan covered their appendectomy, or their ingrown nail. Most of us who even have health plans find that they specifically exclude all healthcare related to anything transsexual, including gender confirmation surgery.6
But of course we still have human bodies, and we still have physical health needs. Those of us with enough money and privilege still need to use locker rooms sometimes. In a locker room, the last thing we want you or anyone else to see, the last thing we want to see, is our penis. We will avoid locker rooms, when we can. When we can’t, we will change bottoms in the toilet stall. We will wear baggy shorts into the sauna along with a sports bra and a towel over our shoulders to make it all seem like routine, ordinary body modesty, instead of hypervigilant, terrified self-policing. We will sit out camel pose in yoga class, or avoid yoga class entirely, because the last thing we want anyone to see is something which hints at what’s there.7
That communal shower in the locker room? The one they tell you to rinse off in before you use the sauna or the hot tub or the dipping pool? Nope, not going in there.8
So, yeah. There’s a lot not to like about this situation. Enclosed space. Penis. We probably like it a whole lot less than you do. We’re just a whole lot more resigned to it. Habituated to it. Kinda like Stockholm syndrome, except for the part where we grow to love our hostage-taker.
You know what we’re not used to, at least at first? You’ve got a leg up on us, on this one. We’re not used to thinking about getting assaulted in bathrooms. We’re used to going into bathrooms, doing what one does,9 washing our hands,10 and walking out. Problem solved! On to the next problem.
…not so fast. Now we have to worry about getting assaulted in bathrooms by lurking rapists (because that is a thing most women worry about at least some of the time) AND we have to worry that a Concerned Citizen, man or woman, will call the authorities and accuse us of a sex crime, or simply decide that the time is right to stomp us into a mud hole.
Like you, we actually can walk away from that fear, for a little while … but not for long. We have feces and urine inside our bodies sometimes, just like you. And just like you, because we are decent, clean people we want to dispose of that feces and urine in such a way that no one else has to see it, smell it, or feel it. And when we have to hold it for a long time, it gets painful, and awkward, and sometimes (more often if we’re post-genital-reconstruction) we get UTIs. Just like you.
So we’d like to go to the bathroom, just like you. Ideally, we’d like to do it alone, but if we must have company, in that vulnerable moment, sitting over cold water with our pants down or skirt up, holding our clothes so that they don’t touch the floor (because, gah, ew)… we would like that experience to be gentle and brief, rather than nasty, brutish, and possibly followed by a stint in the hospital or the morgue.
Just like you.
Grace
Note: If you are a man who is concerned about your women having to share facilities with us — and you do appear to be numerous, or vocal — this post is not addressed to you. Go find some other place to clutch your pearls.
Caveat: Some small portion of this was hyperbole. The basic thesis, not so much.
Caveat 2: Not all trans women feel this way. Many do.11 We’re not a hive mind. We are vast. We contain multitudes.
- So, trans women. [↩]
- hello, sister [↩]
- And it’s not like that’s a comfortable process — damn but that thing has a lot of nerve endings, and more of them than you might suppose detect pain. [↩]
- For the sake of this discussion I am leaving aside those women who do not feel this revulsion toward our penises. We women of that sort exist, but we are a minority, and that complexity is beyond the scope of any possible short discussion. [↩]
- Except for that small fraction who aren’t; see above about complex discussions. [↩]
- Don’t call it a “sex change operation.” Just don’t. [↩]
- This is for those of us with the income and other privileges to be able to do yoga, of course… [↩]
- Once, before I transitioned publicly but after I developed breasts, I had to use such a communal shower in the MEN’S locker room. Fortunately, it wasn’t crowded and no one knew me, so no one talked to me, and one of the showers was situated such that I could face the corner and keep my elbows in tight, pretending that I needed to massage my neck. This sort of careful, planned negotiation of spaces became routine for me. [↩]
- Which, since I’m writing explicitly here, I mean to refer specifically and only to excretion and the necessary manipulations directly related to it. [↩]
- One hopes. [↩]
- I may or may not be one of them, because I’m not inclined to discuss the conformation and surgical history of my genitals with every random member of the public who may read this. [↩]
Except for, it seems like virtually every discussion about trans people, particularly trans women, and their genitals, comes from this perspective. Most of the arguments seem to be Don’t worry, cis people, we agree that our genitals are a problem to be fixed! You shouldn’t beat on us if our circumstances prevent us from having done so yet! As opposed to not beating us up, adding to our depression, trying to get us thrown in prison, because doing so is causing harm and oppression where we cause none. There is no pride nor celebration for trans women and their penises, even when they are loved.
G,
I agree. My post is explicitly centered around the fears of a subset of cis women, and it is from the perspective of trans women whose dysphoria around their genitals is severe. And, yes, you could argue that a post like this feeds the dominant narrative that gender dysphoria has to mean revulsion toward our own bodies. As I alluded to, in the very text that you quoted, some of us do not have dysphoria toward our genitalia (or the dysphoria is minor and manageable, and we choose to live with it rather than risk surgery).
If you would like to have a discussion about that, feel free to write a post toward that, and I will guest-post it for you. Send me e-mail by winnowing the chaff from this one: grace.annamchaff@gmail.com.
However, I think that my post is valuable, and makes important points. I went to some trouble to write it and edit it and work myself up to posting it. So I don’t want to start the followup discussion with, “Yeah, right, fine, but we really should be having this other discussion, the one I want to have.”
So, at least to start, I would like this comment thread to center around this post. Let’s let that discussion proceed, if it’s going to, and once it’s well under way I am happy to start a different, and parallel, discussion on the point you make. Again, I would be pleased to have you write the post to start the discussion that you want to have.
Grace
I am having difficulties understanding why this even is an issue for people. I know it is, I just don’t really understand why. I also wondered if trans men had the same issue and I came across this: http://theartoftransliness.com/post/15853193148/using-the-mens-bathroom
I once had to use a women’s bathroom to change the diapers on my then 6 months old son as the men’s bathroom in that shopping center didn’t have a changing table. The disapproving, hostile looks and scorn and pointed remarks I received made that a pretty uncomfortable experience. That was an exceptional one-time situation for me (I avoided that place in the future and most places have changing tables in men’s room as well or have changing table in a unisex bathroom or in the handicap bathroom). Imagining even worse every time one has to use a public bathroom makes it more clear to me that this isn’t just some trifle issue for trans people.
I was also disappointed to see that it appears that organizations like “Privacy for all students” (I assume they mean for a certain subset of all /snark) have garnered enough signatures to put the California law on letting students use bathroom matching their gender identity to ballot: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/jan/8/california-transgender-bathroom-law-one-step-close/
I don’t really have a comment, other than to say thank you for another well-written post.
As usual, Grace, I am thankful for your posts, and for the courage they show, both in the content and in the clarity of your prose.
Thank you for this wonderful post. It is refreshing to see trans subjectivity centered so uncompromisingly. Of course this doesn’t capture all trans women’s varied experiences–no single piece of writing can. It does capture an experience that is prevalent, important, and thoroughly unconsidered by numerous cis people.
Tamen:
Rejoice! In the next step, they lost. They got enough signatures to require a vetting of every signature, but when that process was finished, they fell short. They can still try other tactics, but this will buy time during which schools will continue to do what two of the largest school districts in the state have been doing for the last ten years, and treating trans student appropriately. And during that time, the sky will not fall, and so they will have a harder time making their point next time, because there will be an easy counterargument: “Yeah, all those dire consequences you folks predicted HAVEN’T HAPPENED.”
I like how Autumn Sandeen put it:
I am reminded of the brilliant and magnificent Coy Mathis decision, in which the judge had to explain to a school district why it was not okay to direct a 6-year-old girl to use a staff bathroom (emphasis added):
As I noted in another thread, race and gender identity are two different things, but as long as we understand that, there are commonalities we can learn from. This is an excellent example of how our experience with mis-handling race can guide us as we learn how not to mis-handle gender. Once upon a time, many white people were profoundly uncomfortable with the idea of sharing a bathroom with black people, and felt free to say so, to try to justify the idea publicly.
Any time one group’s fears are offered as a justification for differential treatment of another group, we should examine matters very, very closely.
Grace
That was good news. Thanks for the update Grace Annam.
So, Ben David wanted to make a contribution to this thread, and I had to spend time deciding how to handle that contribution, and getting out the shovel and disinfectant. My initial impulse was to delete it, for any of many reasons, but that would protect him from any feedback, and would deprive others of the opportunity to understand him better, in his own words.
At the bottom is Ben David’s contribution, in Rot13. You can see it in all its … ah … glory by Rot13ing it again.
Feel free to decipher it, perhaps if
o You think it’s fun to point and laugh at people who describe a difficulty they experience.
o You enjoy watching someone mock at someone who has struggled through difficulty to self-advocate.
o You haven’t got enough sarcasm yet, today.
o You enjoy reading someone who characterizes sometimes-painful lack of bathroom access due to the irrational fear of others as “sensitivities”.
o You are a trans person and worry that you might make it through the day without some transphobia to punch you in the gut … hahaha! Well, okay, we all know that isn’t something which happens, but maybe if you’re worried that your daily intake is low today.
o You would like to see an example of the sort of person who makes the caution behind Footnote 11 necessary.
If you don’t need any of the above in your world, feel free not to Rot13.
Ben David, this is your last contribution to any of my threads. (How Ampersand decides to treat you on the site as a whole is up to him.) These posts, and what goes into them, are clearly beyond your understanding, and I shouldn’t have to spend time handling your leavings.
Grace
—
Ben David:
I do not understand why some women have such a problem with who’s in another bathroom stall. It seems to be that THEY are the ones intruding on someone else’s privacy.
If a trans woman is minding her own business (which of course, in every instance I’ve ever heard about, she is) and locked inside her own stall, then SHE is the one whose privacy is being violated by those who complain about her being there.
Really, how intrusive can people get? I don’t personally regard it as my business what sort of genitals somebody in the next stall may have. Sounds to me like the problem is all of the making of those who are screaming about how “invaded” their privacy has been.
Grace Annam,
I realize this post will likely not be published, but the important thing is that you read it.
You seem to demand unlimited empathy from others with regard to your life circumstances, and you also seem to have no empathy at all for others.
If you don’t get that women in a bathroom – who don’t know you – could reasonably view you as a man dressed in women’s clothes swinging a dick around, then you are as egocentric as it gets. You tell the men in the lives of these women to quit their pearl-clutching.
I grant you, people should leave you alone if you are not aggressive to them. You should be able to wear women’s clothes, men’s clothes, makeup, whatever you want. The problem is that most people DO leave others alone – you seem to be spoiling for a fight, and it is probably based on insecurity. People should leave you alone, but their private thoughts are their own. They can think damn well whatever they please.
Whence comes this notion that men who’d want to ogle or molest women — “mashers,” as I believe they used to be called — are going to go to the effort of dressing in drag and trying to pass as women in ladies’ rooms? I think Avreos has seen too many episodes of “Bosom Buddies.”
My experience with that sort of man (and I have plenty) is that they don’t want to identify with women in ANY way — certainly not by dressing like us, which they would likely consider degrading to their manly dignity.
No one really cares what thoughts women might think about who’s in the bathroom with them. It’s how blatantly plain they make those thoughts — and the nasty comments and complaints to Corporate Headquarters that sometimes go along with them — that creates a problem.
(Grace, this goes without saying, but please feel free to delete this comment if you decide to delete comment 11.)
Obviously. This is a civil rights issue, not a thought-crime issue. Maybe you aren’t aware that accessing everything from bathrooms to, say, emergency medical care is denied to trans people because of the way others react to our bodies. I seriously doubt that Grace, or any other trans woman, is losing sleep over people’s private thoughts. This is about actions.
As far as I know, there is still no documented instance of a man abusing trans-inclusive policies to harass women, let alone of a trans woman attacking another woman in a bathroom. There is no need for men to wear dresses to harass or assault women in bathrooms, or anywhere else. Men are plenty capable of assaulting women in normative clothing, and do so every day–and trans women are some of the likeliest targets. Cis women are in no more danger if they share bathrooms with trans women; trans women are in great danger if they have to use bathrooms with men.
I am absolutely baffled at the idea that a presumably intelligent, intellectually honest person could read the OP and conclude that Grace Annam is “demand[ing] unlimited empathy from others” while “hav[ing] no empathy at all for others.” I guess she should have expressed her recognition of and empathy for the concerns of cis women a couple hundred or a couple thousand times instead of just a couple dozen.
And of course it’s informative that Avreos wrote “…women in a bathroom…” instead of “…other women in a bathroom….” in a comment addressed to Grace. After all, she’s just “a man dressed in women’s clothes swinging a dick around.”
I’m a long-time lurker and maybe 3-4 time commenter. This seems like a good time to say to Grace that I’ve always appreciated your posts and comments here and I’ve benefited a lot from them.
Fetishism transvestisism and cross-dressing are real and much, much more common than transexuality. I don’t think it helps to count people without dysphoria as trans. That’s rather like saying men who enjoy having sex with women, and don’t want to have sex with men, but who identify as gay are gay. It makes no sense.
I know the various distinctions among gender non-conformists are important to you, but they are difficult for the rest of us to figure out. Fetishist transvestites are presumably men and a danger and should be kept out, but non-dysphoric people who identify as women are okay? It also seems odd to say on the one hand it doesn’t matter who’s in the next stall if someone objects to you, but to voriferously object if expected to sit next to a man. My head starts to spin at how involved this all is.
Abbe Faria – are you suggesting that a medical diagnosis is necessary in order to use a bathroom? And presumably a diagnosis that the woman in question can demonstrate to other women who may object to her presence.
If someone identifies as a woman, and is using a bathroom stall for its intended purpose while being respectful of the privacy and safety of other women using the bathroom, then that person should be allowed to use a female bathroom (and she should keep out of male bathrooms). No-one should be required, nor should anyone expect, to be able to ascertain the reasons that that person has for identifying as a woman.
If someone identifies as a man, and is using a bathroom stall for its intended purpose while being respectful of the privacy and safety of other men using the bathroom, then that person should be allowed to use a male bathroom (and he should keep out of female bathrooms). No-one should be required, nor should anyone expect, to be able to ascertain the reasons that that person has for identifying as a woman.
If someone is using a bathroom in a way that is not respectful of the privacy/safety of other bathroom users, then that person should not be in a public bathroom, regardless of their gender or the intended gender of the bathroom users.
Note that none of the above requires any sort of advanced understanding of who is trans and who is not. I agree that sometimes the theoretical discussions on the matter can be confusing, especially for cis persons like myself (and presumably you) who do not have personal experience with the issues. But the issue at stake is not one of theory or of naming genders.
I’m not sure if all of the people posting on this board would agree with the statement that men are a danger and need to be kept out. (Some of them might, though–anyone have thoughts on that?)
I think there are issues of safety, perhaps, but also issues of social acceptance, comfort, and pragmatism: everyone has to go to the bathroom somewhere.
As a cisgendered male, I think it behooves me to be pretty accepting of other people’s need to go. Obviously, I should be comfortable sharing the bathroom with other cis men, but also trans men, and trans women as well. Frankly, if cis women have a need to use the men’s room, I don’t think there’s any cause for me to get upset about that, either.
I don’t think that strict requirements about who goes where are really necessary. For example, while I support the right of trans men to use the men’s room, I think it is perfectly reasonable for them to use the women’s room if they feel they have reason to do so.
It follows, then, that I support the right of cis men to use the women’s room, and I suppose I do–if they(we) feel there is a reason to do so. (For example, if I need to check my hair and there’s no mirror in the men’s room–man, do I hate that. But I’ll knock first.) But, from my perspective, it’s worth acknowledging that I have a bit of privilege when it comes to these matters–not just because cis men usually enjoy freedom from some of the harassment that women and trans people face, but because cis men in line ahead of me tend to be able to use the bathroom much more quickly.
I’m not suggesting anyone should do anything. I would be happy with unisex bathrooms, which is really easy for me to say as I’m a man and am not frightened of women.
But it is obviously very important to some commenters than ‘men’ are excluded and genders are segregated, but I can’t make head nor tail of where or why the line is drawn. You use identification, but presumably cross-dressers have as much to fear as transexuals from male bathrooms.
Rimonim:
Oh, I’ve no intention of deleting Comment 11. I approved it.
Lori Heine:
Yes, though the actions you specify are not my principal concern. Certainly they are something to be concerned about — thinking like that is what got a Federal Air Marshall of my acquaintance told that she had to leave the federal building where she worked and walk 1/4 mile to the local McDonald’s to use the bathrooms there — but they aren’t the thing I, and other trans women, worry about most. We worry about being assaulted, being murdered.
Lee1:
Yes, it’s pretty clear that Avreos is assuming bad faith on my part…
…and conceptualizing me as a man with a penis because I identified myself as a trans woman…
…and conceptualizing it as being all about the clothes…
Viewed from the framework that I am an egocentric asshole who likes to play dress-up as a woman in public for kicks and in order to laugh as I ride, roughshod and sidesaddle, over the fears of women he cares about… viewed from that framework, my post is a cynical rhetorical ploy.
Viewed from the framework that I am a woman with an unfortunate endocrinological history, which I have remedied to the extent that I can, it seems quite normal that I would wear women’s clothes — because I am a woman — and quite normal that I use the women’s bathroom — because I am a woman — and quite normal that I would have sympathy for the fears of other women and try to find ways to articulate that sympathy.
It comes down to whether you think a trans woman is a woman. Clearly, Avreos doesn’t.
Avreos:
No, I told them to go clutch them somewhere else. And yet, you had to go ahead and clutch yours here. Because heaven forbid that there should be the smallest, tiniest corner of the Internet where the fact that you have an opinion doesn’t trump the expressed desire of a woman who thinks she’s in charge of the comment space below her post. But the moderation specs of the poster aren’t important, here. The important thing is…
…that I got to read your opinion.
Lee1:
Thank you! I’m very glad to hear that they’ve been of benefit.
Grace
Yes, you have made the astounding and novel observation that gender identity and gender performance are complicated, and do not fit very well into the gender binary that society enforces. You are not sure where the line is drawn, and quite frankly, I don’t think that anyone is. No matter where a line is drawn, you can argue edge cases.
But wherever the line on who gets to use the bathroom with a skirt on it, fuzzy and circuitous it may be, it should be well inclusive of people who identify as women.
Abbe Faria:
But I didn’t say that it didn’t matter who is in the next stall, did I? Nor did I object vociferously to the thought of unisex bathrooms. I said that trans women, broadly, feel sympathy for cis women who have anxiety about being in a vulnerable position around men, because trans women often have the same anxiety, because we are women.
My objective in this post was to point out commonalities between many trans women and many cis women, commonalities which often get glossed over when some people permit their brains to be hijacked by the thought that that woman over there might have a penis. I was, pretty explicitly, not trying to answer the question, “But how can we police which bathroom people use?”
Because that’s an easy one, and has already been asked and answered here at Alas, at the end of this comment.
Use the bathroom which matches your presentation. If you see misbehavior in the bathroom, report it. “Misbehavior”, in this context, would be activity in a bathroom not related to waste disposal or basic grooming.
Easy! Happy to help. And it works for crossdressers, too, and as you point out, they also need to go to the bathroom and can have reasonable concerns about using the men’s room while dressed.
Trans women didn’t set up this sex-segregated system. We just have to navigate within it. If I were Empress of the World, I would mandate that bathrooms designed for multiple people to use simultaneously have a common sink area and stalls with sturdy doors with bolt locks and no gaps to peer through. And, while we’re at it, they would all have a baby-changing station and vending machine for hygienic necessities in the common area, and adequate hooks and shelf space inside the stalls.
Until then, see above.
Grace
[edited to fix a typo]