Written by:
Dylan Vade
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this Issue of Curve:
Vol. 13#3
Public restrooms. Rather mundane. Not much to think about — unless one is transgendered, genderqueer, a butch woman, a feminine man, or otherwise does not subscribe to rigid gender norms. Then, going to the bathroom in public becomes a daily struggle.
When I started taking hormones and looking more ambiguously gendered, no one wanted me in “their” restroom. No matter what choice I made, I annoyed someone — and that person made sure I knew. People stared at me and told me I was in the wrong restroom. Some ran out as soon as they saw me. I was lucky that these incidents didn’t lead to violence.
Bathrooms are places of heightened gender policing. Anyone who is not obviously feminine is suspect in the women’s room; anyone who is not obviously masculine is suspect in the men’s room. To be honest, I don’t understand why only people of virtually identical genders can share a restroom area. What I do know is that people who don’t fit rigid gender norms get routinely harassed in bathrooms, and almost every gender nonconforming person I know has had difficulty finding safe bathroom access. For many, even in San Francisco, going to the bathroom is literally dangerous.
According to a San Francisco Human Rights Commission (SF-HRC) survey, experiences in gender-segregated bathrooms range from harassment to violence to getting arrested and fired. A butch woman wrote about using men’s and women’s restrooms: “Women jump out of their shoes; I get harassed by the guys.” To avoid attacks, another butch woman saves going to the restroom for certain moments, such as the most interesting parts of movies (bathrooms are emptiest then). Often, harassment leads to violence: An FTM said, “I have been slapped, pushed and dragged out by security guards.” Some people avoid public restrooms altogether. One genderqueer person wrote, “I often ‘hold’ it.” Another person keeps a bucket in his car.
These are not isolated incidents; most respondents said they run into problems “80 percent of the time” or “This is a problem every day.” At San Francisco’s Transgender Law Center (TLC), I see these cases every week. Segregated public bathrooms threaten people’s safety, job security and access to education. They also tell us every day, several times a day, that the only viable gender options are female and male.
As a gender-variant kid, I grew up thinking I was a freak. Sometimes I expressed my gender. Sometimes I didn’t. Sometimes I felt that I had a secret I couldn’t share with anyone, or even articulate, having no language and no role models. It didn’t help that I lived in a world that at each turn bombarded me with the supposed natural order of things, the binary gender system in which everyone is assigned female or male, in which intersex people are forcibly assigned gender by surgery.
In actuality, male and female are just two of an infinite number of options. I believe in a gender galaxy — an infinite number of different beautiful genders. Among trans people, as among nontrans people, there are femme women, girly-girls, butch women, andro women, sporty women, sissy boys, butch boys, andro men, fairies, and many more. And there are many ways to be neither female nor male. Some of us combine female and male; some of us fall completely outside that conception. Some of us have the same gender all our lives, and some of us change it daily.
Often I hear gender diversity described as a line or a spectrum. This image doesn’t work for me; a line reinforces two opposite poles, female and male. I’m a not-so-masculine FTM. I’m not butch; however, I identify as male (whatever that means). Where do I fall on this line? What about a butch woman or a sissy boy? A fierce femme with drag-queen tendencies?
What are we doing to ensure that everyone in the gender galaxy has a safe place to go to the restroom? Last fall, Jody Marksamer, 10 fabulous speakers and the TLC presented a panel at the SF-HRC LGBT Advisory Committee, in which we talked about the fact that many people have no safe place to go to the restroom. The Advisory Committee is now looking at the feasibility of requiring that all public single-person restrooms in San Francisco be gender neutral, and those of us advocating for these changes are also working with organizations who are willing to pilot multiple-person gender-neutral bathrooms. To involve more community members, especially those affected by lack of safe bathroom access, Jody Marksamer, Danny Kirchoff and I started a community direct-action group: People in Search of Safe Restrooms (PISSR). We’re working on changing San Francisco city policy through the SF-HRC, planning actions and researching existing gender-neutral bathrooms.
We want to change the bathroom landscape and create bathrooms safe for everyone.
Gender-neutral bathrooms are not about erasing gender or making everything gender neutral. Personally, I’m rather attached to my gender. Gender-neutral bathrooms are about celebrating gender. Gender-neutral bathrooms are about creating a safe space for all genders. Gender-neutral bathrooms are a logistical means to allow everyone in the gender galaxy to safely go to the restroom.
To find out more about PISSR, go to http://www.pissr.org
e-mail info@transgenderlawcenter.org or call (415) 865-5619. |
