Being Trans in Public Bathrooms

Dilemma: I was in an airport and had to pee.

While preparing to board my plane, I braced myself and went to the restrooms. When I arrived I saw two options, the men’s room with a free flow of people entering and leaving and the women’s room with a line of roughly 6 people coming out of it with more likely waiting inside. Thus I’m faced with my usual dilemma in this situation.

My Baseline Bathroom Decision Tree

I’d argue that this is the same decision tree everyone uses. The certainty and percentage of times one lands in each option just differs.

Cisgender men likely spend the least time considering the question and are rarely ever uncertain. When I was living as a man, the only times I remember questioning things were at sketchy dive bars and gas stations in the middle of nowhere. With few rare exceptions, the line at the men’s restroom is usually shorter too.

Cisgender women are significantly less safe anywhere in the world than men, and bathrooms are no exception. At the same time, I know many cis women who use the men’s room when the line is too long at the other options. They may complain about the individual experience of particular venues, but otherwise don’t seem too put off by it.

Everyone else is at risk regardless of where we are.

Damned If I Doo… 💩

Sorry, I couldn’t help myself.

As a trans woman, if I go into the men’s bathroom — which is what I did on this particular trip — I’m confronted by:

• An exponentially worse version of The Male Gaze, which includes predatory leering, disgust, and all kinds of other unpleasantness.
• Overhearing men’s “locker room talk” in a space where they don’t expect anyone outside their group listening.
• Horrible smells and sounds, which are significantly worse than integrated restrooms.
• Urine-splattered seats in every stall.
• People occasionally peeking under/between the gaps in the stall door/dividers when they see women’s shoes and/or painted toenails there.

It’s a terrible experience for me each time, exponentially worse the larger the capacity for the venue is. A stadium or airport is likely the worst.

It’s simultaneously a bit validating to feel such an obvious visceral
“I don’t belong here” sense from it.

That said, I also fear using the women’s bathroom for different reasons.

• Being clocked by a woman who feels threatened by my presence there.
• Being harassed, rejected, or called out by one.
• The unknowns — I’ve never actually tried yet, so there’s probably other potential issues.

I hypothesize this will still be lower risk and far less unpleasant for me. It’s my goal to bolster my courage enough to try using a women’s bathroom in the near future. I’m passing and being treated as a woman more each day now, but I still fear making anyone else uncomfortable or drawing undue attention to myself.

None of this would be necessary if we had more…

All-Gender Bathrooms

All Gender bathrooms are excellent. I don’t see any downside to them that isn’t already an issue with bi-gendered ones. It mostly depends on design, cleaning practices, and the general safety of the venue, which are the same issues we have with separated ones. The best bathrooms I’ve ever used are all just single stalls with full privacy (ceiling-to-floor walls and doors, no gaps, occupied indicators) and a shared sink area outside of them.

And that’s just a pragmatically easier to design (after several years of architecture courses, trust me), cheaper to maintain system. The benefits of including a broader range of human beings is a happy side effect.

Why are Bathrooms Gendered?

The first gender-segregated public restroom on record was a temporary setup at a Parisian ball in 1739 […] The ball’s organizers put a chamber box (essentially a chamber pot in a box with a seat) for men in one room and for women in another. […] Everyone at the ball thought this was sort of a novelty — something sort of eccentric and fun.

Sheila Cavanagh, Queering Bathrooms: Gender, Sexuality, and the Hygienic Imagination

It’s hard to find great quick reference resources about the matter that doesn’t say something weird and inaccurate about trans people, but Why Do We Have Men’s and Women’s Bathrooms Anyway? (Time Magazine) is a decent one if you want to go down a rabbit hole just a little bit without reading a whole book.

Safety?

Today, most people who like the idea of gendered bathrooms is because — frankly — cis men can really fucking suck. Setting aside my own misandry, they’re nearly-always the creepy, rapey, assaulty ones in any context.

Men are responsible for the vast majority of sexual violence in America. According to a 2010 National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey, 90% of perpetrators of sexual violence against women are men. Moreover, when men are victims of sexual assault (an estimated one in 71 men, and one in six boys), 93% reported their abuser was a man. It’s true that women also assault men, but even when victims of all genders are combined, men perpetrate 78% of reported assaults.

Liz Plank, Most perpetrators of sexual violence are men, so why do we call it a women’s issue?

But segregating bathrooms doesn’t actually do anything to prevent this. It’s not like women’s restrooms have security guards or any other way to stop a shitty man from going in and doing whatever they’re going to do. If anything, having that space potentially shared with other (decent) men could likely improve safety for non-men.

Reference Links:

• Perpetrators of Sexual Violence: Statistics — RAINN
• Safety and Privacy in Public Restrooms and Other Gendered Facilities — UCLA
• Sexual Assault Stats — NSVRC

Conclusion

I find all this discomfort, confusion, and risk unnecessary. I believe we’d all behave better if we integrated our bathrooms the way all our homes and many businesses already do. I know I’d personally feel much safer.