Gender identity and bathrooms

Factual Questions
21

Some places have laws designating genders for specific bathrooms. In most cases, however, the police rely upon the catch-all of “disturbing the peace,” which can pretty much be employed to fit any situation.

I have never heard of a legitimate transgender (BTW, it’s “transgender”, folks, not “transgenders”; nor are we “a transgender”) person in real life going into the ladies room presenting male. I’m sure it happens, but it’s vanishingly rare. I don’t know of anyone in my community who wouldn’t react with horror over such a thing.

The difficulty in enforcing any “disturbing the peace” ordinance comes about when the transgender person has all female ID. Such as me, for instance. Even my Social Security and passport information says “female.” So what would a court really do? “So officer, a person went into the ladies room, did their business, washed their hands, and walked out - and you arrested them, even though they were presenting as a female, had female ID, and there was no evidence of any private parts being exposed to anyone else?” My best friend, a fire-breathing transgender attorney, would have a field day with that lawsuit.

So what if you have no legal ID which says “female?” Some of us, especially when new, have “carry letters” from our psychologists and/or physicians stating that we have been diagnosed transgender, we are not up to any funny business (presumably), and giving 24-hour contact information for the doctor. Often the police will be satisfied with that. But you can always catch a cop on a bad day. Or a bad cop.

Almost always, it never gets as far as the police. The first line of outrage is the cisgender women themselves who may be offended or scared - I’ve had to calm them down when I’ve taken someone who doesn’t “pass” into the rest room on a couple of occasions. The next line of outrage is the establishment manager - again, typically they won’t call the cops if everyone is reasonable, although they can ban you from ever coming in.

It’s getting better, in the United States. Each year it’s less and less an issue. Each year it seems the number of horror stories of transgender women abused and beaten for using the bathroom in accordance with their gender presentation declines. So I keep fighting, every year, until it’s not an issue any more.

22

Remember L.A. Law with their unisex office bathroom? I always thought it was used for plot purposes – the possibilities of who/what was overhearing in another stall when gossiping were doubled.

23

I can think of a pretty good reason for gendered bathrooms, and that is safety. We had more or less unisex bathrooms in college too, but would many women feel comfortable using a unisex toilet at a pro (American or otherwise) football game? Even I don’t feel comfortable around that many drunk dumbasses.

Of course I am not disputing the right of trans people to use the bathroom of their gender.

24

Please understand that I respect you in many ways and you assuredly have some valid reasons for thinking the way that you do. However, I really and truly do not get it and and I am not trying to play dumb.

Here is the way that I look at it:

  1. It is a bathroom meant for specific purposes, none of which are sexual and many of which are contrary to that.

  2. I have had no psychological trauma when I have used a women’s restroom either through design or necessity even if there were women there at the time like the college or nightclub examples I gave earlier. I don’t think anyone else did either. Putting a sign on the door that reads Males or Females (or even some other cute version of that for some restaurants) doesn’t change the fact that it is just a room where people poop and pee in their own enclosed space.

  3. It is just a room with plumbing for doing a necessary biological function. I understand that most people want privacy when they are semi-exposed but that is what stalls and partitions are for.

  4. What about unisex bathrooms for everyone with separate stalls? That seems to be the easiest solution that skips above the whole problem entirely?

Why is there some special focus on public restrooms? I share my house with my two daughters. There is no need to segregate bathrooms by sex/gender in my house because we just take turns just like people do in public unisex bathrooms and it creates no problems.

Granted, this is just the male perspective. I realize the whole world is my urinal and I treat it as such so I may not be as in tune with some finer sensibilities of others.

25

I confess to being confused. Your first two sentences sound like you’re taking an oppositional position in some way to what I said, but I see nothing to disagree with? :confused:

26

I might have misread you but I was referring to your last paragraph mostly. There are several notable complaints/lawsuits in the U.S. because of transgender people that want to use one that is contrary to their chromosomal sex and have met opposition because of it. I don’t understand why that would be an issue at all from one side or the other. As long as you can get your business done, that is those rooms are for and no damage is done as long as they meet that purpose at least in my view. I would personally just go for all unisex bathrooms with better stalls than are typical in the U.S. but some people make a political or personal issue out of it.

The point where we may disagree (or maybe not) is why that is an issue to some transexual people (or anyone really) in the first place as long as the facilities serve the purpose they are intended to. In my view, gender and sexual politics has absolutely nothing to do with basic infrastructure to support basic biological processes.

27

Are you asking why don’t transgender people just use the bathroom which corresponds to their genetic sex? If that is the question, the answer is twofold. First, there are incredible gender-specific taboos and social pressures to use the bathroom which corresponds to your gender. If I’m female, why should I be using the men’s room in a situation where there are no unisex bathrooms? Why shouldn’t I be using what all the other women are?

The second issue is one of potential violence. Transgender women who use the men’s room while presenting as female frequently suffer verbal abuse and harassment, and can suffer physical abuse, assault and battery, even rape. If a transgender woman uses the women’s room and is “made,” most likely the worst thing which can happen is an arrest for “disturbing the peace.”

How real is harassment and violence in the men’s room for transgender women forced to use it when they are presenting female? Pretty real. I’ve witnessed it first-hand as a third party. And I have a friend with a facial scar and an artificial tooth, replacing the one knocked out when she was forced to use a men’s room at a restaurant. It went alright until someone in the men’s room punched her from behind at the sink, calling her a “fucking fairy,” sending her into the taps. The manager’s reaction - the same guy who insisted she use the men’s room - was “served you right.” :rolleyes:

28

In Thailand, several schools tried third-sex bathrooms. Here’s a story about one. But for whatever reason, they never caught on.

I often see transvestites in Thai men’s rooms but never at the urinal. They always use the booths.

29

Fair enough. I have no experience with that. My only personal experience with transgender people was in New Orleans during the 90’s. They basically picked and chose what they wanted to do without many (or any threats) but I can see how that would be a problem in parts of the country.

However, I still see restrooms just as basic infrastructure that is extremely arbitrary. Large events just have Port-a-Potties dropped off for everyone to use. Outside of some bar scenes, I don’t think many people really care what facilities anyone uses to do their business. There is certainly no reason to make it a political matter. The whole thing can be solved easily just with gender neutral bathrooms built for anyone from handicapped people to people with small children. Many places like airports already have them.

My point isn’t that transgendered people don’t have some discrimination problems. I am sure that they do. It is just that blaming any of the problem on a bathroom door placard probably isn’t the best way to address the root cause and probably causes some needless backlash over an easily solvable problem.

30

I think you mean Ally McBeal (which was set in Boston).

And, yes, it was a plot device. Just like the non-unisex bathrooms in other shows are places for the menfolk to discuss their problems with the ladies outside or the womenfolk to have a cry out of sight of the men waiting outside.

31

God damn, my eyes are going.

I thought the title of this thread said Gender Identity and Threesomes.:smack::(:o

32

“Lavatory” is translation into Latin for “washroom”. I suppose you wash in there (I hope you do) but that is not the primary purpose is it?

33

Spanish law makes it a requirement for workplaces with workers of both sexes (our law says sexes; the sociological meaning of “gender” is not a common concept here) to have separate bathrooms and, if applicable, dressing rooms; a different law, also at the national level, makes the same requirement for “public houses” (bars, restaurants etc). There’s a growing trend to not do so and instead provide a larger, single bathroom, with all stalls and no urinaries, or to relabel the already-existing rooms as “unisex” and remove the urinaries (if any) in the former gent’s. Two common factors are space (if your bar is the general size and shape of a tram wagon, you don’t want to dedicate half of it to bathrooms - better a single accesible room than two closets) and sex-representation inequality (at one of my brother’s jobs, he was one of five men working in a 200-people office).

That it makes things easier for transgenders and transvestites is nice (I expect they appreciate being able to use the first available bathroom as much as I do), but doesn’t even cross most people’s list of motivations.

34

Anyone who has trouble with unisex bathrooms would have their head explode at a kd lang concert.

35

What I don’t understand is, don’t they share at home? Do people of the other gender have cooties, but only if not living under the same roof? I’m reasonably sure that dude at work (unisex rooms) who leads people to avoid the room he’s used and leave it ajar doesn’t smell any better at home, yet his family is probably alive… probably.

36

Here’s a perfect example of being blinded by the obvious.

Bathrooms in homes are almost always used by only one person at a time. On the other hand, the vast majority of public bathrooms are specifically designed to allow several people in the room at the same time.

37

If we’re dealing with hypothetical future scenarios of unisex bathrooms then I guess there’s a point, but the thread was directed at the harsh reality of now. Until there are these universal unisex bathrooms, it’s going to be a problem we (meaning me and mine) have to deal with.

38

That is what people are commenting against though. I have shared bathrooms and even houses with many people, both male and female. I don’t want to be too coarse about it, but it isn’t like you are dropping a load with a group of strangers as performance art. When is the last time that you really had to take an epic pee or a poop in a public place in front of random strangers with no privacy?

I can honestly say that has never happened to me in a public restroom and I assume it is true for the vast majority of the people. Privacy already exists for almost all public restrooms whether you are male or female but people seem to be using that to hint at some deeper problem even though it isn’t the real source of contention.

Everything you are commenting on is completely arbitrary and situation dependent. Women that claim they can’t pee in anything other than pristine marble settings suddenly can when they get out in the woods on a hiking trip and really need to go. I have seen it happen many times. They can find a tree as fast as any mammal when the need arises.

There isn’t anything sexual about basic biological functions and they are completely context dependent. When people complain about the current situation, that isn’t what they really mean. They are trying to complain about something more obscure and deeper to their thought processes. Suitable lavatories for everyone is an easy problem to solve but I doubt that is what some people are really hinting at.

39

We had an integrated locker room in my dorm. Only on our wing, which was “special”. There was never any issue with it whatsoever. But we had a particular level of trust among the residents - I certainly wouldn’t have wanted to share a locker room with some of the oafs on the other wings.

40

Ah, maybe I’m blinded by architecture. The immense majority of public bathrooms in Spain do not allow several people in the room at the same time: when I say “stalls” speaking of Spanish bathrooms, they often aren’t actual stalls, they’re individual rooms which open into a general area containing the washbasins. Then again, the same applies to the ladies’ in my current employer’s British locations (I haven’t visited the gents’); the Swedish location’s bathrooms are individual rooms. The restaurant in the Swedish industrial area has a dozen bathrooms, all individual rooms: the immense majority are labeled unisex and contain a throne and washbasin, the very few labeled with only a man-picture contain a urinary and washbasin.

But even when the stalls are actual stalls and so long as there aren’t urinaries in a common area, any tasks involving partial nudity take place in a location where you can’t be seen by others.