For as long as I have been actively engaged in things trans, I have read and heard quite a bit about The Bathroom and The Trans.
And it’s scary, neh?
I think there has been some part of my brain over the last two years of using the bathroom appropriate to my gender that has been prepared to deal with a confrontation. The fact is, and it is a fact, there are a lot of trans people who have to deal with confrontations related to using the bathroom. It seems to be the primary source of sturm und drang for trans people and those who want us to never use the bathroom. But the truth for me is that I have never been accosted or harassed whilst peeing or whilst washing my hands.
Does that make me lucky?
Prior to my name change, and that is prior to getting an ID card with the letter F on it which would seem to signify to anyone who might possibly looked at it that the appropriate restroom for me would be the one with the picture of the stick figure in a skirt (could be a kilt, couldn’t it?), I carried a letter from my therapist which noted that I was currently in treatment for GD and therefore not just some random guy playing dress up so he could hear women peeing or rape them. So when they cops or security were inevitably called, I could whip said letter from my purse and be all like
In your face, I’m trans, bitches!
(or something less confrontational)
And they would politely leave me alone? I kind of suspected the letter might keep me from some horrid punishment, but it really was more a security blanket for me, a thing that said that someone said it was okay for me to pee in the women’s room. And I showed that letter to all of no people.
None. Not a soul ever saw the thing. Nor has a single person ever asked to see my ID.
Now don’t you use the P word (ya know – pass), because I don’t like it and I don’t do it. I exist and I am.
Maybe it’s because of my attitude that I don’t have issues or maybe it’s because I’m lucky to have not come across someone who has wanted to make an issue of me and it could still happen.
There is that part of my brain that is still prepared just a little to be confronted – J’accuse! …or more like the end of Invasion of the Body Snatchers where Donald Sutherland does that horrible open mouthed screamy pointy thing. I have no worries of ultimate vindication, but in between the horrid moment of being accosted and having to vindicate myself, I would have to have that experience.
No one should have to have it. It shouldn’t be an issue. Even not having had an issue, I still have the fear of one and that is an issue in and of itself.
We should all just be able to pee in peace.
Reasonably Noble 