Occupied
In the first of a series of articles written for Pi across the course of LGBT History Month, Allan recounts the experience of using public toilets as a transgender person.
This is an open letter of apology to the lady I scared out of the women’s restroom the other day.
When I first began socially transitioning as a man, nothing could have prepared me for the treacherous ordeal that was my first trip to a men’s public restroom. I had been forewarned of the horrors, of course. I braced myself for the severe stench of ammonia, the liquefied clumps of wet tissue strewn about the floors; I knew that I had to avoid any accidental eye contact with another gentleman at all costs. I had mentally rehearsed my visit to the lavatory more than once: walk in resolutely, making a bee-line for the stalls before anyone could get a good look at me. Do my business. Get out. Wash my hands for no more than 20 seconds (my mind flinched at the thought) and then haphazardly wipe my hands on my trousers instead of using the hand-dryer right next to the sink. Every detail had to be executed perfectly else I incur judging glares that would chase me out of the bathroom. I fretted over which way my feet pointed in the stall, how many pumps of soap to use, what defence to give of my presence there if someone looked at me for a second too long.
No matter how many uneventful trips to the bathroom I’d had, nothing could quell the pangs of anxiety that seemed to seize my gut and twist it every time I realised I needed the restroom. It didn’t help that one particular trip had resulted in a security guard shouting “LADY GET OUT, LADY GET OUT, LADY GET OUT” from across the room, drawing the eyes of all twenty guys who had been queuing at the time. My covert operation went up in flames.
So, the next time I needed the restroom, I drew up a different kind of plan. While my friends were absorbed in conversation, I quietly slipped away, ducking swiftly to the women’s restroom before anyone could see which door I had gone through. It was the ‘wrong’ restroom to use, sure, but after my previous encounter, I was starting to wonder whether there was a ‘right’ restroom for me at all. At least I wouldn’t stand out in a room of men who were all a head taller than me.
I walked across the cafe with an exaggerated swagger; I always thought that a swinging, space-consuming gait that screamed of rugged masculinity would compensate for my pocket-sized build. As soon as I stepped into the women’s restroom, however, I softened. I took my hands out of my pockets and let my shoulders slump into docile curves. My strides shrunk into shy steps, so that I would take up less space. I had to exude feminine softness to justify - no, to apologise - for my being there. What felt like thousands of eyes staring into the back of my head rolled onto me like spotlights, freezing me to the spot. Every trip to the bathroom requires a different kind of performance.
I was just finishing washing my hands when a woman walked in. She’d been distracted by something on her phone, so it wasn’t until she was already well into the lavatory that she looked up and caught a glance of my face. A startled gasp. Her phone retreated frightfully into her purse. She backed right out of the bathroom and seemed to hover at the entrance, doing a double, triple take at the sign on the door. Then, having finally reassured herself that she was in the right place, she stepped back in, before turning to regard me with a hostile, almost acidic gaze. I averted my face in humiliation. I hastily wiped my hands on my jeans. Then, I rushed out.
Since when had shame become the default state for going to the bathroom? Since when did every gesture, every flicker of the eyes, become an appeal for my right to occupy a public space? “We tolerate you, but you shouldn’t be in our bathrooms,” they say. “We tolerate you, but we don’t want to see you in our spaces,” they say. What they mean to say is: “We tolerate you, but we have no space for you here. So, GET OUT.”
The transgender experience is one of shrinking. We are told that modern society accepts us, but never that there is a space that belongs to us. The “good” transgender person is the one who tucks themselves neatly out of sight, because occupying any volume of cisgendered people’s space is an infringement of such and a discomfort for them. We are a people lost to the negative spaces of the gendered WC sign, always too masculine for the women’s restroom and too feminine for the men’s, always scrutinised through a rigid gender binary that does not give. Anyone who does not exist as a polarity of the traditional model of the gender spectrum, or, indeed, anyone who exists outside of the spectrum entirely, is left hesitating between which door they are allowed to walk through - if they are not altogether barred from entering. With my poor, tottering mimicry of a masculine saunter or else my self-misgendering gait of femininity, I too must pay a subscription fee to an archaic gender binary before I am allowed to enter a gender-specific facility.
The campaign for equitable and inclusive facilities is still ongoing at large. UCL currently has 52 spaces designated as gender-neutral restrooms, serving approximately 42,000 students and 13,000 staff members. That comes out to around one gender-neutral bathroom for every 1096 people. Meanwhile, the amount of gendered bathroom facilities come up to around 140. It is clear that more needs to be done.
The fight for inclusive spaces is often confused with the fight for exclusive spaces; the shadow of suspicion always hangs above us, ready to tear us down for wanting to ‘hoard’ public spaces for ourselves. I am not asking for a restroom with a sign readily displaying “TRANS-EXCLUSIVE”, so that people might feel it is their business to know whether or not I am transgender. I simply want to use the bathroom without having to meticulously calculate my entrance, stay, and departure with acute anxiety.
So, until the inclusivity of transgender people in public spaces becomes the norm; until gender-neutral facilities have been implemented at a community-wide, nation-wide, global-wide scale; until my gender presentation warrants no judgement from anyone occupying the same gender-specific space as I am; this is an open letter of apology to the lady I scared out of the women’s restroom.
This series of articles was curated and edited by Jess Fairchild. Artwork for the series created by Vera Liu.