Believe it or not, I am a guy who likes to leave my house from time to time. Occasionally I'll be out, you know, people-watching in the local park, shopping downtown, or cruising around and making frequent stops at the tiny indie cafe in my gentrifying Brooklyn neighborhood, inhaling pints of coffee on the hour. Sometimes I'll even drink water. Eventually the time comes when my bladder has successfully been filled and I'll have to, you know, empty it. I'll find the nearest public restroom and use it. As long as there's a stall with a door, of course.
As a "transitioned" transsexual man, it's easy for me. Again, as long as there is a stall involved. I can't stress that enough. This man needs a stall. Because he sits to pee. Because he still has a vagina.
A few weeks ago I received a message in my inbox from a concerned parent of a newly recognized transgender child. In the email was information on a petition he started to allow his trans child use of a safe bathroom at school. His kid, an elementary school student in coastal Georgia, had recently expressed that he didn't identify with the gender he was assigned at birth (female) and now wished to attend school and live life in every capacity as a boy. The parents spoke with the school about the details around what it means to have a trans child in their school system and the things that this would affect -- bathroom usage, gym class changing areas, correct pronoun use. The school was supportive and OK with everything until the child actually wanted to use the restroom. He was only allowed to use the girls room, therefore going against the main point that was understood and agreed upon before school was back in session. The parents came to the school to speak with the principal, and it spiraled out of control, resulting in the principal threatening to call CPS.
This story has gotten a lot of press -- negative, positive and the usual judgmental, hiding-behind-an-avatar, online-comment flame-wars. Not because of the child per se, but because both parents... wait for it... are female-to-male (FTM) trans people. People are assuming that the parents are forcing their child to be trans, or that their home life is making it an almost too safe space for this child to feel that he was "born in the wrong body." Because he is growing up around two parents who are queer, male-identified trans people, is this affecting his own feelings of gender and the way he wants to live his grade-school life and beyond?
I wish I could tell this kid it gets better.
This family's story triggered a lot of feelings with regard to my own bathroom challenges. Before I transitioned in my 20s and still to this day, public restrooms remain a small terror for me. It's a small terror I'm able to mask with the outward appearance of a calm and collected man simply going to use the restroom. Pre-transition, when I would walk into the women's restroom, ladies would look at me terrified, tell me I was in the wrong bathroom, or scream "Get out! This isn't the men's room!" I was a male-appearing kid and never thought I was doing anything wrong until I realized I actually was doing something wrong. My sheer existence in that specific public space was making the masses uncomfortable, and for years I felt like I was walking on eggshells when I was just trying to live my life. Or pee.
Now, as an adult, using public men's rooms has gone from a newfound glory to an inspiration for feelings of constant paranoia. It doesn't matter where I am -- it could be at the SoHo Bloomingdale's bathroom or at a truck stop in middle America -- there is still that sense of dread. I'm comfortable with the "plumbing" I was born with and don't want to change it, and I choose to not use a "stand-to-pee" contraption, but the flip side to that is I can't use a urinal and have to use a stall. Many times there is just one lone stall and the door has been ripped off, or it's out of order. Sometimes I have to visit three fast-food places just to find a bathroom with a working stall. Even then, when I'm halfway there, comfortable in the stall and ready to let the urine fly, I am convinced that the sound of the stream hitting the toilet bowl water sounds drastically different from the sound of pee exiting a penis and hitting the toilet water, and that the bathroom police await my exit so that they can tell me I'm in the wrong place and to tell me that they know my body is different from theirs, that they know my past and what's in my pants. And that it actually matters.
The story about the trans kid in the small Georgia town is not for me to judge. From a young age I felt that my gender didn't match the one I was assigned at birth, and if I had had resources like the Internet, the language to tell adults how I felt inside, or any sort of trans person to look up to when I was an elementary school student, my social transition would have started decades before it actually did. Having two trans parents could be a gift for this child. He could grow up never having to experience urine anxiety in his adult years. He could grow up with the ability to pee in peace.
Follow Amos Mac on Twitter: www.twitter.com/amosmacphotos
Rebecca Juro: Why Transgender Identity Matters
may we all just pee in peace!
If you're afraid of making a noise just flush it while you'r peeing.
I didn't realize most men peed in the urinal. I would feel weird wipping out my private parts in front of other people...but maybe men are different that way...
And don't worry about the sound of your pee. Plenty of cissexual men pee sitting down, especially when they're also taking a crap. If anything you do will out you, it'll be the nervous look on your face.
Like many people, I never thought about the fear and problems that even such a usually normal and uneventfull moment could create for the transgender community.
It made me think about the unisex bathroom in Ally Mc Beal, and the fact that people were surprised by them. I always thought it was the greatest idea, and your post shows that it should be the norm, and not the xception.
In fact, a couple years before I actually transitioned, I walked into a male restroom, wearing black silk slacks, black silk blouse, no breast enhancements. As I did my business, there was a loud knock on the door and an authoritative "Come out of there." I said "just a second" as I put myself back in order, fearing that I was going to be attacked. The "authoritative voice" commanded a second time that I come out of the stall.
When I opened the door, it was clear how I should answer. A Maryland State Trooper was standing there. I showed him my ID card as he escorted me out, and I said that as long as the gender marker on my ID said M, I had to use the male restroom. There was nothing he could do. I was obeying the law.
But he scurried back inside with a smirk, to tell the guys in the men's room the story ...
In my office we had a person transition from male to female, and it really was a non-event EXCEPT for the women who panicked at the thought of a "man" in their bathroom. Eventually this person was forced to use a restroom on a different floor. To this day I still can't understand the silliness behind that situation.
Speaking specifically to your situation, Amos, rest assured there is nothing odd about a man always wanting to use a stall (and never a urinal). I have a really good friend is male that never uses a urinal in a public restroom - it's not that he has issues with urinals, or privacy, or public restrooms; it's just always his habit to use a stall.
I wish we as a society could get over some of our weird hangups like this one. What difference does it make which piece of equipment a person uses to do their business in a restroom?
For women there is this constant barrage that an MTF is really a rapist (search Google and you'll find an unusual number of stories on laws that were attempted to be created that forced individuals to use the washroom based on their ID so there would be less rapes and would make the washrooms safer)