This is a topic always assured to get a variety of responses.
Should transgendered people use toilets marked for the sex they were born as, or the sex they feel like they are, regardless of anatomy?
Camp #1: If they were born with a peen, use the male bathroom! Vag, female! It's that simple! Male has penis, female has vagina! What is so difficult to understand?!
Camp #2: It's not about anatomy. If they feel like they're female, use the female toilets, and vice versa!
Camp #3: Post-op or pre-op? They should use the toilets with which their existing body parts coincide!
Camp Me: While I do agree with camp #2 within the existing framework, this is just another reason for the abolishment of gendered bathrooms altogether. I mean, what of people who have both peen and vag? Or those who don't identify as any particular gender?
Gay clubs (and some 'alternative' ones) that I've been to have, for all intents and purposes, unisex bathrooms, and yeah, they're filthy (as are any bathrooms where large numbers of drunk people pee/vomit), but otherwise, it works out fine. I see no reason why 'gender' should be such an important and divisive category for one to fall into.
I do recognise the potential threats here, though. It is easier for a man to go into a unisex bathroom and harass a girl, then come out as if nothing has happened, with no one being any the wiser, which is not the case with gendered bathrooms. Perhaps security cameras could be installed as a precaution.
I'm all for an androgynous society, that would be my ideal world.
Should transgendered people use toilets marked for the sex they were born as, or the sex they feel like they are, regardless of anatomy?
Camp #1: If they were born with a peen, use the male bathroom! Vag, female! It's that simple! Male has penis, female has vagina! What is so difficult to understand?!
Camp #2: It's not about anatomy. If they feel like they're female, use the female toilets, and vice versa!
Camp #3: Post-op or pre-op? They should use the toilets with which their existing body parts coincide!
Camp Me: While I do agree with camp #2 within the existing framework, this is just another reason for the abolishment of gendered bathrooms altogether. I mean, what of people who have both peen and vag? Or those who don't identify as any particular gender?
Gay clubs (and some 'alternative' ones) that I've been to have, for all intents and purposes, unisex bathrooms, and yeah, they're filthy (as are any bathrooms where large numbers of drunk people pee/vomit), but otherwise, it works out fine. I see no reason why 'gender' should be such an important and divisive category for one to fall into.
I do recognise the potential threats here, though. It is easier for a man to go into a unisex bathroom and harass a girl, then come out as if nothing has happened, with no one being any the wiser, which is not the case with gendered bathrooms. Perhaps security cameras could be installed as a precaution.
I'm all for an androgynous society, that would be my ideal world.
do the toilets really need to be politically correct? as a male with a penis I really do not wish to queue for the bathroom because there is only x2 unisex cubicles.
ReplyDeleteMaybe its just me but we are either man and woman, as you mentioned you cannot have both genitally!
If you dress like a woman, look like a woman but was born with a penis (or its taped to the leg) for all intensive purposes you can go to the ladies bathrooms and sit to pee.
Why not?
ReplyDeleteNobody wishes to queue for a bathroom, but that's just how it is. It's not like there'll be any less cubicles, there would be more, if anything.
Also, I think I said you CAN have both genitally, they're called hermaphrodites.
And you know, I don't have a problem with a biological male who identifies as female using a female bathroom, but lots of people do.
Oh how do they pee? (erase)
ReplyDeletenever mind probably not best for me to think about as i need to get some sleep. interesting stuff/post!
Lol, I have no idea how they pee, regrettably. But I'm scared to google it.
ReplyDeleteI'm not liking the security cameras in bathrooms idea very much... And I'd rather keep gendered bathrooms, but I do know where you're coming from.
ReplyDeleteA trans student at our university got assaulted in a bathroom on campus. I think they were a transguy, [I can't remember exactly - it may have been the other way around] but whenever a unisex bathroom wasn't available, he'd use the female washroom because he felt safer. But someone still assaulted him.
ReplyDeleteOur gay bar is renovating to make the bathroom unisex, and several co-ed dorms on campus have a communal, shared, bathroom. It works just fine.
I wrote on this a long time ago, actually.
http://philenotfound.blogspot.com/2010/09/gender-segregation-in-public-spaces.html
Maybe we should just incorporate a free for all bathroom. If you don't care about peeing while there are men and women or because making a gender choice in terms of male bathrooms and female bathrooms makes you uncomfortable, then you can just go in where everyone is welcomed..
ReplyDeleteI do agree that once you have had a surgery, if you take that route, you should be able to officially pee in the corresponding facility.
I see what you mean and I'm all for unisex, but I don't think it's that simple. We have a lot of social constructions and rituals related to restrooms. It's just easy to see why a lot of people have a problem with it.
ReplyDeleteStories; Oh, I don't mind. Perhaps the cameras could just view the bathroom, and not inside the actual cubicles.
ReplyDeleteBags; That's terrible. What, someone followed him in there and assaulted him?
Kayla; I wouldn't have a problem with that. Baby steps, why not.
Vic; None we couldn't live without. I don't really see why anybody has a problem with it.. I mean, I do, but I don't think they're valid reasons.
In Japan nobody complains if a woman enters the men's toilet. That is quite common when the women's toilet is crowded. But there may be some commotion otherwise!
ReplyDeleteI like the idea of a unisex toilet but I think most women wouldn't like it.
In the rush hour, some train cars are women-only.
Transgendered people should use the men's toilet unless they look like women. In that case they could use the women's toilet... hopefully! Men never complain. It is the women who may complain.
BUT in straight clubs, and I say straight clubs, meaning that all clubs not specifically labelled as gay tend to be interpreted as straight clubs, no matter how right/wrong that is, in those clubs, the men's washroom is SO MUCH MORE DISGUSTING.
ReplyDeleteIn fact there was a study done, that basically stated straight men are typically dirtier than gay men/women and straight women. And by a large margin, like these men were tracking filth into their own homes.
Also, I don't trust men. Ignoring my own issues, I don't want to be alone or be followed into the washroom with men, especially drunk men.