Over the past couple weeks, tons of big, buff, traditionally masculine, conventionally attractive transgender men have posted selfies in women’s restrooms with the caption “Do you want me in the bathroom with your wife?” As a small, chubby, not conventionally attractive transgender man who is sick of binary respectability politics (“passing”), transmisogyny and non-binary erasure in the transgender community, I would like to break down what’s wrong with this selfie crusade against anti-trans bathroom legislation.
First of all, we need to get rid of the idea that any one person “belongs” in a certain bathroom based on gender or sex whatsoever. What happens in bathrooms? You go into a stall with a lock (essentially a mini room) within that room, where you are simply going to do your “business,” and then you wash your hands and leave. I don’t know about you but I do not strip down naked to use the restroom, and even if I did, I’m in the stall...you know...where no one can see me or my genitals. Concerns over sexual interactions in bathrooms, assault, etc. are moot because sex is not just heterosexual and assault or sexual assault is not just heterosexual. Trying to uphold gendered separation of bathrooms continues to perpetuate heteronormativity and also the false assumption that all domestic or sexual abuse or violence happens between two people of different but binary genders. In fact, if we didn’t shame men and women so much about not seeing the other gender undressed, then maybe we wouldn’t also have such a hypersexualized and repressed country.
Furthermore, not all trans men (or trans women) express their gender identity in traditional ways. Isn’t the point about fighting anti-trans violence to break down and dismantle traditional gender roles and expectations, not to perpetuate them? These “selfie protests” are perpetuating the idea that in order to “belong” in the women’s bathroom, you can’t look traditionally masculine at all. But, what if someone who expresses their gender traditionally masculine still identifies as a woman or feminine, and feels safest inside of the women’s restroom? Well, then they belong in the women’s restroom. These selfies perpetuate the idea that someone who “looks” like a man does not belong in the women’s restroom which is also extremely transmisogynistic. Not all trans women are traditionally feminine, the same way that not all cis women are traditionally feminine.
Additionally, not every person identifies as man or woman. Male or female. In fact, the majority of my friends who identify with the “trans” community actually identify as non-binary. Some of these friends still feel the most safe in bathrooms that match the sex they were assigned at birth, some of them need and can only use gender-neutral or all gender restrooms, and some of them like to use the bathroom that closely matches their gender expression.
Ultimately, people just need to use the bathroom. No matter what they look like, express like or identify as; people just need to do their business. The great debate over “bathroom bills” will never be settled by trans men and their iPhones. Upholding the gender binary and gross understandings of gender are not revolutionary. The only solution to the oppression of trans/non binary people is to actually abolish unnecessarily gendered spaces.
