When I enter a public restroom, there are a few things I can almost always expect:
- I enter the bathroom and search for an empty stall. If it’s a place I visit often, I probably have a stall I always use, and will quickly become unreasonably irked and agitated if I discover that it is occupied.
- I enter a stall, whether it is “mine” or not, do my business, flush the toilet like a model citizen, and leave the stall.
- I wash my hands, check my hair and makeup, and maybe give a hearty greeting to the person next to me at the sink.
- I leave and go about my day.
This seems to be pretty standard bathroom protocol. Occasionally there are some unpleasant hiccups -- like discovering the person in the stall before me either plugged the toilet or forgot the thing had a flushing mechanism, or the person in the stall next to me playing an unpleasant trumpet number I didn’t know I’d have the misfortune of hearing -- but for the most part, things are pretty normal.
However, recent legislation and hot topics in the media have informed me of a development I most certainly was not aware of throughout all my public bathroom escapades:
The act of going to the restroom to relieve yourself is apparently a sexual experience.
I mean, what other conclusion am I meant to draw when I keep reading that the primary concern of the gender composition in a bathroom is what kind of genitals they have? Why does everyone want to know what the person two stalls over is packing?
When I go to the bathroom, the absolute last thing I want to think about is what the other folks taking a whizz look like naked. I just want to pee, maybe check my text messages, and get out. I assume most people are the same, regardless of whatever sort of bits they’ve got down there.
Making matters worse, the number one concern is that if people are allowed to enter whichever bathroom they choose based on gender identity, perverts will undoubtedly assault women and children.
At this point, I am left wondering: what kind of bathrooms do these people go into? They are certainly not the ones I have had a rather mundane experience with my entire life. Not once in my entire twenty-two years of existence have I entered a bathroom in the which the ladies stripped down to their birthday suits to take a community pee while singing Kumbaya. Instead, bathrooms typically employ a unique and progressive piece of super modern technology: doors and locks. People usually enjoy their privacy regardless of gender, so said perverts would have a rather difficult time unless they plan to somehow crawl underneath the door and into a stall.
Now, I understand that exceptions exist. Invariably, some creepo somewhere will try to bend the rules for sleazy purposes. However, I am not inclined to believe that these people would be prevented from assaulting someone due to something as silly as a bathroom rule. In fact, just last week a man sexaully assaulted a woman in a bathroom, and two weeks before that another man attacked an 8-year-old girl in a bathroom. Both were cisgender, and neither of them were pretending to be women. These aren’t the first incidents like this to happen, and they were happening long before the Bathroom Wars began.
The fact of the matter is this: when a transgender person enters a bathroom, they, just like anyone else, want to take care of business and get out. Instead of coming up with imaginary reasons to be scared, people should stop and ask themselves why they are so captivated with the genitals of a person they have never met. The people in the bathroom are more than whatever they have under their pants and skirt.
I don’t want to be a part of this culture that’s so obsessed with sex that they won’t even allow people to pee in peace. The idea of gender-inclusive spaces is really not as scary and radical as people seem to think it is. In fact, unisex bathrooms are already a thing.
If you look closely, you might even have one in your very own house.
