Restroom Politics

I've decided to re-open this blog to talk a bit about something near and dear to me: restroom segregation for trans people. As ENDA draws near, this conversation is only going to get louder. ENDA champion Barney Frank has made his opinion clear, even while trans advocates and allies remind that nothing is set in stone yet. But this has been my nightmare for the last two years, and even amongst other trans people, if you haven't lived this, then there are subtle but terrifying nuances you might miss.

Some of this is really specific to the job I held, so I'll talk about that a bit. I work for a big box retailer, in a position they called "shrink analyst". I was a corporate employee, but one who worked in specific, assigned stores. I was sort of a troubleshooter...I'd split time between my stores, researching ways to improve their profit margin by eliminating waste and excess...whether that meant preventing product from becoming damaged, or helping leadership find better ways to manage their daily routines. I was a part of a team of such people and in addition to dealing with our own stores, we often covered for each other or worked together to resolve issues that transcended the store-level stuff that was our bread-and-butter. The important thing to remember is that I worked in very busy, department type stores and that my basic job function required a great deal of mobility.

When I transitioned on the job, the rule was made clear to me: Unisex restrooms only, until such time as I was able to legally change my sex, by way of gender reassignment surgery. I argued until I was blue in the face, but nothing swayed them. Eventually my supervisor, who was always a champion of my causes, convinced me that we'd be better served fighting a polite battle within the system than ruffling feathers from without. In retrospect, I don't think he was wrong...I just think it was an unwinnable situation, period.

And lord knows, I tried to win it. Polite conversation. Not so polite conversation. Huge, detailed powerpoints. An EEOC complaint. Contacting my local ACLU. Also contacting my local equality advocacy group, Michigan Triangle. Everywhere I went, people told me it would be a tough fight...more than once I heard "If only we had ENDA already...". And now we get word that ENDA may not be a help at all. To say it's disheartening is the least strong sentiment I can express. To say that it makes me queasy and want to throw up is more accurate...without hyperbole, I have some kind of PTSD over this, and if I think about it too long, I'll be in ruins.

The Ideological Concerns

Anyone who has spent any time thinking or reading about the civil rights movement understands these key points, but I'll present them here anyway.

It's Discriminatory. This is the heartbeat of the argument. The definition of Discrimination is "special treatment based on class or category". Clearly, the rule we're discussing here meets the standard of that definition. We know discrimination to be wrong...history has proven that over and over again. This should be all the more defense we need, but sadly, it doesn't stand on its own.

It's Othering. We know discrimination is wrong, but we don't always think about why it's wrong. There are a million reasons why, really, but a term that's come into common use lately, and which I like to use for its broad implications, is "othering". You see, if the problem solely existed amongst a few who, we might be able to deal with that...but when those people get their way and get to make rules like this for us, it's a voice of authority telling everyone - most of whom wouldn't necessarily be inclined to dislike or distrust us - that there is something wrong with transsexuals that requires them to be treated differently than "normal" folk. That is what powers discrimination, and that is what othering is about. It takes the viewpoint of an influential few and establishes it as social policy, giving it a sort of implied "correctness" that is harder to overturn later.

It's Dangerous. Perhaps the most troubling aspect of this line of thinking is just how dangerous it is. It is one example of transphobic behavior, just like hate-related homicide is an example of transphobic behavior. They may be on different ends of it, but stripping a person of restroom privileges and stripping them of their life reside on the same spectrum. You may argue that dangerous people will always be dangerous, even if transsexuals are allowed free use of public restrooms, and there may be some truth to that. But people have to understand that the message "it's okay to treat transsexuals differently" doesn't stop at restrooms in everyone's minds, especially when the reasons cited for why the restroom rule exists include things like "keeping our women and children safe". Because really, if something is a threat to women and children...maybe that something needs to be eliminated outright, no? Sadly, there will always be a small, but ever present minority, for whom violence is an acceptable answer to society's perceived ills, and those people don't need any more provocation than they already have. It sounds dramatic but in all seriousness, if you can take one thing, you can take everything.

It's Sexist And Classist. A point that sometimes gets overlooked is the whole "get a vagina and everything will be okay" defense, which my employer fell back on. Never mind just how nonsensical it is, consider what they're really saying: Who you are, how you behave, how well integrated you are, and everything we know and trust about you (which for me included 13 years of over-the-top loyalty and service) is completely subordinate to one simple question: Do you have a vagina? In one fell swoop they reduced womanhood to a price tag (approximately 22k, domestically, if you're curious), something all women should be angry about. Now granted, no one who wasn't truly driven would spend that money in this way, but none of that mattered to these people; in the end, it was simply about the letter F on the proper documents, completely ignoring the fact that many trans women simply don't have the means to make this happen (and what about trans men, for whom this whole conversation is even more involved and complicated?). Bottom line, a woman's genitals are the most important thing about her and go fuck yourself if you're poor.

And that's where I'm going to leave off for tonight. Tomorrow I'll get into the gruesome details of how this played out for me in real life.