As an undergraduate, visiting Paris for the first time, I had occasion to use a public men's room. To my great surprise, inside I encountered a woman sitting at a table, keeping a close eye on the urinals. A small bowl rested on her table, filled with a number of small coins.
I soon grew used to "using the facilities" under the watchful eye of a woman. After my second or third visit, my concern was not for her gender but for my ability to stave off her fury by having handy a few centimes to drop in her bowl. The men using the urinals never sexually attacked her, and she never attacked the men using the urinals (except verbally for ignoring her tip jar).
I've been reminded of my initial surprise and quick familiarity with the presence of a W.C. attendant as I've read of the national uproar over requiring schools to allow transgender students to use the washroom of the gender of their "choice," rather than that of their birth. Here, in Washington, conservatives have been circulating Initiative 1515, which, it is claimed, would be the most radical anti-transgender statute enacted in America. The Seattle Times has described the initiative as "an utter embarrassment, an economic disaster and an immoral endorsement of blatant discrimination."
Such laws have been proposed as protection for our youth against the dangers that lurk in their school, university, and private company restrooms. (We have precious few public restrooms of the sort that I gratefully used in Paris.)
I have a young female relative who lives in a coeducational dormitory. Men and women share the same bathrooms. They brush their teeth side by side, which, as I've mentioned in a different context, amazes guys of my generation who rarely got beyond the lobby of a women's dorm. No problems occur, even among hormonally-charged college-aged students.
And really, what problems might occur, especially within schools? Girls use stalls. Are boys going to break down the doors to get at them? Boys don't now venture into a girls' restroom, even though the door is open to them. Will they nevertheless announce to the school that they are girls in boys' bodies just to gain the permissive access that is already physically available to them? And then what?
How realistic are we being?
I've been reading a novel -- it takes place in a well-described Boston, which was the draw -- about a prep school student who has been assigned to tutor an 11-year-old boy for a spelling bee. At their first meeting, the youngster whispers to the teenager, "I'm a girl!" -- a terrifying secret he had been keeping from the entire world, including his parents. He (she) had never heard of "transgender"; he (she) thought he was unique.
Eventually, the "boy," by now called by her adopted female name, begins planning medical treatment. But in the meantime, her friends at school -- male and female -- have made life miserable for her whenever she tries to use either gender's bathroom.
The older student writes in his journal:
What was going through my mind, and what I didn't dare say aloud, was to wonder how the hell this could happen to someone. How could nature have gotten it so screwed up? Why should anyone have to go through this just to be who they are? ...
Once again, I tried imagining myself trapped in a female body and just couldn't get there. ... My mind refused to let me go there, even in my imagination. What must this profound disconnect be like for Kay?
It made me want to throttle anyone who would ridicule her, who would make this horrible, horrible situation even worse.*
Precisely. Whatever misguided fears the proponents of Initiative 1515 may have for the safety of their sons and daughters, how can they overlook the misery and lack of alternatives such a statute would present for their kids' transgender classmates? Those kids have loving parents, too, parents who suffer along with their kids.
I'm not so naïve, of course, as to believe this initiative, like similar proposed laws across the country, is entirely about child safety. It is primarily one more attempt to keep the world from turning, to keep life from changing. "Stop! No more change! Let's go back to the world of 'Leave it to Beaver'."
Beaver led, in retrospect, a pretty idyllic life. But we ignore the fact that many of his classmates did not. We can do better today.
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*Robin Reardon, Educating Simon (2014).
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