Restroom Rights

Restroom Rights

Have you ever felt uncomfortable in a restroom? That would make it awfully difficult to accomplish one of the basic human necessities wouldn’t it? If you were verbally, physically, or sexually assaulted while trying to use a public restroom you’d most likely end up avoiding that situation.  With state lawmakers passing laws that restrict transgender individuals to only use the restroom of the gender they were assigned at birth, and arguing that transgender individuals are dangerous and predators, results in violence against the transgender community. This state violence then trickles down and allows other forms of violence, based on a deeply rooted transphobia. One of the ways in which transphobia is perpetuated with state condoned violence is through the media that falsely advertises transgender individuals as the predators within restrooms, when statistically speaking they are the prey.

The state condones violence through many aspects such as, policing, medicine, the military, and the way in which space is created and who is allowed to occupy it. By space I am talking about the ability of transgender individuals to navigate and exist. Much of the world and travel is dependent upon some sort of paperwork or legal document stating your “identification” which includes your gender. Birth certificates, licenses, and passports are all required to be able to really travel, and if an individual does not identify with their assigned gender from birth or able to change these things, this creates a difficult barrier to navigate. Binary genders are so normalized and control so much of how today's world creates space, that many people never have to consider the weight of checking a box “male” or “female” when making decisions such as getting a license, or entering a bathroom labeled for men or women.   

Restrooms are one way in which society sorts and segregates people.  Society has very clearly drawn the binary of male to female gender as far as bathrooms go, and even has the general public trained with symbols to associate gender with. There is a false, preconceived, state supported, notion that transgender individuals are predators in the scenario of which restroom is appropriate to use and which is not. North Carolina recently repealed its House Bill 2, which stated that transgender individuals must use the restroom of the gender they were assigned at birth, because it faced backlash such as public criticism and economic boycotts. But, just because laws are being repealed, does not mean that the mindset of many people have mirrored that. Most people have gender norms so deeply rooted in their psyche that it is easier to latch onto what it normalized and already structurally instilled, than to understand what is wrong with our society. The structures in which we all participate and navigate feed into things such as racism, sexism, classism and all of these intersect within the transgender community.

Restrooms are being used as the stage to instill a false threat to women. This ties into ideas of what it means to be a “man” and what it means to be a “woman”. It is an issue of the things that constitute masculinity, and who can and cannot embody that. In Captive Genders, they state that, “They’ll (The big money that owns media) take any opportunity, they pay people millions of dollars to figure out how to talk to us and convince us that things are different than how they are” (pg. 341). So, through the media, these gendered notions are enforced and imposed on people without them being actively conscious of it in most cases.

Transgender individuals are often the targets of violence within restrooms. From verbal and physical attacks, to outright being denied access to the restroom. The denying access of transgender individuals to the restroom of their choosing is a form of state violence in many cases. Even when there are not state imposed laws in place, and the states repeal laws and bills, the ways in which the media imposes and enforces gender, and portrays transgender individuals, perpetuates and plays off of fear, which can result in other forms of violence.

Works Cited

Stanley, E. A., Smith, N. Captive Genders: Trans Embodiment and the Prison

Industrial Complex. AK Press. 2011.