Why Not a Private Restroom for Everyone?
From reader Hunter Oatman-Stanford:
I enjoyed the reader comment in your recent note that outlined how the so-called bathroom bills may actually require people to use bathrooms that don’t match their genitals:
Since people are, in fact, getting reassignment surgery across the country, one can imagine a scenario in which a transgender man who has received surgery and as such has male genitalia, who identifies as a heterosexual man, would be forced to use a women’s bathroom AS A RESULT OF THESE LAWS.
The laws implicitly assume that people are more comfortable using a restroom or locker room with only one gender, when it’s common knowledge that many people are uncomfortable even in gender-segregated spaces, hence the stereotype about middle-school kids hating to shower after gym class.
If locker room or bathroom anxiety is a common issue, why aren’t we pushing to make all of the spaces accommodating to people who want real privacy by offering gender-neutral, single-person stalls? Much like the retrofitting requirements of the ADA [Americans with Disabilities Act], this seems the logical way to approach public accommodations.
A pricey one, though, and who’s going to pay to retrofit all those bathrooms? The local, state, or federal government? Presumably federal, given the recent directive from the Obama administration over transgender access to school bathrooms under Title IX. Perhaps it’s a relatively small price to pay—not only for trans Americans’ desired access, but privacy for all kinds of people.
This next reader and transgender woman, Emily, makes a similar case as Hunter’s. Her note is specifically responding to the one from reader Ben Denny, “Does the Left Have a Smug Problem?”—a call for intellectual honesty and openness to opposing views when it comes to the caustic debate over bathroom access. Here’s Emily:
None of us is immune from smugness. I can attest to it coming up in my own words or behavior at times. I agree with Mr. Denny in that it is helpful to remind oneself of ones foibles from time to time.
Interesting that he picks the transgender bathroom issue to use as an example. I am a transgender woman, and no one is going to be, or ever has been, endangered when I use the women’s restroom. (We are usually the ones subjected to violence and horrible discrimination due to nasty and untrue stereotypes about us.) The possibility that some man might dress up as a woman and commit perverted acts was there long before transgender people ever came into the consciousness of most Americans.
Is there a realistic fear of this sort of attack? Then make all restrooms single-use, gender-neutral spaces.