Here is what it’s like.
There been a lot of concern and debate around sharing bathrooms with trans women. Most of us grew up in a culture where being trans wasn’t generally accepted or considered a valid identity. Things are changing now. With this change naturally comes lots of debates, questions, and concerns over safety. There are on-going debates about trans women in sports, trans children, and of course, the bathroom debate.
In the comments of another article I wrote about JKR, I got into a fascinating discussion with someone over bathroom rights, who mentioned where she lives, it’s actually not legal for trans women to use the bathroom, and she’s never encountered one. Where I happen to live, there are plenty of trans people, both trans women, trans men, non-binary peeps, genderfulid, ect. Here it is perfectly legal and expected to use the bathroom you identify with and I just wanted to share my experience on what that is like.
Before we begin, I’d just like to add the usual disclaimer. My experiences don’t speak for everyone. There are and will always be people who have had other experiences than me. I can only write from my own personal experiences, and no, I don’t speak for all women everywhere (cis or trans) but for myself.
The first time I reguarly shared a public bathroom with a trans woman, was a woman who worked in the same office building as I did. I never knew her or her name, her office was down the hallways somewhere, but she used the bathroom and I would see her in there. She was clearly trans, I could tell by her facial features and heigth. I never once spoke to her. Usually I saw her by the sink washing her hands, and occasionally giving herself a quick make-up check in the mirror before she went back to work. She never lingered very long or hung out in there. I imagine she had to get back to work. I shared this bathroom with her for about 2 years. Nothing weird happened, it was like being in the bathroom with any other woman.
I train regularly at a martial arts school where we have two public dressing rooms, one for men, one for women. You can use which ever you identify as. In at least two occasions that I can recall we had trans women at the school who would change with us. It was a very cramped space and we often would bump into each other. The trans women would simply change, and engage in the usual talking we all did. I never saw anyone’s genetallia (not that I was looking for it). I never felt like my private space was being violated, it was never weird, at least not for me. I don’t know if it was for my training partners, it never really came up. This happened on and off for about 4 years.
I was a member of a rock-climbing gym for about a year that had a woman’s locker room, showers, and a sauna. In general, I didn’t linger in the locker rooms much, but one time I did decide to use the sauna in there. It was a woman’s only sauna and I bravely went in wearing a towel. Inside was a trans woman, sitting alone, wearing a towel, just like me. She looked very nervous and scared when I came in. I was also nervous as it was my first time in a sauna, and I didn’t know the etitquet. I waved and gave her a light smile. She nervously then smiled back and stayed in the sauna a few minutes, then she eventually left. Other times I would run into her changing in the locker room.
I never once saw her genitals. She either didn’t pull them out ever (I also was never looking for them) or perhaps she was post-opp. At no point, did she do any form of ‘man-spreading’ where she acted like she was more entitled to the space than others. Certainly at no point did she pull out her schlong, jump on a bench, whirl it around shouting “behold the power of my penis! I am lord over all of you!” which is something I would expect a man to do. Okay, I am exagerating here, but only a little bit. Women you know what I mean. When a man acts like he is more entitled to space than women, does his subtle behaviors in some attempt to dominate, interrupts you, tries to take charge, or just acts like it’s all about him. I know not all men do this, many men are humble and great, but we’ve all met that guy that is happy to take over women-centered spaces and act like it belongs to him.
To clarify, please know that I actually am not very fond of men, and under no circumstances do I want them in my women-only spaces. I do not want men in my locker-rooms. I do not want men in my bathrooms. I don’t want to see their bodies. I don’t want the few obnoxious men who act like they own me and everything around them intimidate me or threatening my safety. I do consider it a safety issue. I am a survivor of sexual assault, which was done by a man, in public. The thought of having a man in one of my very personal, very rare, woman-only spaces, is not okay with me, at all. It’s not that I assume all men are out there to rape me, but I have certain boundaries that I feel are important for safety issues.
So why is it that I don’t want men in my bathrooms, locker rooms, and other spaces, but I’m okay with trans women being there? After all, many trans women have penises.
Well the thing is, trans women are actually not like men, at all, despite their bodies. They are women and I feel comfortable sharing the bathroom with other women. Trans women, from my experiences so far, act the same as cis women, this includes behavior in the bathroom. They don’t try to lord their male privledge over us, like some men, they don’t peek into my stall, stare at me, make me uncomfortable, or impede my space, ask rude invasive quesitons, try to look at my pussy, etc. I’ve never had one rudely cut in front of me to use a sink, grab paper towels, or cut off my path walking, which is the sort of thing men do all the time to me in public.
What might be at the core of the debate, is a lack of understanding of what trans women actually are. When I was growing up, I was taught that trans women were actually “Men, who want to be women” or “Men who liked pretending to be women” by some sort of mental illness or other reason. I was raised to believe that being trans was unnatural, wrong, and very uncomfortable for everyone.
Then, when I was about 22, I realized a very close friends of mine was trans, a trans man specifically, and I learned a lot about what being trans really was. I saw him struggle for 5 years, 3 suicide attempts, until he finally accepted his gender and decided to transition. Transition changed his life, it saved him. When he transitioned, everything in my past that had told me this was wrong, unnatural, and uncomfortable. However in practice, it wasn’t. Instead, him living as a man, felt right, normal, and even good to me. It felt like it was the way things were supposed to be. He explained he had been a boy/man his whole life, and had been putting on this elaborate drag show forever, but at some point needed to just be himself. I was floored by how good, right, and normal he felt living as man despite the fact I had known him as a woman. I then realized everything that I had been taught about transness, just wasn’t feeling right. Instead, him transitioning felt right. Trans people have the minds, thoughts, and souls of a different gender than the biological sex they were born into. Trans women are actually women born with in a male body. Trans men were men born in female bodies.
Later on I learned more, mostly that trans people tend to act/live more like their gender identity than what they were assigned at birth. True, I’ve seen a couple early transitioned trans women who haven’t quite realized they had male privilege, and appear to be trying to hold onto it, sometimes in ways that feel quite sexist to me. Overtime, when people start treating them like women, they learn fast as society is hard on women. Yes I have met at least one annoying trans woman, but I did also share a changing space with her, and it was fine.
A lot of things about trans people, in the theory I was raised with, sound wrong, but in application feel just fine. In theory, It made no sense someone was trans, but then in real-life, here is a trans person and they don’t feel wrong to me. The bathroom is another example of this. In theory, at least the one I was raised with, it would be uncomfortable for me to share a bathroom with a trans woman, but in reality, it’s been just fine, nothing differen’t, strange, or scary. I had to open to actual experience, rather than just the theoretical.
If you’re uncomfortable with the thought of sharing a bathroom with a trans woman, that’s fine, I’m not here to gaslite your feelings, but realize the theory of something is often very different than the actual practice. Try actually sharing a bathroom with a trans person, maybe get to know an actual trans person and see if they’re what society says they are cracked up to be. You might be surprised. Many are just ordinary people living their lives, and they need to pee like anyone else.
