Looking and Not Looking: One Trans Guy on Safety in Public Bathrooms

George is a trans man whom I’ve known for over 20 years and he’s awesome! He is involved in trans discourse and is also a psychotherapist. George helped me keep the language on this site inclusive. The trans community is referenced multiple times on this site, usually in the context of gender affirmation, but the very real subject of safety is not deeply explored. I talked to George about what it’s like to be a trans guy using public restrooms and how safety concerns can impact that experience.

First question [laughs]. Do you use a stand-to-pee device? Why or why not?

I don’t stand to pee. It never actually occurred to me as something I wanted to do! [Laughs] If I can be sitting while doing something, that’s the option I’m going to choose!

Part of the reason I don’t stand to pee is that people expect that to be important to me. [Laughs] And I’m very contrarian. So I’m like, if you want me to do this thing, I’m not gonna do it. [Laughs] If this is what you expect of me, no.

What has your personal experience of using public bathrooms as a trans guy been like?

Our culture gives us contradictory messages about “looking” and “not looking.” Women’s spaces are to be protected, but cis men will joke about spying on women to bolster masculinity.

In the men’s restroom, there’s no privacy—as if it shouldn’t matter if men have privacy. But what privacy there is, is socially guarded very fiercely. It’s just not materially protected.

I want privacy, and I want to respect others’ privacy, but these contradictions make it difficult to navigate these spaces.

In men’s bathrooms, if there’s a line, you don’t communicate, even to coordinate. And times when I’ve been looking for a stall and trying to figure out if a stall is empty, it’s pretty nerve-wracking. Because in a way, I’m looking in. I’m looking under to see if I see feet, and I can feel cis men’s eyes on me, like—what are you doing?

 There have been times when I’ve been waiting in line for a stall, and there’s been an empty stall and it just hasn’t been acknowledged! And eventually I figure it out and I’m like, Goddammit. [Laughs] I’ve been waiting in line, but because we can’t communicate with each other here, I didn’t know there’s an empty stall.

And, you know, I pass now, but I still have a lot of anxiety. It can be anxiety-provoking when I’m waiting for a stall or when I’m peeing in a stall. I wait for someone to make a lot of noise sometimes, if it doesn’t feel like a safe place to be.

Have you ever been made to feel out of place?

I was once in a place where there were a lot of trans people around, but also a lot of fairly conservative people around. I was stepping into the men’s bathroom, and this man looked at me, looked at the men’s bathroom sign, looked at me again, and smirked, and kept looking at me and the sign back and forth. It was more like a mocking than a threat.

Or another time, I was in a gay bar that didn’t have a women’s restroom, and didn’t have toilets, it simply had a bathtub where you were going to pee. So I just had to hold it and I remember saying to someone, “What happens if someone needs to poop?” And he looked at me totally aghast, like “Why would you do that? Why would you do that in this space?”

 So. Some gay cis men can be very exclusionary, and that was one of those spaces, and I didn’t realize it before I tried to go to the bathroom! [Laughs] I mean, I did realize it was exclusionary—but I didn’t realize how much the bathroom would be used to exclude… both people with vulvas and people with IBS [laughs].

We’re talking a lot about gender. How do you think about gender?

I’m coming from a perspective that gender is something that we create moment by moment—I’m speaking to gender performativity here. It’s not a masquerade, but it is a dance. A lot of people really want to pin down the right steps they need to do or else they’re not doing the right dance and they’re not who they say they are.

And I think that’s all really bogus and people need to learn to express themselves based on what feels good in their body. And when what feels good in their body comes up against social expectations, to allow themselves to be critical of those social expectations.

There’s a lot of things we say about gender as a matter of course. Like we say men don’t sit to pee. Men can sit to pee. And there’s a lot there around virility, ability, power—being able to direct your flow. Rather than a sense of it goes where it goes. I think a lot of men, trans and cis, feel this external and internal pressure to be in power. And that’s just f*cking exhausting.

In a general sense, how do trans men have their masculinity policed or threatened?

There’s an idea that cis women must be protected from trans women by cis men—this bolsters the hegemonic masculinity and femininity and the separation of the two. Because of this, trans women frequently experience overt violence in the bathroom.

I think a lot of cis men would say they don’t need to be protected from trans men, because that would be to deny their masculinity. But in fact I think they do feel really threatened by trans men. Because if someone they perceive as a woman can be a man, then anybody could be a man! And all the hard work they have to do to shore up their masculinity would be for nothing.

If a cis man clocks a trans man—meaning identifies him as trans—the attitude is going to be less like protector, and more like a kind of delight. A delight in what they perceive as an opportunity to emasculate. I think a lot of cis men shore up their masculinity by degrading the masculinity of other men.

I think there can be anger towards trans men, for stepping out of line, for stepping out of our “place,” and there’s a desire to put us back in our place. And that looks like, “Oh you’re a man? You think you’re a man? Well this is what men do.” And then violence. “Take it like a man, if that’s what you think you are.”

And trans men have astronomical rates of sexual violence perpetrated against them. [According to the US Transgender Survey in 2015, 51% of trans men have been sexually assaulted at some point in their life. See more here.] I think a lot of that is “corrective” violence. Violence meant to put us back in our place.

In bathrooms specifically, what risks do trans men face?

I don’t hear a ton about trans men experiencing violence in the men’s restroom. What I hear more is trans men experiencing violence in the women’s restroom. If a trans man is forced to go to the women’s restroom, because of laws, or maybe they’re at school, they might experience a type of violence similar to what trans women experience. “Protecting” girls.

If you have a vulva but you are gender nonconforming and you’re in the women’s restroom there can be this violence—like Nex Benedict. There’s also been instances of trans men being arrested for using the “wrong” restroom. This is something that happens. You get forced into the women’s restroom, then you get harassed by security, harassed in general.

That’s terrifying. I imagine stories like that loom large for you when thinking about safety.

I initially experienced a lot of difficulty and anxiety in bathrooms because I don’t reliably pass. I think it’s particularly difficult, because, you know, I had top surgery and I take testosterone, so I’m very hairy—it terms of body, I pass. But if I speak, I get clocked. My mannerisms, the way I walk, is very feminine, and I like that about myself.  But when cis men notice this, they can get angry? And I’ve been trying to piece together why this is.

I think it’s very dangerous, in general, anywhere, to be someone in a masculine body who is feminine in some way. For example, dressing femininely. I wear men’s and women’s clothing. Or the way you behave, the way you talk. There’s this eagerness to be violent towards someone who is in a masculinized body but behaves in a feminine way.

This isn’t just a bathroom only thing. This is life in general. I’m on the street and people have threatened me. Put their hands on me. And I think the bathroom is scary because it’s this place with one door and no windows, and you’re trapped.

Obviously these are huge social problems. What can cis women and cis men do on an individual level to create safety?

This gets to something I wanted to talk about when you asked to interview me. And that’s that a lot of what’s going on socially has to do with how people feel about their own gender.

As a trans person, I get a lot of people telling me things about my gender, and it’s a really diverse array of things. And what that implies to me is that they’re projecting. When people talk to me about MY gender, they’re talking about THEIR gender.

I would like a world where people don’t have to protect their genders so much. That they can perform their gender, but if it goes a little bit off course, according to whatever the norm is, that’s okay.

And just logistically? The best bathrooms are ones where everyone shares the sinks and there are stalls with floor to ceiling doors. Where everyone has true privacy. Men’s bathrooms often have only one stall and sometimes no stalls at all. It’s ridiculous!

You’re a therapist with some background in psychoanalytic thought. Any perspective from that lens?

From a psychoanalytic perspective, I think there’s these exhibitionistic and voyeuristic strains that we don’t as a culture know what to do with, while maintaining everyone’s safety and dignity. People deny those things, then act them out on vulnerable people like trans people.

I would like to see a place where people can have their privacy respected, and where people can also acknowledge their desire to be seen and their desire to see, without invading anybody’s boundaries. I think that’s a really hard line to walk. And it’s a struggle that we’re acting out through bathrooms. There’s something unconscious playing out here.

What tips would you give a trans guy to stay safe and feel comfortable in the bathroom?

[Laughs] It brings to mind advice that a young thief might get. Act like you belong there. Don’t act like you shouldn’t be there or that you shouldn’t be doing what you’re doing. Any anxiety you have about who you are—try to make your peace with that. Just go in like you belong and do your thing.

Most people don’t want trouble. Most people are also afraid. Sometimes that can be safe, and sometimes, when people are frightened, that can be dangerous. Be aware that you’re not the only one who’s afraid, and kind of figure out in the moment how to respond to other people’s fear. Have fun and be yourself.

Thanks George! Check out the Resources page for links to trans-friendly supplies and articles. In need of support or in crisis? Trans Lifeline is peer-run. The number is USA 877-565-8860. Are you a little less contrarian than George, and still want to pee standing up? Here’s the link. Want to share your story too? The email is gostandingup@gmail.com and further details are here.