When I was 25 years old I was in New York’s Guggenheim Museum. As I started walking into the women’s bathroom, a security officer put his hand on my shoulder and said, “Hold on there a minute, you (expletive) pervert, you can’t go in there.”
I told him I was a woman, but he had doubts. After all, I was thin as a rail, my head was shaved, I wore no make-up, and my torn jeans and combat boots said otherwise. He was certain he was stopping a 12-year old boy from peeing and peeking at women. I literally had to go to the security office to convince him not to throw me out of the museum.
This sort of gender policing is extreme, but at a daily level, many people find going to the bathroom a similar ordeal. “This is the women’s room,” someone will politely point out. “The men’s room is down the hall.” That’s why a couple of weeks ago the people in the building where I work voted to de-gender the bathrooms. We did this partly in response to a growing trans presence on our campus and in the country as well as a more obvious presence of “diversity of gender expression” among all of us. More and more people are willing to express gender as neither a this nor a that, but rather a multiple and shifting set of performances, identities, and sartorial signifiers. And public bathrooms, a product of modern technologies and anxieties, are no longer built to withstand our postmodern blurring of binaries.
Changing the little signs on the door, from “women” and “men” to “gender neutral,” may seem trivial upon first glance, but toilets have long been a space where a lot more happens than urination. Indeed, as Jacques Lacan argued, urinary space is one of the most fundamental ways that we know gender.
Urinary segregation has been about more than gender. Race (“Colored” and “White” bathrooms) as well as abled bodies (handicapped accessible or not) and class (“executive” washrooms or “for customers only”) have played out in the architecture of the modern public toilet. That’s why over at the Huffington Post, Rutgers law professor Carlos A. Ball tells us that “bathrooms are a civil right.”
Discussing the Conservative hysteria about the Employment Nondiscrimination Act (ENDA), Ball points out that “during each one of these civil-rights struggles, there were conservative critics who dismissed bathroom-related advocacy by minority groups as unnecessary and even silly. A similar response is taking place today as the LGBT rights movement pushes to prohibit employment discrimination against transsexuals.”
For Ball, bathrooms are not trivial since gaining access to urinary space has historically been a way for discriminated groups to win rights. Although it may be difficult for white Americans to imagine what it is like to be “Colored” and for normatively gendered persons to imagine what it’s like to be transgendered, we all have to go to the bathroom and we can all imagine that being able to pee in peace is a necessary right that should be afforded all humans.
Yet it would be a mistake to believe that the fight over urinary space will be won in the courts alone. We should remember that urinary segregation is not just a site of oppression, but a site of privilege and people with privilege will fight to keep it. If we look at urinary segregation as symbolic violence, we can see that it will take a lot more than legal arguments to take it away. By insisting that all bodies must divide into “Men” or “Women,” “Gentlemen” or “Ladies,” or even “Dudes” and Dudettes,” public toilets are able to erase the messiness of bodies and gender. For those of us (and yes, now that I’m older and no longer shave my head, that does include me) who pass easily through the doors, being confronted by the messiness of non-gendered bodies causes anxiety.
Whenever I bring up urinary segregation in my gender class, white women will say “rape.” When I point out that their bathrooms at home are not segregated by gender and that sexual violence is far more likely to be committed by people we know, they resort to “but men are gross.” The purity of white feminity—sexual purity, but also the metaphorical purity of cleanliness—the construction of white women as necessary to police “dirt”—makes urinary segregation by gender a necessary piece of race and gender hierarchies. Furthermore, the segregation of bathrooms by gender makes modern forms of desire legible by maintaining the fiction that there are men and there are women and desire is for one or the other or both. Without urinary segregation the entire basis of much of modern mojo, what Judith Butler calls the heterosexual matrix, will be called into question.
It is here, where social power is written on the door and maintained by those of us who easily pass the test, that we can see that the public toilet is a real mess.
14 Responses to Urinary Segregation
mercy_otis_warren - September 16, 2010 at 10:00 am
“When I point out that their bathrooms at home are not segregated by gender and that sexual violence is far more likely to be committed by people we know…”Well, presumably their bathrooms at home are not multi-stall/urinal affairs, but single-occupant. This would seem to make a bit of difference. And you tell your undergraduate students that they are more likely to be raped by their fathers and brothers at home than by strangers in a public facility? (I.e. my understanding is that statistics about “sexual violence [being] far more likely to be committed by people we know” includes acquaintances, dorm-mates, dates, friends of friends, etc…not necessarily or only members of one’s immediate family, which is presumably what we’re talking about with undergraduates “at home”–correct me if I’m wrong, or if by “at home” you meant their dorms.) You must prompt a lot of nerve-wracking Thanksgiving breaks.
lbcarfagna - September 16, 2010 at 1:35 pm
Well said, and much needed. As an openly transgender PhD student, its hard to recruit allies and impress upon people the importance of things like preferred name and pronoun preferences. But what is worse, however, might be what happens after getting their support. By opening up my narrative, it invites speculation into private areas of my life that is quite unnerving. Every time I choose a restroom, I am reminded that my choice is a statement and no longer just something as simple as using a restroom. Gendered bathrooms require me to either be “radical” by using the restroom that does not match my body, or to be seen as “not trans enough” by using the restroom that does match my body. I was recently asked why I use the bathroom that matches my body and not the bathroom that matches my gender identity. My response unfortunately must cite violence, and my fear that if an altercation happened I’d be more likely to escape unharmed there than elsewhere. In addition, as pointed out by Prof. Essig’s anecdote, at the end of the day my only legitimacy exists beneath my clothes. Try to imagine what that kind of vulnerability feels like.Further, in response to the fear of rape in bathrooms, it is quite unfortunate to see this divide and conquer mentality imposed any time someone tries to stand up for restroom solutions that are inclusive to individuals of all gender identities and expressions. There is no down-playing rape – for any gender. I also agree with Prof. Essig’s fact citing about rape, too. Look deeper and you’ll find that it isn’t just women who fear rape in public restroom spaces. However, isn’t there a solution for all of us? I can think of so many and I truly hope we get there soon.
akana - September 16, 2010 at 8:53 pm
Just curious: why do you refer to it as ‘urinary space’ rather than, say, fecal space?
mbelvadi - September 17, 2010 at 6:56 am
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. When women complain that “men are gross” they aren’t engaging in some abstract cultural metaphor, or “constructing” themselves as “police”. They are stating a well known fact about western culture and how men are socialized to use bathrooms compared with women. I had my eyes opened recently in a discussion about renovating our library’s bathroom and comparing notes with male colleagues about what was needed in the men’s room vs women’s. Without going into details, it was obvious to me that men are spreading pathogens onto surfaces that women would expect not to have nearly such a high rate of pathogens on. This isn’t some post-modern “construct”, it’s rationality, even science.
elksm11204 - September 17, 2010 at 8:16 am
Some European facilities are all gender, with completely enclosed stalls, and an attendant (certainly attendant is warranted when large enough). Using such a facility was a very civilized experience.
landrumkelly - September 17, 2010 at 8:21 am
Is there perchance some way that I can now unread the above, some mental “undo” that will allow me to go back to my naive simple-minded oblivion of believing that, regardless of nature’s whims, one is finally defined as (or going to define oneself as) either male or female? Help me on this. . . .Landrum Kelly, Jr.
cahide - September 17, 2010 at 8:50 am
Men’s body hair falls onto toilets. Even when they pee “properly” their urine drops splash back onto the rims of the pot (at home too!!). If they use pisoirs, their urine smells far stronger than women’s and even if they flush properly their is this pissy smell hanging around. Women are far more vulnerable to infections as they always have to sit on the pot, whereas men are “miles” away from the bacteria when they pee, and let’s face it we pee more in public toilets than that we empty our bowels. Why insist on having women and men share the same bathroom? If you ask me I would prefer a totally private one person per time toilet with all the necessary physical and chemical facilities (bacteria killing wet tissues etc.)that men, women, girls boys and handicapped adults and children may need. But there is a long way to go for that to happen…
pittlaw - September 17, 2010 at 9:50 am
This is the kind of discourse that gives academia a bad name
22228715 - September 17, 2010 at 10:24 am
Oh, I so want to be a good feminist and ally, and to intellectualize this topic, and make it all a social justice exercise. And I do think this author is onto something in pointing out that there are power dynamics at work when the use restrictions for a bathroom are decided. But…The reality is that on the gender and sex identity spectra, for whatever reasons, most of the population clusters closer to the ends, and both physiologically and socially/culturally, those two ends are vastly different when it comes to bodily elimination habits. I think that’s just cold, hard pragmatism, at least at this point in the development of Western culture. I applaud those who are seeking three or more options for restroom configurations rather than two, but I’m afraid my experience is that usually at least one person is life-alteringly distressed when the options get boiled down to one.
katisumas - September 17, 2010 at 11:15 am
What makes anyone think that women can’t get raped in a women’s only public toilet? Unfortunately, women also pee on the seat, but luckily we have those paper seat cover these days, or if not you can cover the seat with tp.And what about those long lines waiting to use the women’s rest room while the men’s is totally empty? I’ve walked in a single stall men’s room at times only to be greeted upon my exist by shocked stares from the 10 women still waiting in line to use the single stall women’s room……Women’s urine splashes back in the side of the bowl too, and our hair fall in there as well — yes, women do have body hair too!Men’s unrine smelling stronger than women’s? Give me a break!And to digress and get back to academic concerns, anyone remembers the urinal Marcel Duchamps displayed upside down to mock museum art but, in spite of this, turned out to be a thing of beauty displayed in a museum? Anyhow, it’s my observation that today’s urinals even when turned upside down are bereft of aesthetic qualities….
dank48 - September 17, 2010 at 12:32 pm
I don’t see the big deal myself. As Laurie Essig points out, most of us do okay with unisex bathrooms at home, without urinals. Ever since reading “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” I’ve taken a leaf from the doctor’s book and have sat down at home. (We live in a small house, without soundproofing.) It disturbs my wife not in the least, and I don’t have to worry about aiming, not to mention the charming effects of aging on the system.
ddonner641 - September 17, 2010 at 2:18 pm
Re: #3At the risk of stating the obvious I would suggest that the author has found this venue a satisfactory solution for that particular need.
timewaster123 - September 20, 2010 at 1:12 pm
Yes, please either have single use bathrooms or give options — at least keep segregation by cleanness level alive! I actually don’t care about the gender part, but smells, garbage and hygiene are another concern. If transgender people and clean metrosexual guys want to use the frilly bathroom with me, whatever. But I worry that going too far on the gender neutral bathrooms means I’ll have to deal more often with the “truck stop” bathroom level of cleanliness. Yuck. To illustrate, the women’s bathroom on my floor has not just air freshener that someone brought in, but also a frilly table, potpourri and a lamp. I doubt I’d find that in the men’s room.In fairness, it’s not that women can’t be gross, but we are more likely to get glared at for it. Plus I already live with a man, so I do know… [grumbles about beard clippings and toenails around the sink...]
ccchron - September 24, 2010 at 11:29 pm
yes, I would certainly support expanding the options to three–the conventional two plus uni/trans–but would strongly resist reducing the options to one, if I could. It’s awkward enough to encounter peers and superiors of your own gender at these least impressive moments of your day; having to confront those of the other gender(s) would be even more mortifying.