You Can’t Shit With Us
I hate using public bathrooms.
Now, to be fair, I doubt anyone enjoys feeling the remnant of a stranger’s warmth or listening to a symphony of flatulence while they go about their private business. But I don’t just dislike using public bathrooms, I’m afraid to.
While I was assigned female at birth, my gender identity has become increasingly complicated over the years. I’m pretty sure I’m not a man, but I’m also not sure I’m a woman. The words that we use to describe gender, masculine and feminine, fail to capture the way that I see myself and experience my identity.
After years of therapy, tearful conversations with my parents, online quizzes titled “What is Your Gender?”, and moments of gender dysphoria and euphoria, I’ve finally settled on this identity: non-binary. Existing outside of the binary definitions of man and women, masculine and feminine, feels like it allows me the room to authentically be myself.
With that in mind, let me paint a picture for you: my body has feminine curves, but I dress like an eboy version of Atticus Finch and my hair looks like I do summer sales. So when I enter the women’s bathroom on campus, heads turn.
Some people try to stealthily check out my reflection in the mirror when they think I’m not looking. Children whisper to their moms “why is there a boy in the girls bathroom?” Sometimes they’ll come in, take one long look at me, walk back out, check the sign outside the door to make sure they didn’t walk into the men’s restroom, and then come back in looking confused. And if the gods are especially angry with me that day, people will ask me to leave. Sometimes they are condescending, talking to me like a child who lost their way. And other times they shriek, threaten, and point at me in terror while I wash my hands.
So if I, a person who was assigned female at birth and sits when they pee, feel barred from using the women’s bathroom, who is this space made for? On the front of the women’s restroom is a stick figure woman with hips twice the size of her shoulders and a flowing a-line dress. When I walk into the women’s restroom, I see that standard of normative femininity for those who enter, a goal that I can’t and don’t want to achieve. Public bathrooms aren’t segregated by sex or even gender lines, instead, people are categorized based on their gender expression and whether or not it is deemed “passable.”
While public bathrooms are theoretically open to all, they are not a neutral space. Rather, they set a standard for who really belongs in society and have set that standard for more than a hundred years now. The standard today being, those who are able to pass as traditional cisgender men and women. They are more than just toilets, but there is power in declaring who can and who can’t shit with you.
When I share my public bathroom frustrations with other people, I’m scared I won’t be taken seriously or dismissed as being overly sensitive. Who cares that much about a public bathroom? Why does it matter if sometimes people stare at you? But when I have these experiences almost everyday I come on campus, I don’t just feel mild discomfort but a constant rumble of guilt, isolation, and anxiety. I feel guilty that my presence is making someone else scared. These experiences reinforce that I, as a gender noncomforming student at BYU, don’t belong anywhere on campus. Not even where our most primal needs are performed.
My only other option is to use one of the 23 gender neutral bathrooms on campus. Which may sound like a lot, but there are over 210 women’s restrooms on campus. And most of the gender neutral bathrooms are single user restrooms, hidden in inconvenient areas, like inside of the family study room on the third floor of the library. They haven’t been placed intentionally with transgender students in mind.
In an ideal world, I would love if BYU had all-gender bathrooms in every building, but that would first require BYU to care about its transgender and gender noncomforming students. And I’m not holding my breath for that.