As if the average adult doesn’t have enough to worry about, consider the awkward, impersonal but strangely intimate space tucked away in most gathering spots, the public bathroom. They are the bane of my existence.
I, at first glance, look like the person in the women’s bathroom that your mother warned you about — a man. And a man in a women’s bathroom is, by definition, a threat.
As a result, when I enter a women’s bathroom, I expect to run into problems. Experience tells me that I will come face to face with another woman who will not recognize me as such, and she will respond accordingly, as if she is in danger. To avoid both scaring other women and being challenged on my gender, I go through all sorts of gyrations when visiting a restroom in public is unavoidable.
1) Decloak
First and foremost, I remove whatever outer clothing I have on that masks my breasts — coat, sweater, scarf, sweatshirt — you name it, it’s off. I put my curves on display. You would think that being a 42C, I would be easy to code as female when the majority of barriers to boob visibility have been removed. But, it doesn’t seem to work that way. Somehow my short hair and masculine features erase my breasts.
Once while walking back to the car after a football game, my dad and I stopped the local Elks lodge to use the bathroom. It was an unseasonably warm fall day, and (out of character) I was wearing a form-fitting tank top so no de-cloaking required. Once in the door my dad and I split up, and I asked one of the club regulars, “Where’s the restroom?” “Down the stairs to the left,” he answered, smiling. I followed his instructions only to come face to face with my father entering the men’s restroom. A repeat of the question to another club member with the gender specified — “Which way to women’s restroom, please” — offered a new set of instructions. “Back up the stairs and to your right.” Three feet from my original location.
2) Avoid
If there is a choice, I avoid crowded bathrooms. We people are pretty much sheep, following the leader to the nearest thing that meets our need. Luckily for me, that means that there is usually some second-floor, around-the-corner, down-the-hall alternative bathroom that is virtually ignored. Of course, this technique doesn’t always work because other people are looking for hidden bathrooms, too.
The last time I climbed the stairs to use the “alternative” bathroom at a small regional airport, I walked in on a young woman in the middle of changing her clothes. It is one thing to think a man has walked in while you are washing your hands. It is an entirely other issue if “he” walks in when you are stripped down to your pretty little things. I didn’t even bother to point out that I had boobs and they were a lot bigger than hers. I just put up my hand to block my eyes and backed out.
3) Survey
At busy airports, malls and movie theaters, it is often difficult if not impossible to find a low-traffic bathroom. But with careful observation, I can usually get a read on who is going in and who is coming out. And with a little bit of math, I can guestimate how crowded the bathroom is and when I will most likely be able into a stall unseen. (Getting out again, is any entirely different problem.) At any rate, the survey method is, again, not foolproof.
Recently I made my way across the lobby of a theater toward what I had determined was a fairly empty bathroom, only to have a woman chase me down from 25 feet away. Determined to stop my imminent invasion, she wildly waved her arms. “Excuse me! Excuse me!” she yelled. “EXCUSE ME! You are going in the wrong bathroom!”
I’ll admit that on this one, I wasn’t as gracious as I usually am. My parents were standing to the side watching it all. I was embarrassed. Letting my ego get the better of me, I turned toward her slowly, looked her dead in the eye and in a low voice, snarled. “No. I am NOT.”
As is usually the case, the timbre of my voice combined with a closer look at my body eradicated her confusion, and she stood sputtering an apology. In the cosmic balance of things, her teenage daughter was completely mortified and was certainly much more affected than either my parents or I.
4) Look Down
Every once in a while, there is no getting out of it. I have to go into a crowded bathroom and wait in line for a stall. The first step is simply to lower my head and get in the line, then I wait out the first round of recoiling and gasping as the others in line absorb the evidence that I am actually supposed to be there. Unfortunately, the person who joins the line after me, more often than not, is sure that she has discovered what no one else has. THERE IS A MAN IN HERE.
I have had women tap me on the shoulder in a line of ten women in an airport bathroom, step to the head of the line and block my way to the stall in a packed concert hall bathroom, tell the other women that there is “a problem” in a football stadium bathroom.
I don’t expect this to change much. And, honestly, I consider it my responsibility to figure out how not to scare women, no matter how much of a hassle it is. The only thing I would change is the line police. I find them perplexing. Do they think all those other women are dumb? Do they think a man wouldn’t recognize that all the other people in line were not like him? Do they not know that the first thing in a men’s bathroom is a urinal. Trust me. If a man walks into a woman’s bathroom by mistake, he knows it immediately.
This is a perpetual problem and I go back and forth between finding it my responsibility not to scare people as you say and figuring they need to deal and loosen up about gender presentation.
Pretty much, I avoid all bathrooms except my own or the ones where it is a single room with a door that locks. And even those people seem to want to police, as if it matters whether I go into a room with a skirt-wearing figure or a pants-wearing one!
The thing is, as much as I would like to other women to actually LOOK at me before they freak out, I do also understand that some men are dangerous to women and it is not unreasonable for them/us to be wary when it seems as if our space is invaded. Personally, I would just like there to be “family” bathrooms everywhere. That way I can take our 7-year-old boy in and not send him alone into a men’s bathroom. And the men I know with young daughters can avoid having to take them into men’s restrooms, which is REALLY problematic.