The Original Gender Neutral Restroom

For a couple of minutes, I’d like to set aside all of the politics, crusading and fear that are clouding and confusing the debates about so called bathroom bills to come at it from very basic daily pragmatics. I want to suggest four scenarios involving transgender people to elicit responses to each.

First, imagine a transgender person who identifies as male, dresses as male and would be visually recognized as a male. This person enters a men’s restroom and uses a stall for personal privacy while caring for their needs. How are people who see this person entering and leaving the public restroom likely to respond?

Second, imagine a transgender person who identifies as male, dresses as male and would be visually recognized as a male. This person enters a women’s restroom and uses a stall for personal privacy while caring for their needs. How are people who see this person entering and leaving the public restroom likely to respond?

Third, imagine a transgender person who identifies as female, dresses as female and would be visually recognized as a female. This person enters a women’s restroom and uses a stall for personal privacy while caring for their needs. How are people who see this person entering and leaving the public restroom likely to respond?

Fourth, imagine a transgender person who identifies as female, dresses as female and would be visually recognized as a female. This person enters a men’s restroom and uses a stall for personal privacy while caring for their needs. How are people who see this person entering and leaving the public restroom likely to respond?

The current bathroom bills would make only options two and four legal. The options I would expect to evoke the most reaction from neutral observers. Options one and three become illegal, though they might well go unnoticed.

This little exercise says nothing at all one way or another about what religious or moral principles might guide transgender persons to do about their gender identity. It says nothing at all one way or another about gender-neutral restrooms that seem to be advocated or opposed around the fringes of this debate. I am aware that for decades women in business environments have objected to male executives using men’s restrooms as strategy centers for corporate decision making that excludes women. I am also aware that many businesses that can manage with single use facilities are eliminating the gender designations in the interest of more rapid access and shorter waits. Retail establishments often have a family restroom as well as women’s and men’s rooms as a courtesy to parents who must assist an opposite sex child. Of course, the family restroom is gender neutral.

All of this being said, I do want to be clear that I believe sexual predation and voyeurism are serious issues that need to be addressed in serious ways, and I’m afraid the debates over the bathroom bills are interfering with that. We do know that sexual predators and voyeurs have been sneaking into public restrooms to find their victims for many years, probably as long as there have been public restrooms. Modern technology seems to have taken this to a new level but the impetus is the same. Typically we think of sexual predators as heterosexual men, and we know that they are often married. While we don’t usually think of women as sexual predators in the same way as men, there have been too many cases of female school teachers having sex with their students to dismiss this as a male problem. However, hanging out in restrooms doesn’t seem to be their usual mode of operating. These concerns require much more than the current bathroom bills.