🚻 when you gotta go you gotta go
Why bathroom laws make very little sense in real life
Hi friends, it’s been a stressful week for many of us. I’ve certainly been struggling with updates and staying engaged. I appreciate your patience as I get back into some of these challenging topics to be aware of in this newsletter.
(If you’re not ready to get back into challenging topics, honestly, same—may I recommend that you instead watch Ryan Gosling perform I’m Just Ken live at the Oscars in a pink sparkly tux, and remember—you are Kenough. See you next week!)
I’ve been thinking about where gender markers or biological sex definitions actually intersect with daily life, and for many people this comes up in medical contexts, travel, and in public bathrooms.
Bathrooms are important because they meet a non-negotiable need. If you gotta go, you gotta go. And while some trans, gender-nonconforming, or androgynous-looking people may hold it until they get home or to a unisex bathroom, that’s incredibly limiting and also unhealthy (higher risk of UTIs, for example).
It’s even harder when your workplace does not have a bathroom you can use. I remember a scene in the movie Hidden Figures where the Black woman scientist has to jog out of the large building, in heels, to use the restroom in the nearby restaurant because her workplace has no women’s bathroom. Obviously discrimination, right?
People, mostly women, have been willing to jog to other floors and other buildings during their work breaks for so many years, because doing the boundary-breaking work they are qualified and called to do is important.
In November 2024, U.S. Representative Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) introduced the Protecting Women's Private Spaces Act, aiming to prohibit transgender individuals from using restrooms and locker rooms that align with their gender identity on federal property. If enacted, this legislation would affect federal employees and visitors by restricting bathroom access in places such as national parks, courthouses, and other public federal facilities.
It is no accident that Mace introduced this legislation after Sarah McBride was elected as a U.S. Representative. She would no longer be allowed to use the women’s restroom in her workplace.
And you know, for legislation that gets justified by “making women safer,” how does that work when women get harassed and kicked out of women’s bathrooms? And I’m talking about any woman who has a buzz cut or is wearing masc clothes or just doesn’t conform to white, cis, traditional femininity.
“Biological sex” in Nancy Mace’s bill is defined as whether an individual produces eggs or sperm. The problem, I mean, other than the blatant discrimination, is that this new definition of “biological sex” makes no sense and is not, actually, how we have ever determined which bathroom someone should use.
People look at your visual appearance when deciding which bathroom you should use.
And yes, I understand that for most cis people, their visual appearance is aligned with their reproductive capabilities. But this is a law. Laws are supposed to be precise, and deal with edge cases.
It also bugs me that this definition is basically “look at the person and decide whether they are more likely to produce eggs or sperm.” Because many people have no legal or medical evidence that they produce eggs or sperm. I don’t, for example, have any medical record that my body is able to produce eggs (or sperm). Again, I could guess, but this is a law, it shouldn’t be a guess. And whose guess is the official guess? Mine? A police officer’s? My doctor’s?
It doesn’t make any sense.
Bathroom bills do not prevent harassers and abusers from stepping into a women’s bathroom. They do prevent law-abiding gender non-conforming people from using any public bathroom comfortably and safely.
It’s just a vague license for discrimination.
It is not your or my responsibility to change laws regulating bathrooms. What we can do is realize how gendered bathrooms actually work, who is most likely to get harassed in them (gender non-conforming people) and we can fight against harassment if we observe something happening in a bathroom.
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Thanks so much for reading! Let me know what you think in the comments.
Take care,
Rey
Another important note here on bathroom bans that all trans and nonbinary people, but especially paint trans women as the threat. The most common testosterone blocker for trans women on HRT is spironolactone, which is a diarrhetic. When I first went on it, I could not sleep more than four hours without getting up to pee. Trans women on T blockers have to use the restroom MORE than their cis counterparts. It’s another reason bathroom bans are so deplorable.
After NC initially passed (and ultimately rescinded) HB2, their "bathroom bill," I heard of two cis women who were (briefly) arrested for going into women's rooms. One was just tall and slender and very goth. The other had very, very short hair b/c she had just donated to Locks of Love. This movement is insane.
In my post ("Roll with the punches" https://robinreardonwrites.substack.com/p/roll-with-the-punches-easier-for), I inserted a section toward the end that, I hope, is both amusing and sardonic; it's told from the point of view of a potential rapist who's trying to figure out how to sneak into women's rooms by pretending he's trans.