The transgender bathroom solution is easy. We’ve actually been using it for decades in some places, but neither transgenders nor society at large want to implement it.
The Controversy
Who Doesn’t Want a Solution and Why
The Solution
The Controversy
Homo sapiens is not binary, never has been. Intersex, trans people have always been here. Yet the public bathroom system is still based on a binary model. That causes conflict.
For me: I switched in 1981, transsexual. I’ve never had a problem in any bathroom, even when I’m obvious. Why? I’d say that even when people did “read” me in the ladies’ room, they could see my sincerity, and no one ever asked me to leave—not in Kansas (where I’m from), Texas, Alabama…not even in North Carolina while the ban was in effect (on my way to and from Virginia Tech).
But in the 21st century, the transgender paradigm has dominated rhetoric with an array of sexually avoidant issues that raise questions people didn’t previously have: What sex do you want to be?
Who Doesn’t Want a Solution and Why
Transgenders don’t generally want the below solution because most transgenders actually want to keep the binary system, leveraging validation of new sex, gender or fantasy from authorities.
Intersex generally don’t want this solution. Why don’t intersex help trans more often with these social problems? I think it’s because most everyone wants to distance from trans people, even intersex.
Skeptics also don’t want the below solution. I find myself thinking it’s because they don’t want to
- imply or confer approval of trans lifestyles with a workable solution,
- don’t want to use any tax revenue money to make it happen, and
- I’ve talked with some cisnatal women who, in refusing to admit trans can actually be women, want the state to validate their role as women/females, also.
The Solution
But we don’t need to get into all this. There is an easy fix: Take a tip from Renaissance Faires and County Fairs alike, and just re-design the bathrooms:
Individual stalls and communal hand washing.
Change the model of bathrooms so that all persons are treated equally and safely, where no one is put in a position of fear, where no one can use bathrooms to seek validity or feel they’re losing validity:
Men, women, kids…all okay. I’ve never even seen anyone complain at such groupings at a Renaissance Faire or County fair. (I’ve heard others complain, and I have also complained, if they weren’t clean, but not that there was a communal area before private stalls.)
Instead of lawsuits, jails, legislator time, arguing over who is a bigot or a radical—just redesign public bathrooms to fit non-binary people and everyone.
Example: You go to the movies. Instead of having two bathrooms, redesign that same space into one large room open to the lobby (perhaps separated by an intermittent glass wall) with multiple exits, so that there are individual stalls that are actually private and lockable with real doors, each with an exhaust, no urinals at all for males so no one can expose self to others, have a bank of hand washing sinks by exits. No one sees anything other than people going into closets or washing hands. (Extra Boon: We could also see who doesn’t wash hands.)
People in the lobby can see that all are safe. Modesty is assured for all. Intersex is cared-for as well as any trans, neutrois, agender, gay, straight, Martian, Muggle—anyone.
- But non-T people want their own binarism confirmed by excluding all those who aren’t cissex.
- Trans people want to be confirmed with a new sex, or sex-and-gender, depending on view…
Ugh.
How to pay for it:
- It can be required of new construction.
- It can be phased in over time to existing public locations.
- It’s cheaper than dealing with lawsuits that can crop up.
All this is a fight we don’t need to have.
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