Target recently announced a new policy that would allow transgender employees to choose the restroom (and fitting room) that aligns with their gender identity, as opposed to using the restroom and fitting room that reflects the sex they were born. That very same week, the economy took a hit as bridge toll revenue plummeted, because all the trolls stayed inside, making the most of this opportunity to wax poetic about the "old days" in comment threads. It makes sense - at least to me - that a person should be able to pee where they feel the most comfortable, because no matter who you are, I'm going to resent you being in the restroom at the same time as me regardless, but what's been missing from this heated debate about values, the free market, and the "little girls' room" is this very important fact about public restrooms: they're revolting.
Aside from jail and a waiting room where someone already filled out the crossword puzzle in the May 2001 issue of People magazine, the public restroom is one of the worst places you could end up, and that isn't gender specific. This place is the salle de bain of our existence, if you like French puns. No one is comfortable in a public restroom, and defending the sanctity of a place where there are puddles that could be water but might also be urine is probably not the most constructive use of your moral indignation. Yet, here we are, having this conversation about whether the genitalia you were born with should be the determining factor when deciding where you go to do something that makes us all stinky, embarrassed equals.
Who among us has not endured the horror of the public restroom? What man or woman has not made that desperate pilgrimage to the most expensive department store in the mall to find a restroom without sticky floors? Have not we all seen and done unspeakable things in this place? The dissenters are right: public restrooms are in political upheaval, but it has nothing to do with the gender identity of the people inside them. Believe it or not, I've come across many cisgender people whose presence and/or actions in the bathroom made me significantly more uncomfortable than the prospect of a cameo appearance by a transgender person. Here are just a few examples of issues that may be more pressing than who is in the stall next to us.
1. People who go for the soap first when washing their hands.
People who wash their hands wrong should have to use a different sink than the rest of us. You can't always tell just by looking at them, but there are a lot of people in this world who put soap on their dry hands before rinsing them. Would you ever deign to work a quarter-sized amount of Herbal Essences into your hair before wetting it? No? Then why would anyone put soap on their hands before they're capable of creating a lather??? These soap-firsters threaten our hygienic values, and they must be stopped.
2. People who refer to the bathroom as the little girls' or little boys' room.
Typically a habit of the pretentious, the trying too hard, and the out of touch, the announcement, "I'm going to visit the little boys' room!" steers even the liveliest of conversations toward uncomfortable silence town. The act of dropping a deuce is less threatening if you leave everyone wondering if you're going to build a sandcastle or play hopscotch before rejoining the group. The little girls'/little boys' room remark is intensely creepy because no actual little girls or boys ever refer to the bathroom using that terminology; it's a weird, baby-talkish phrase used by adults who think the only way to bring up nature's call in polite conversation is to make it seem juvenile. People who can't utter the word "restroom" are far more detrimental to the public restroom milieu than anyone who lives as Deirdre now instead of Philip.
3. Stalls that aren't private.
The main concern about transgender restroom accommodations is that they could make women vulnerable to male predators who will exploit policies like the one Target has implemented to find new victims. But what about all the existing threats to our safety and security that have existed since the creation of public restrooms? We're all afraid in the public restroom, and that's probably because you probably a build better stalls using a Lego set than the shoddy, "I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll blow your house down" materials used in most public restrooms.
The fear started the first time you had an unexpected diarrhea emergency at Sears and, at the height of its horrors, a toy fire truck rolled under the door into your stall, followed by 4-year-old Kevin on his hands and knees, who snuck away from his mom while she changes his little sister's diaper. That fear only intensified when you found yourself in the stall of a crowded bar bathroom - wondering if you're going to puke or die - only to realize you've been making eye contact with someone on the other side of the door. "Can they see me?" you wondered, wordlessly summoning the hare from Alice in Wonderland to offer you a pill that would shrink you enough so you could flush yourself down the toilet and disappear forever.
Bottom line: Public restrooms have never been fortresses, and Target's policy doesn't expose any weak spots in security that didn't already exist.
4. Limited hand-drying options.
Regardless of what you believe or who you you think is entitled (lol) to use the same public restroom you use, I think we can all agree that not having access to paper towels to dry our hands with puts all of us at risk. Using the air dryer takes time-time we don't always have. For example, what if we're in Target and we think we see someone who identifies as the same gender that we identify as, but we suspect he or she wasn't born the sexual organs we normally associate with that gender, so we need to get out of there ASAP, but he or she is blocking the door? If our hands are still wet, how will we be able to scale the wall, move a ceiling tile, and make our way into the ventilation system to escape? We desperately need the paper towel options in all public restrooms.
5. People who are still drawing penises on the stall door.
Just to be clear, we're fine with co-urinating with people who carry a permanent marker into the bathroom with them for the sole purpose of drawing a penis on the stall door, but our values as a society are being challenged when someone who shops in the same department that we do wants to stop into the restroom to check their hair?
Katie Hoffman is a writer living in the suburbs of Chicago. She enjoys leftovers, lunges, and laughs.
