Visible Man: Gender neutral
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Jamison Green offers a man's POV on life in the trans lane. Opinion,
advice and information from an internationally respected leader of the FTM community.
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Marcus Arana spends a lot of time talking about bathrooms and genitals. He's a discrimination investigator for the San Francisco Human Rights Commission, and his workload is 100 percent dedicated to the transgender community. Transpeople, business owners, nonprofit agencies and representatives of governmental departments and educational institutions all call Mr. Arana. He's the resident expert.
"Bathrooms are by far the most common issue that comes up in complaints filed by transgendered people in this city," Arana says. "If they're not being kept out of them, they're being thrown out of them. People seem to have the most difficult time dealing with transpeople when the idea of public exposure of genitalia crosses their minds."
Arana spends at least 25 percent of his workweek dealing with bathroom issues, complaints and explanations. "These inquiries cause me to have to use the word genitals at least a half dozen times during a 10-minute conversation. Try that in the course of your business day! During my first year on the job, every time I had to mention genitals, I was really self-conscious, my voice would drop to a whisper. I had to train myself to not be apologetic when I would talk about genitals, and after a while I got over the sense of impropriety or embarrassment. It really is something we all have to deal with, so we might as well get over it."
Often the calls Arana fields are from business owners or managers who've been approached by a transgendered or transsexual client, employee or applicant. Usually business people want to know how to facilitate an employee's transition. When they call they're worried, confused or supportive, in that order. And their number one issue is how other employees feel about having transpeople in the bathroom when they either know the person is trans or knew who the person was prior to transition.
The most difficult concept to convey to employers is that a transgendered woman or man has a right to use a bathroom no matter what their body looks like (or what the nontrans people think the transperson's body looks like under their clothes). If coworkers are upset, they're going to have to learn to get over it. If they remain upset they will have to look for another bathroom to use. The transperson doesn't have to be the one to accommodate them. Arana explains that in San Francisco business owners are obligated to ensure the transperson's right to use the facility that is appropriate to her or his gender identity.
In spite of this simple axiom, many transpeople still don't feel safe accessing public restroom facilities in San Francisco. Perhaps it's because they still are not safe from self-appointed gender police who want to regulate transpeople's access to public space. The Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Advisory Committee to the Human Rights Commission held a panel presentation on bathrooms in September 2002 that was a big eye-opener for people who never thought about bathrooms as a safety issue for transpeople and others who don't fit stereotypes. The advisory committee heard quite a bit from butch dykes who have just as much difficulty as any transgender-identified person. The committee appointed a task force to study the issue, and the Human Rights Commission committed itself to further exploring how to resolve these concerns.
Community members and activists have come together to develop ideas for creating safe access to public restroom facilities for transgender and genderqueer people. One of their ideas is that all single-use bathrooms throughout San Francisco be designated gender neutral, serving both males and females. This practice is already quite common in business establishments throughout the city. The task force has proposed that all single-use bathrooms in city buildings be converted to gender-neutral facilities. Using city-owned buildings would allow us to create a "test case" to chart the effectiveness of such an arrangement in creating greater comfort and safety for people who need to relieve themselves. This is not a plan that's in process; it's just a suggestion so far, and if it were to come to pass it would not happen overnight. It would be implemented slowly over time, but the task force believes this is an attainable objective.
"We're examining the statutes about how many toilets a public building must have for males and for females. We have to be mindful of such constraints as we develop any new standards," Arana says.
What I have found interesting is the reaction to this from some quarters within the FTM community. Some men object to having gender-neutral restrooms available because they feel they have worked hard to become men, and they want to use that men's room, dammit. Using the men's room is a right of passage that transpeople often use to confirm their transitioned identity, just like the sex marker on a driver's license. It affirms us, and so we are reluctant to let go of it because we have so few affirmations available to us.
I think it's important to understand that if some gender-neutral bathrooms are available to people who are not otherwise safe in public space it does not threaten people's identity as men or women. Using a gender-neutral bathroom does not mean the person in the space is gender-neutral. If a man is in the gender-neutral bathroom, then it's a men's room for that period of time.
We must find better rights of passage than bathrooms to confirm our gender identity. Using bathrooms this way is about passing, not about who you are, or about addressing a common problem (how to provide for citizen relief!). Passing in a public restroom is about looking manly enough or womanly enough, and while we may have certain appearance standards as a personal goal, we have no more right to inflict those standards on other people than they have to inflict their own standards upon us. We can't be advocating a system that says, "If you're rich enough to afford surgery, hormones, electrolysis and everything else you need to convince people that you fit their stereotype, you'll have the privilege of using a gender-specific public bathroom." We need to ensure the safety of all people who need to relieve themselves, no matter what they look like.
Arana agrees. "I'll know that we have done our job at the commission, and that society has evolved, when I go to use a public bathroom and the sign simply says 'toilet.' We shouldn't be looking for that little sign on the door to tell us who we are. The separation between men's and women's rooms isn't about identity; it's about facilities and safety. If we can just get people to mind their own business, we'll be making huge progress."
For more information about transgender civil rights protections in San Francisco, visit the San Francisco Human Rights Commission's Web site at: http://www.ci.sf.ca.us/sfhumanrights/lgbthiv.htm
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