There are two stalls with very solid wooden doors. I enter my own private toilet stall. I have important business to do, sit down, and open my game of solitaire on my phone. This could take awhile. After a fair bit, there is knocking on the door and a male sounding voice says, "Sir, Sir?" I say just a minute. Fortunately, I am finished. As I open the door, the maitre'd who earlier had led my family and I to a table says to me with the restroom door ajar, "This is the women's restroom."
I nod to him and say, "Yes, I AM a woman."
"Oh sorry, sorry," he says bowing and withdrawing. Several little girls enter the restroom as he leaves with big eyes giving me a look of suspicious wonder.
As I exit the restroom, I think to myself, "Why do I bother? Why do I continue to bother..." putting myself in this situation. Over and over again. I ponder why I continue to do it when I could just as easily use the men's restroom. No one would be the wiser except for me, my partner, and family members. And, where would it end? When and where would I use the men's restroom? At work? At restaurants? In theaters? Any other place where I find myself using the public restroom?
This has been a thing in my life ever since I let myself just go ahead and wear the clothes I liked. I stopped trying to be female enough to be taken as a female. I allowed myself to just wear men's clothes top to bottom. Since then, I decided that I just didn't care whether people could tell my gender or not. In fact, I felt it could be considered confidential information.
One day, I was looking at shoes in a Portland, Oregon shoe store. A saleswoman rushed over and asked me what gender I was. I looked at her knowing there was aHi bsolutely no need for her to know my gender to sell me a pair of shoes. I calmly, quietly told her, "I wear a men's size 10 shoes in narrow." I knew this did not satisfy her curiosity. However, at that moment, I felt that my gender identity was none of her damn business.
At first when I started wearing men's clothes, I did use the men's restroom. It was easier. No one ever complained. Men's restrooms always had a stall. Only once in the ten years or so that I used the men's restroom was there a stall with no door. But, what I learned is that if I just acted like I knew what I was doing, no one looked. On that day, there was a man repairing something on the wall outside the stall with no door. I just knew he wouldn't look as long as all seemed normal. So, I sat in the stall behind his back, did what I had to do, pulled up my pants, and left. He exhibited nothing so much as a twitch. All was as it should be.
All this male restroom usage began to be a problem when my daughter was born. I was not the birth parent but had mother bear instincts just the same. I realized that I was not going to take my baby girl into the men's restroom. Society was just going to have to deal with me in the women's restroom. The flip side was I was just going to have to deal with society.
I've had security guards called on me. I've been confronted in the restroom by a male landlord. "What are you doing in here buddy?"
My response was, "I may not look like it, but I am a woman. I'm washing my face and then I'm going to pee. Do you want to see some ID? Otherwise, I'll be out when I'm done." My friend who was in the lobby later told me about the hullabaloo about there being a man in the woman's restroom.
She said, "I knew who they were talking about." Not exactly rocket science.
I've walked into restrooms where women were laughing and talking until I walked in and I could hear a pin drop. I had a little girl look at me quizzically and say to her mother as they left, "Mommy, is this an everybody's bathroom?" I can only wish her mother said, "Yes, dear, today it is."
I've had women stare at me while I washed my hands just begging me to say something to explain my presence. I just continued on about my business. If they've got something to ask, let them ask.
Then, of course, I wear ties. I love ties. I've loved ties since I was a little girl. Only my mother knew about my secret love of ties. She let me wear them when no one else was home. I wear them to work. I wear them for a night on the town and to restaurants. Some people know me at work by my ties.
What is really remarkable to me is that people think only men wear ties. This bit of fabric cut and knotted in a certain way means unmistakably that I have a penis. Remarkable is this piece of fabric and the power it confers. Talk about magical thinking.
Recently, I was in Mexico. I don't know much Spanish, but I do know the word for bathroom is "baño". I went into a women's restroom. There was a small Mexican woman looking up at me telling me it was the women's baño. I raised my hands to cup my breasts and said, "La female'." She gave me a surprised look and nodded.
On another occasion in Mexico, I walked into the women's restroom to startled looks but no one said anything. I am settled on the toilet. I hear a tapping and this little woman's voice saying something about blah, blah, baño. I know that I better address this right away before things escalate. I pull up my pants, open the door, cup my breasts, and say, "Female." Again, she apologizes and withdraws.
It's not that I blame these women. In Mexico, I did not see a lot of tall, androgynous women. But, in this country, I get really tired of the immense concern that I maybe in the wrong restroom. I am just taking care of bathroom business. How is it that everyone forgets that at home most of us have gender neutral bathrooms? Why this eternal fixation? The majority of assaults in the United States committed against women are by heterosexual men they know. Really, we all just want to pee.
So, why do I bother? Why don't I just make it easy on myself and use the men's restroom where I have never once been bothered? It is a political statement for me. I believe that all people should get to wear what they want and use the restroom that matches their personal sense of identity. I believe this infantile focus on sex role stereotypes keeps all of us in little boxes.
If I wear what I want, move, and walk how I want, I am demonstrating to female and male children that they can be and dress how they want to in our world. Only then can little girls know they can grow up to be president and little boys know they can grow up to be ballerinas. No one should be shamed for wearing a piece of fabric cut, folded, and knotted in the way they like. See you in the women's restroom.
L'Chaim
Joceile
5.10.17
For more stories, go to joceile7.blogspot.com
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