THE GENDER NEUTRAL RESTROOM IS NOT YOUR RUNWAY

THE GENDER NEUTRAL RESTROOM IS NOT YOUR RUNWAY

I am a transmasculine student on the campus of LBSU and I need to go pee.

BY JUDE SAMPSON

As of late, I am out to almost everyone in my life. As my world adapts and the people I cherish most use my new name and pronouns, I find myself thrown in the deep end of a society built around the separation of the alleged two genders that exist- because I think they are still narrowing down if cisgender men are real.

For a period of time this semester, I used women's bathrooms around campus. It was muscle memory at first; I saw that voluptuous triangular woman on the door and headed in to do my business. It wasn’t until I was washing my hands next to a line of women waiting for a stall that I could feel eyes on me. I don’t blame them. With my short hair, bound chest, and wardrobe belonging to what could be one of the Sprouse twins in their “Suite Life” era, I looked like I stumbled into the wrong bathroom. I lived and presented as a woman for the first seventeen years of my life, so I sensed the energy in the room the second I stepped out of the stall. I know they were uncomfortable. I was uncomfortable. After this, I only had one option: brave the men's restroom.

I can only describe the trek to no woman's land as an affliction upon the timeline that is my life. The men’s restroom is a deceptive beast. It has no line, no shortage of toilet paper, and no shortage of hand soap, which is concerning, but for me, convenient. However, these pros cannot outweigh the number one con: being perceived by men. Actual decades are shaved off of my life when I get clocked by a guy who I know is about to leave the restroom without washing his hands. I do not know what causes their eyes to linger. I mean, I am the epitome of masculinity. My hips are wide, my chest isn’t flat, and did I just take a tampon out of my bag? Hell yeah, I did. I know it must be hard to not be as manly as me, but sometimes you just gotta roll with the punches.

The awkward staring contest I held once a day in the men's restroom was so unbearable that after a week I called it quits. I avoided water and liquids in general so as to not awaken whatever abnormal urges I had to urinate, considering both restrooms found my need to do so almost criminal. During these dark days I have dubbed “Pushing P,” I found myself in a Western standoff with the campus. My spurs kicked up dust as I walked around in search of any solution. Tumbleweeds bounced around me, the trans people of discrimination’s past tipped their hats at me, and my guns were drawn at signs that read “Women” and “Men”. I only lowered my weapons when I found myself exploring the area around the fine arts buildings. Tucked away by the University Telecommunications Building was a structure beyond my wildest dreams.

A bright light shone from the heavens. Birds chirped. The winds blew a tune. Angles sung.

I had encountered the gender-neutral restroom.

It was the Taj Mahal of bathrooms. The Beyoncé of latrines. The HBO Max of lavatories.

The beige walls beckoned me inside. The creaky metal shelf arbitrarily placed on the wall cheered me on. The full-length mirror wrapped me up in a warm hug. The soap dispenser said trans rights. I had never felt so at home inside of a place where I come only to relieve myself.

However, some of you do not go in only to relieve yourselves. I can sense it. The bathroom and I are so in tune with one another that it tells me all of your secrets, and it tells me what you people do in there while my bladder bare-knuckle boxes itself in the midst of me waiting for a vacancy. I was also shocked to learn from the bathroom that my time is being wasted by a group hellbent on tormenting my daily life: cisgender people.

I do not hate cisgender people. I have a cisgender mother and father. Some of my best friends are cisgender. I just wish that they would consider my feelings before forcing me to encounter them, as it causes me and the gender-neutral restroom a great deal of stress. So understand this, cis people: The gender-neutral restroom is not your runway. It is not your therapist's office, your hotbox, your ford truck month, or whatever you people like to do for fun. It is my sacred space.

If you are cisgender, please know that your allyship towards trans people rests solely on how long you take in the gender-neutral restrooms. I have been having to wait outside of it for almost five minutes some days. It honestly feels like a calculated attack against the trans community. If you were truly an ally, you would know that the unspoken rule is that you have one minute and thirty-seven seconds to get in and out of that bathroom. That means no tying your shoes, no taking pictures of your outfit in the mirror, no reorganizing your backpack, no inhaling oxygen, and no pondering your thoughts. As a trans student on this campus, the alienation I feel from the gendered restrooms is too great for you to be wasting time in the only one I feel comfortable in.

As for trans students, here is a list of ways you are allowed to waste time in the gender-neutral restrooms: -Tune into all six seasons of “The Sopranos” -Walk for Prada in Milan Fashion Week 2022 (you will have to travel back in time for this one) -Befriend one of the creatures from the Jim Henson classic “Labyrinth” -Create a new element to add to the periodic table (for they/them’s in STEM) -Listen to Rhianna’s entire discography (in preparation for the baby) -Invite three men to a Greek island for your wedding to determine which one is your biological father -Single-handedly end the phenomenon of men starting podcasts -Become an old-timey detective and solve a caper -Get slimed onstage at the Nick Kids Choice Awards -Challenge JK Rowling to a fistfight (and win) …and so on and so forth.

I will leave you with this: being trans is hard. Being trans on a college campus is hard. To have my only beacon of hope be a gender-neutral restroom that becomes overrun with cisgender people who dare to urinate? That’s hard. They go to the bathroom in a boring, clinical way. My fellow trans students and I use the bathroom in a barrier-breaking, fever dream-inducing kind of way. To attempt to understand this experience as a non-trans person is futile.

The words that precede these might seem exclusionary. To assume this, you would be right. Exclusion is the bare minimum of what I am capable of.

It is a great skill I learned as a limited-time user of the men’s restroom.