LG
07-18-2007, 12:08 AM
Long news item, but worth a look...
------------------------------------------
Restrooms Become Gender-Identity Battleground
by Cody Lyon
EDGE Boston Contributor
Tuesday Jul 17, 2007
On June 24, the very day New York City celebrated its Gay Pride and around the corner from the Stonewall Bar where it all began, Khadesha Farmer, a 27-year-old African-American woman, says she quietly excused herself from her table. She was enjoying her friends, some cooling drinks on a hot day and nachos at the Caliente Cab Company, a huge restaurant that features a nearly life-size taxicab bestriding its entrance. The restaurant has become a tourist haven in Greenwich Village.
According to her, Farmer made her way down some stairs to Caliente Cab Company’s public restroom. As she walked into the restroom marked, "women," she was confronted by another woman leaving the restroom. According to Farmer, the woman told her that this is the "ladies room," to which Farmer said she responded politely that she was indeed, a woman.
Farmer says she is accustomed to such encounters since her outward appearance is considered by many to be masculine. "I’m not the most effeminate woman in the world, nor do I try to be, but people still find it necessary to let me know that they think I’m in the wrong bathroom," Farmer said later.
A few seconds after the exchange with the woman, while Farmer was using a private stall, a drama began to unfold--a scenario that points up some of the core issues about society’s definition of gender, and challenges the rules of what is "acceptable" within the realms of gender expression. This drama presents a daily trial for persons who are transgender, as well as those who express gender traits counter to the traits associated with the sex they are born with.
Very often, the modern battleground for such issues has become public restrooms.
"A 27-year-old lesbian was kicked out of a bathroom because of her perceived gender" is how June Brown, spokesperson for the Sylvia Rivera Law Project in New York City, put it. The Sylvia Rivera Project, named after a transgendered veteran of the 1969 street fights in the Stonewall that laid the foundation of the modern gay rights movement, works on trans legal issues.
"New York City law protects people who need to use the bathroom regardless if any other person perceives said other person’s gender identity as not matching that of the bathroom they may both be using," Brown told EDGE. She was referring to the city’s comprehensive anti-discrimination statutes.
But in spite of any laws on the books, the transgender individual, the feminine man, the butch lesbian or anyone who expresses gender identity and subsequent appearance that runs counter to what society sees as normal can find the most common act of a human being--using a facility to relieve oneself--a humiliating experience. And public restrooms can present the most difficult challenges that can lead to perilous situations and even arrest.
It is in this most mundane of spaces--a place where relieve themselves, wash their hands and muss with their hair--where unwritten, unspoken social mores and traditional views of gender are challenged. While some may see individuals who buck the traditional definitions of gender roles as controversial, these people believe they are simply seeking respect and dignity.
According to the Human Rights Campaign, the term transgender is "a broad term that applies to people who live all or substantial parts of their lives expressing an innate sense of gender other than their sex birth. This includes transsexuals, cross dressers, and people who simply feel their biological sex fails to reflect their true gender."
Many mental-health professionals now define gender as one’s sense of maleness or femaleness. This differs from the more clinical term "sex," which instead refers to male or female, since "sex" is defined by genetics, genitals and law, among other conventional definitions.
Unlike transgendered individuals, Khadesha Farmer firmly identifies with the gender of her birth sex, female; however she does have a masculine appearance, what some might call "butch" or even androgynous. Her appearance, like that of many Americans who may dress, look or present an outward image that transgresses conventional gender norms and are subsumed under the general heading of "gender nonconforming."
Filmmaker Shani Heckman’s short documentary, "Wrong Bathroom," blends humor and formal interviews exposing what Heckman calls the battle for entry into gender-specific restroom spaces for those who don’t fit into those gender-conforming cookie-cutter silhouettes outside the door.
She says that she was inspired to make the film after a female teacher in one of her film classes made a comment about folks shooting films in restroom spaces. "I’m all about women’s liberation but we really need our restroom spaces," the teacher said.
Like Farmer, Heckman didn’t have to look in the bathroom mirror to be made aware of her appearance in the bathroom. "I live life as a masculine female and am being made constantly aware of my gender presentation when entering a public women’s restroom," said Heckman.
According to experts on gender and society, presenting a gender image that does not conform to conventional norms in a public setting can often lead to scenarios whereby those individuals face, ridicule and sometimes even more perilous situations in sex segregated situations like a public bathroom.
"People who are not easily identifiable as male or female face a variety of potential challenges in public spaces like the restroom," said Dr. Anne Lawrence, an internationally recognized expert on transgender issues, "including the possibility of denial of services, verbal harassment, or even violence."
According to Lawrence, these challenges often present themselves in department store changing rooms, health clubs, swimming pools and even homeless shelters. She said each of these spaces can be especially uncomfortable, awkward and taxing, both emotionally and physically for the individual whose appearance runs counter to acceptable gender norms.
The potential difficulties can be even more severe for some individuals who identify as transgender. While many transgender people blend in flawlessly with the gender they identify with, for those individuals who don’t necessarily "pass," finding a safe place to use the bathroom can lead to difficult and physically painful choices.
"Some transgender people have told me that they go to extraordinary lengths to avoid having to deal with public restrooms at all, such as walking long distances to find a single stall restroom, or even restricting the consumption of fluids," said Dr. Lawrence.
Michael Silverman, executive director of the Transgender Legal Defense Fund, is representing Khadesha Farmer in a lawsuit against the Caliente Cab Company. "The central issue is that transgender people, as well as those who vary in gender expression, just want to be treated with the same dignity and respect as everyone else," said Silverman, adding that "there is no need to be hostile."
But back to Gay Pride Day in New York: Dignity and respect were sorely absent, if you believe Farmer’s account of what happened in the basement bathroom, and in the following minutes upstairs in the main dining area. According to her, after the restaurant’s bouncer burst into the women’s room, yelling "Is there a man in here?," Farmer says she tried to convince the man she was indeed a woman. No matter; he refused to accept her claim, even with identification. He demanded that she and her friends pay the full tab, and leave, even though they hadn’t gotten their meals yet.
"With me, I guess some people see a guy, because they have this pre-conceived notion of what a guy’s supposed to look like," said Farmer, adding that the same held true for preconceived notions of a woman’s appearance.
Farmer’s case demonstrates that anyone whose appearance varies from the norms of gender expression threatens the concept of what society considers normal, even acceptable. According to experts, the sex-segregated public restroom provides a strong example of what they say is the widely perceived "naturalness" of gender. The sex-segregated bathroom is a bastion of such perceptions.
"The current system of gender, along with heterosexuality, depends on gender being seen as natural, so many people do not want to have that natural order questioned by desegregating bathrooms," said Laurel Westbrook, a University of California Berkley scholar of gender studies.
Westbrook has written about and explored the sociological construction of gender and its relationship to sexuality in her work. She says that urinating in peace is something the majority of society takes for granted, but "for the person who is perceived as breaking the rules of gender, using a bathroom that others think they should not, calls the very basis of sex segregated bathrooms into question. Any violation creates anxiety around the gender system for people, most of whom are quiet devoted to maintaining it."
Enforcement of a strict gender order system may well have been a factor in the security guard’s response on Gay Pride Day at Caliente Cab Company. But regardless of these perceived rules of "normalcy," some hope to forge greater understanding and acceptance of those who don’t fully adhere to western society’s prescribed notion of how one expresses what it means to be male or female.
"This is part of the universe in which we are doing our work" said Michael Silverman of Transgender Legal Defense Fund. Silverman notes that the culture by which men are men, and women are women is what we are brought up in, and this is the ground zero of where a lot of people of people are coming from when they express feelings of anxiety about being in a bathroom with someone they perceive to be of the opposite sex in.
"It’s no point in trying to deny it, or trying to pretend that someone else’s reality is not important" he said. But he also notes that situations in the bathroom similar to Farmer’s are not necessarily confined to those who identify as transgender or those who challenge norms. Silverman shared the story of a married elderly couple where the husband was disabled and in a wheelchair. One night, while at the theatre in New York City, the wife brought her husband into a public restroom. According to Silverman, the women in the restroom were none to happy that a man, albeit disabled and in a wheelchair, was in that public restroom.
In addition, Silverman also pointed out that parents with small children often are leery about sending their kids into a public bathroom alone. So Mom or the Dad will bring his child in the bathroom with them. Again, they are often the objects of stares and in some cases, verbal hostility.
"Wrong Bathroom" touches on this issue as well. The film looks at the case of single fathers having a bathroom where they can take their small daughters. Heckman says that a potential solution might be what she calls "family restrooms."
"Family Restrooms are about safety for all people and in the long run economically can be seen as more affordable and ideally cleaner spaces since everyone will be using them," said filmmaker Heckman. "In addition, family restrooms are almost always accessible for those with disabilities and finally are always safe with locks that work and doors that cover from floor to ceiling."
On college campuses across the country, debates are being waged over the idea of gender-neutral or transgender single-stall restrooms in dormitories or other public spaces. But often, especially in space-starved places like New York City, additional restrooms may not be economically realistic alternatives to the current system, which furthers the need and enforcement of laws that protect those individuals who are gender nonconformists.
Currently, the states of California, Minnesota, Rhode Island and New Mexico have laws on the books that include the term gender identity in their anti-discrimination laws. In New York City, the Human Rights Law includes gender identity in its anti-discrimination law covering public accommodations, of which, the bathroom is considered a part.
As Filmmaker Shani Heckman pointed out, the public restroom has a long legacy of being a place where discrimination became a very tangible reality. "Restroom spaces have been used restrictively against people throughout U.S. history. Jim Crow laws in the South kept African Americans in their separate restrooms," she said.
But Heckman also noted that women’s restrooms were indeed a huge part of the women’s movement and labor movement, when factory owners were forced to add them, making the concept of women’s spaces a sensitive issue. "I would not be the first in line to say hey let’s get rid of them all," Heckman said. "I am, however, painfully aware of how these separate places have helped force gender stereotypes on us all and perhaps created further factions between us."
Cody Lyon is a New York freelance writer whose work has appeared in a number of national daily newspapers and New York weeklies. Lyon also writes a political opinion blog at http://codylyonblogolater.blogspot.com
------------------------------------------
Restrooms Become Gender-Identity Battleground
by Cody Lyon
EDGE Boston Contributor
Tuesday Jul 17, 2007
On June 24, the very day New York City celebrated its Gay Pride and around the corner from the Stonewall Bar where it all began, Khadesha Farmer, a 27-year-old African-American woman, says she quietly excused herself from her table. She was enjoying her friends, some cooling drinks on a hot day and nachos at the Caliente Cab Company, a huge restaurant that features a nearly life-size taxicab bestriding its entrance. The restaurant has become a tourist haven in Greenwich Village.
According to her, Farmer made her way down some stairs to Caliente Cab Company’s public restroom. As she walked into the restroom marked, "women," she was confronted by another woman leaving the restroom. According to Farmer, the woman told her that this is the "ladies room," to which Farmer said she responded politely that she was indeed, a woman.
Farmer says she is accustomed to such encounters since her outward appearance is considered by many to be masculine. "I’m not the most effeminate woman in the world, nor do I try to be, but people still find it necessary to let me know that they think I’m in the wrong bathroom," Farmer said later.
A few seconds after the exchange with the woman, while Farmer was using a private stall, a drama began to unfold--a scenario that points up some of the core issues about society’s definition of gender, and challenges the rules of what is "acceptable" within the realms of gender expression. This drama presents a daily trial for persons who are transgender, as well as those who express gender traits counter to the traits associated with the sex they are born with.
Very often, the modern battleground for such issues has become public restrooms.
"A 27-year-old lesbian was kicked out of a bathroom because of her perceived gender" is how June Brown, spokesperson for the Sylvia Rivera Law Project in New York City, put it. The Sylvia Rivera Project, named after a transgendered veteran of the 1969 street fights in the Stonewall that laid the foundation of the modern gay rights movement, works on trans legal issues.
"New York City law protects people who need to use the bathroom regardless if any other person perceives said other person’s gender identity as not matching that of the bathroom they may both be using," Brown told EDGE. She was referring to the city’s comprehensive anti-discrimination statutes.
But in spite of any laws on the books, the transgender individual, the feminine man, the butch lesbian or anyone who expresses gender identity and subsequent appearance that runs counter to what society sees as normal can find the most common act of a human being--using a facility to relieve oneself--a humiliating experience. And public restrooms can present the most difficult challenges that can lead to perilous situations and even arrest.
It is in this most mundane of spaces--a place where relieve themselves, wash their hands and muss with their hair--where unwritten, unspoken social mores and traditional views of gender are challenged. While some may see individuals who buck the traditional definitions of gender roles as controversial, these people believe they are simply seeking respect and dignity.
According to the Human Rights Campaign, the term transgender is "a broad term that applies to people who live all or substantial parts of their lives expressing an innate sense of gender other than their sex birth. This includes transsexuals, cross dressers, and people who simply feel their biological sex fails to reflect their true gender."
Many mental-health professionals now define gender as one’s sense of maleness or femaleness. This differs from the more clinical term "sex," which instead refers to male or female, since "sex" is defined by genetics, genitals and law, among other conventional definitions.
Unlike transgendered individuals, Khadesha Farmer firmly identifies with the gender of her birth sex, female; however she does have a masculine appearance, what some might call "butch" or even androgynous. Her appearance, like that of many Americans who may dress, look or present an outward image that transgresses conventional gender norms and are subsumed under the general heading of "gender nonconforming."
Filmmaker Shani Heckman’s short documentary, "Wrong Bathroom," blends humor and formal interviews exposing what Heckman calls the battle for entry into gender-specific restroom spaces for those who don’t fit into those gender-conforming cookie-cutter silhouettes outside the door.
She says that she was inspired to make the film after a female teacher in one of her film classes made a comment about folks shooting films in restroom spaces. "I’m all about women’s liberation but we really need our restroom spaces," the teacher said.
Like Farmer, Heckman didn’t have to look in the bathroom mirror to be made aware of her appearance in the bathroom. "I live life as a masculine female and am being made constantly aware of my gender presentation when entering a public women’s restroom," said Heckman.
According to experts on gender and society, presenting a gender image that does not conform to conventional norms in a public setting can often lead to scenarios whereby those individuals face, ridicule and sometimes even more perilous situations in sex segregated situations like a public bathroom.
"People who are not easily identifiable as male or female face a variety of potential challenges in public spaces like the restroom," said Dr. Anne Lawrence, an internationally recognized expert on transgender issues, "including the possibility of denial of services, verbal harassment, or even violence."
According to Lawrence, these challenges often present themselves in department store changing rooms, health clubs, swimming pools and even homeless shelters. She said each of these spaces can be especially uncomfortable, awkward and taxing, both emotionally and physically for the individual whose appearance runs counter to acceptable gender norms.
The potential difficulties can be even more severe for some individuals who identify as transgender. While many transgender people blend in flawlessly with the gender they identify with, for those individuals who don’t necessarily "pass," finding a safe place to use the bathroom can lead to difficult and physically painful choices.
"Some transgender people have told me that they go to extraordinary lengths to avoid having to deal with public restrooms at all, such as walking long distances to find a single stall restroom, or even restricting the consumption of fluids," said Dr. Lawrence.
Michael Silverman, executive director of the Transgender Legal Defense Fund, is representing Khadesha Farmer in a lawsuit against the Caliente Cab Company. "The central issue is that transgender people, as well as those who vary in gender expression, just want to be treated with the same dignity and respect as everyone else," said Silverman, adding that "there is no need to be hostile."
But back to Gay Pride Day in New York: Dignity and respect were sorely absent, if you believe Farmer’s account of what happened in the basement bathroom, and in the following minutes upstairs in the main dining area. According to her, after the restaurant’s bouncer burst into the women’s room, yelling "Is there a man in here?," Farmer says she tried to convince the man she was indeed a woman. No matter; he refused to accept her claim, even with identification. He demanded that she and her friends pay the full tab, and leave, even though they hadn’t gotten their meals yet.
"With me, I guess some people see a guy, because they have this pre-conceived notion of what a guy’s supposed to look like," said Farmer, adding that the same held true for preconceived notions of a woman’s appearance.
Farmer’s case demonstrates that anyone whose appearance varies from the norms of gender expression threatens the concept of what society considers normal, even acceptable. According to experts, the sex-segregated public restroom provides a strong example of what they say is the widely perceived "naturalness" of gender. The sex-segregated bathroom is a bastion of such perceptions.
"The current system of gender, along with heterosexuality, depends on gender being seen as natural, so many people do not want to have that natural order questioned by desegregating bathrooms," said Laurel Westbrook, a University of California Berkley scholar of gender studies.
Westbrook has written about and explored the sociological construction of gender and its relationship to sexuality in her work. She says that urinating in peace is something the majority of society takes for granted, but "for the person who is perceived as breaking the rules of gender, using a bathroom that others think they should not, calls the very basis of sex segregated bathrooms into question. Any violation creates anxiety around the gender system for people, most of whom are quiet devoted to maintaining it."
Enforcement of a strict gender order system may well have been a factor in the security guard’s response on Gay Pride Day at Caliente Cab Company. But regardless of these perceived rules of "normalcy," some hope to forge greater understanding and acceptance of those who don’t fully adhere to western society’s prescribed notion of how one expresses what it means to be male or female.
"This is part of the universe in which we are doing our work" said Michael Silverman of Transgender Legal Defense Fund. Silverman notes that the culture by which men are men, and women are women is what we are brought up in, and this is the ground zero of where a lot of people of people are coming from when they express feelings of anxiety about being in a bathroom with someone they perceive to be of the opposite sex in.
"It’s no point in trying to deny it, or trying to pretend that someone else’s reality is not important" he said. But he also notes that situations in the bathroom similar to Farmer’s are not necessarily confined to those who identify as transgender or those who challenge norms. Silverman shared the story of a married elderly couple where the husband was disabled and in a wheelchair. One night, while at the theatre in New York City, the wife brought her husband into a public restroom. According to Silverman, the women in the restroom were none to happy that a man, albeit disabled and in a wheelchair, was in that public restroom.
In addition, Silverman also pointed out that parents with small children often are leery about sending their kids into a public bathroom alone. So Mom or the Dad will bring his child in the bathroom with them. Again, they are often the objects of stares and in some cases, verbal hostility.
"Wrong Bathroom" touches on this issue as well. The film looks at the case of single fathers having a bathroom where they can take their small daughters. Heckman says that a potential solution might be what she calls "family restrooms."
"Family Restrooms are about safety for all people and in the long run economically can be seen as more affordable and ideally cleaner spaces since everyone will be using them," said filmmaker Heckman. "In addition, family restrooms are almost always accessible for those with disabilities and finally are always safe with locks that work and doors that cover from floor to ceiling."
On college campuses across the country, debates are being waged over the idea of gender-neutral or transgender single-stall restrooms in dormitories or other public spaces. But often, especially in space-starved places like New York City, additional restrooms may not be economically realistic alternatives to the current system, which furthers the need and enforcement of laws that protect those individuals who are gender nonconformists.
Currently, the states of California, Minnesota, Rhode Island and New Mexico have laws on the books that include the term gender identity in their anti-discrimination laws. In New York City, the Human Rights Law includes gender identity in its anti-discrimination law covering public accommodations, of which, the bathroom is considered a part.
As Filmmaker Shani Heckman pointed out, the public restroom has a long legacy of being a place where discrimination became a very tangible reality. "Restroom spaces have been used restrictively against people throughout U.S. history. Jim Crow laws in the South kept African Americans in their separate restrooms," she said.
But Heckman also noted that women’s restrooms were indeed a huge part of the women’s movement and labor movement, when factory owners were forced to add them, making the concept of women’s spaces a sensitive issue. "I would not be the first in line to say hey let’s get rid of them all," Heckman said. "I am, however, painfully aware of how these separate places have helped force gender stereotypes on us all and perhaps created further factions between us."
Cody Lyon is a New York freelance writer whose work has appeared in a number of national daily newspapers and New York weeklies. Lyon also writes a political opinion blog at http://codylyonblogolater.blogspot.com