It's not just about the restrooms but because you all keep making it about the restrooms we can talk about that...

Presented to Celebrate Diversity 2017 in Warsaw, Indiana.

I stand with my young child and face two doors, knowing what I need can be found behind both, aware that choosing one over the other is to publicly declare my deepest political allegiances. I casually make my way through Door #1, hoping nobody will notice. “Sir” I look up, and realize she’s looking directly at me. I’ve been found out. “Sir, you want to be over there,” she commands as she points directly toward Door #2, valiantly defending the innocence of the flock of preschool girls we’re both surrounded by. We go into the other room without a fuss. My child peers into a nearby urinal with suspicion at its contents, then up at me. “Mommy, what-” I swiftly brush him into the nearest stall before he can utter any more incriminating words, not knowing how to explain to a preschooler that there is no Door #3 for people like me.

There is a chance that any time you or your loved ones enters a public restroom, that they could be sharing it with a sex offender.  Child molesters, voyeurs/exhibitionists, date rapists - these are all people who buy the same groceries as us, eat at the same restaurants as us, and fill up at the same gas stations as us.  If you were the type to be concerned about safety in public restrooms, and believed that legislation were an effective tool to protect restroom patrons, what could you do about this situation?  If your proposed response is to outlaw transgender people, you just might be Indiana Republican state Senator Jim Tomes. Bear with me, I’m quoting him verbatim: “What about the other sector of society of people that who have all through the decades women been using women’s restrooms and men been using men’s restrooms and kind of like that and kind of expect that level of privacy?”

Don’t worry about people who are actually predators and convicted sex offenders; the real danger has been me all along!  Nevermind that if there really were an epidemic of cross-dressing voyeurs peeping under bathroom stalls, Fox News would be plastering their mug shots all over scare pieces in a never-ending parade of shame.  Meanwhile, the true stories of abuse and violence against transgender folks in public spaces get pushed to the back pages of the news.

I don't like the men's restrooms because I'm not a man, I’m nonbinary. I am familiar with the women's restrooms, but I'm not a woman, and I raise far too many suspicions in there now for my comfort anyway. I have gotten very skilled at finding single-user restrooms wherever I go, but I will use the men's room now if it's urgent, and carry myself with the confidence of a mediocre white man in a generally successful attempt to blend in.

I’m disturbed by a trend lately, where some men gleefully plot for (or at least dream about) pushing themselves into women's restrooms in an attempt to get kicked out. Sometimes it’s cis men [“cisgender” means someone who is not transgender]. These cis men are attempting to “prove” that anyone can “fake” being trans simply by throwing on a dress. Sometimes it’s trans men posting selfies, and then "surprise! I have a vagina!" It's supposed to “prove” that they don't belong in women’s restrooms because they "look like a man". The problem is that all of this harms women. Many trans women are suspected of “faking” their genders and that's why these laws are being passed in the first place. They are enforced by targeting women who “look like men”, which hurts all women, trans and cis alike. Plus, at its most basic this trend an example of cis and trans men forcing their way past women’s stated boundaries in an attempt to intimidate them to get their own way. What if masculinity were used for justice instead of violence?

In many states, there has never been a law explicitly against using the "wrong" restroom.  So why after over 100 years of trans people in multi-user public restrooms - yes, we've always been using them, even if you didn't notice - why now do we suddenly have this deep and urgent need for laws to segregate and outlaw us?  Honestly, it's for the money.  This is a great way to scare people into donating money to the political campaign or advocacy organization of their choice.  I'm including pro-LGBT orgs here: many of them use fear tactics to profit from our situation too.

Even if laws were passed explicitly to protect people like me, we still wouldn't be safe.  Laws can only provide recourse against harms already caused, for those of us who can even afford legal action, but they don’t change the hearts and minds of those who act against us.  The fact is, we cannot be safe in a society that demands segregation.  I mean that in the fullest sense.  We cannot be safe in a society that demands “separate yet equal” restrooms.

Racial segregation dates back to 1849; the first separate gendered restroom ordinances came 40 years later, in 1887.  When you dig into the arguments presented when proposing these gendered restrictions over the past century, you will find that it wasn’t about protecting women from men, it especially wasn’t about protecting black women from white men, it was always about protecting white women from black men by demonizing blackness. Segregated restrooms have always been racist as well as sexist, and as such will always be unsafe.

I again want to make it very clear that the root of the violence against my people isn’t the laws, it’s the prevailing mentality of a society that accepts a certain order of things as “normal”, and anyone who deviates is deemed in need of correction. In a society where all genders were valid and deserving of equal recognition and protection, it would be unthinkable to demand some of us to hide ourselves while others flaunt your “normal” genders every chance you get. You accept gender segregation because you don’t see us as real people.

For example: a friend of mine on Facebook recently posted that she defended the right of trans women to use the women’s restroom alongside herself, but she wanted to ask all trans women to please place the seat down after they were finished. Several of her friends chimed in their complaints in the comments. I think they thought they were being cute, but the message was clear: normal women keep the seat down, fake women leave it up. It never occurred to them that if a trans woman leaves the seat up, then leaving the seat up is a normal way for women to use the toilet, because trans women are women, not objects for your scrutiny.

Separating us out as not normal, not like you, not fully people leaves us vulnerable even in places that aren’t segregated by gender, even in places designated specifically for us. Stonewall Inn, site of the Stonewall Riots of 1969, is famed as the birthplace of the modern gay rights movement. In March of last year, a transgender woman went into the single-user restroom of Stonewall Inn, and video surveillance shows a man following her in there, where he then attacked and raped her. There are no safe spaces for people who are deemed less than human.

Two years ago, I spent the weekend traveling the beautiful Ozarks of Missouri with my child and my transgender wife. We stopped at a gas station to fill up, and we needed a bathroom break. It was a tiny place with a single-user restroom on the exterior of the building, so we sat on the nearby bench to wait our turn. The man standing next in line before us refused to budge. Soon he was joined by another man, forming a barricade. A woman came out and begged him not to start anything, to just let us go. We quickly realized they were targeting us, refusing to let us access the single-user restroom, willing to escalate to violence if necessary. They didn’t see a family with a child. They didn’t see people. They just saw some deviants with fake genders. We will never be safe until we are real.

"Natural"

"Natural‬" is meaningless. "Natural" is artifice. "Natural" is the greatest sham of the century.

I fucking hate when people act like the mind is not part of the body, nor the body part of society. Meaningless distinctions.

My gender is all in your head.

It's something I realized back when I finally stopped pretending to be female. It really is all up to the beholder what they think gender is in general, and what my gender is by extension. I don't mean they determine for me what my gender is; their gender of me has tangible consequences for me. I can be completely honest in my comportment, and that does have some influence, but ultimately I'm not the author of my gender in their minds. Each time I am observed, they are creating a new gender, a spectre in their minds which is real as every other thought or experience they have.

It's important to note that this is identical to the gendering conflated onto cis people. The only difference is some gender spectres have a revocable aura of "natural".

👌

Sexual Abuse as the Cis Norm for Sex Education

TW dysphoria and rape

Let's talk about how cis people have sexually abused me my entire life. FUN!
Being raped multiple times wasn't traumatic... so I felt for a while, only I'm now realizing this is an inversion of reality.
Being raped wasn't more traumatic than sex in general, not enough for me to notice a significant difference.
To understand why sex has historically been traumatic for me, we need to first look at what healthy sex looks like:
It requires informed consent and co-determination. I need to be aware of what is happening and have the ability to exercise bodily agency.
I, like many queer and trans folk, was raised to view penis-in-vagina as The Sex, and with zero acknowledgement that dysphoria is possible.
Every single person who had the opportunity to educate me, grossly neglected to de-center PIV or present other options for sex as equal.
The only context my vagina was mentioned was as either a source of magical Jesus powers, or as a source of profound sexual liberation.
It is especially important to note that every cis male partner I've had was actively pushing this repression/liberation sex binary for years.
I was actively taught to view my intense discomfort with vaginal stimulation (even in a loving caring context) as something that's fixable.
I was expected to change. Always me. Never the other person. Never the way society pushed their cis agenda.
Individual partners claimed to respect my desires to avoid certain contact, but would guilt me on how their "needs" were equally valid.
All of the sex-positivity cultural rhetoric was on their side as I was shamed for not being "good, giving, & game".
No one ever suggested even once that my feelings were normal or natural, and that their sexual pressure was the dysfunction.
Fact: informed consent is not possible when cis people have actively obstructed education on trans bodies and queer sex.
Fact: bodily agency and sexual co-determination is not possible in the midst of ongoing gaslighting.
Fact: cis-centered sex education is abusive, and cis people who aren't actively working to dismantle that are complicit in ongoing abuse.

"Coming Out" as an Ally

Much has been written about what the responsibilities of allies are,¹ and how calling oneself an ally doesn't preclude one from participating in the same oppression as openly bigoted persons.²  In fact, many people discourage themselves and others from using "ally" as a self-appointed label at all.³

GLAAD recently came up with a campaign that we can use as a case study.  They have since changed the wording to remove the problematic language we are responding to, but the Google search results still show the original text.

[Screencapture of Google search results. The page title reads "Come out as an LGBT Ally. Take the pledge" and the page preview reads "[A] is for Ally. Broadening acceptance of LGBT Americans requires the help of allies".]

This is a prime example of appropriation⁴ of trans/queer culture.  I am not asexual, so I encourage you to learn more from the ace community themselves on why the A should stand for "asexual".⁵  Even if you find that inclusion debatable (and I most certainly do not), this case still highlights the problems with trying to include "ally" under the alphabet soup of queer/trans identity.

Ember Assington outlined an incomplete list of reasons why, in the GenderQueer Atheists group on Facebook:

1. Queer people don't need to be saved by cis-het people, they need to be liberated from the oppression imposed by cis-het people.

2. Allies are necessarily coming from a position of privilege, so there's nothing for them to be in the closet about. They are not being oppressed, so there's nothing for them to "come out" about.

3. Calling yourself an "ally" is meaningless. There are plenty of people who declare themselves allies, and then go on to say horrible, bigoted things.

4. "Ally" shouldn't be an identity; it should be a collection of actions that support and raise up oppressed people by centering those people and their liberation rather than speaking for them.

5. Talking about "coming out" as not-a-bigot seems to imply that bigotry is a default position, and simply not being a complete shitbag is worthy of praise, rather than just being what we should expect of all people.

One additional reason I'm so opposed to allies appropriating a letter within LGBTQIA⁶ and the narrative of "coming out", is that once they take this and make it theirs, our own use of those things have lost their significance as descriptors of our own unique experiences navigating cis/straight structures of power as trans/queer people.  What is the significance of explicit Lesbian Gay Bi Trans Questioning⁷ Intersex Asexual solidarity, when our community must now be centered around straight/cis (ally) experience as well?  How can "coming out" be an act of resistance against structural cis/straight oppression, when straight/cis (allies) are "coming out" as cis/straight allies?

It really shouldn't need to be said, but this isn't an anti-ally position.  This isn't something that alienates straight/cis persons who make active efforts to enable queer/trans liberation.

Footnotes:

1. Racism 102: Ally, Step-by-Step

2. 10 Ways That White Feminist and White Anti-Racism Allies Are Abusive To Me In Social Media

3. Why I Don’t Like Calling Myself an “Activist” or “Ally”

4. It should be pointed out, GLAAD themselves are not the ones doing the appropriation of "coming out", but rather enabling cis/straight persons to do so.  Cultural Appreciation or Cultural Appropriation?

5. ASEXUALITY and LGBT: THE CASE FOR INCLUSION [pdf]

6. As to whether the alphabet soup itself should be perpetuated, that is a whole larger conversation.

7. I identify my sexual orientation as "questioning", so this is not limited to people who are seeking to resolve their questions with an eventual "coming out" as something else.

Attempting to Define Gender, a Case Study

What is the definition of "woman"?  When I first saw the essay "Are Lesbians Women?" by Jacob Hale [trans man], it piqued my interest, partly because one of the first objections to my gender when I came out as genderqueer was that if I cannot adequately define "woman", I cannot adequately define myself to be outside of "woman".  (One wonders why it would not suggest that, given the allegedly questionable validity of womanhood itself, I could be more easily "allowed" to define myself outside of it, but I digress.)

Pop culturally, trans women are not "real women", but a quick google reveals that cis women can have their "real woman" card revoked as well (though albeit on a somewhat different "no true scotsman" level).  "Are Lesbians Women?" attempts to break down the fundamentals of womanhood into a list of what society has generally agreed are the criteria.  Jacob Hale is quick to point out that no one single item on the list is "necessary or sufficient", meaning you can generally leave one off and still be included within the category of "woman" by society, but if you can only count one in your favor you are not included.  For example: while "identifies as a woman" should be necessary and sufficient for womanhood, society rejects that criterion as such.

1. Absence of a penis
2. Presence of breasts
3. Presence of reproductive organs which allow for pregnancy to occur
4. Presence of estrogen and progesterone in balance with androgens within "normal" range
5. Presence of XX, or perhaps absence of Y, chromosomes
6. Having a gender identity as a woman
7. Having an occupation considered to be acceptable for a woman
8. Engaging in leisure pursuits considered to be acceptable for a woman
9. Engaging in some sort of sexual/affectional relationship with a man who is commonly recognized as heterosexual
10. Achieving and maintaining a physical gender self-presentation the elements of which work together to produce the gender assignment "woman"
11. Behaving in ways to produce the gender assignment "woman"
12. Giving textual [documentation] cues that work together to produce the gender assignment "woman"
13. Having an unbroken history consistent with the gender assignment "woman"

Notice that, thanks to the work of feminists, some of these categories have been so expanded as to include most people of any gender, particularly #s 7 and 8, and 10 and 11 to a lesser extent.  Perhaps that's what my well-meaning friends are saying when they insist that I do not fall outside of sufficient criteria, because to a certain extent I cannot fall outside a criteria which encompasses nearly everything.  However, as it stands, I only fully satisfy some of these requirements at this point (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 12),  others are satisfied/unsatisfied in different ways at different stages of my life (7, 8, 9, 10, 11), and I definitely do not satisfy a few obvious ones (6, 13).  It becomes even more complex when one realizes that #s 1-5 cannot be verified as fact by others without an intimate understanding of my medical history.

What about "lesbian" - can that be a gender identity in its own right independent of woman?  (Yes, anything can be a gender identity. And no, claiming your gender identity is "squirrel" doesn't make you cute, it makes you a jerk.)  How many criteria of "woman" can one violate and still be "lesbian"?  For example, a genderqueer friend satisfies #s 7, 8, 11; partially satisfies 10; and does not satisfy 1-5 or 9.  They also answer #6 as "identifies as lesbian" (among other gender labels).

There are many questions yet unanswered:  How "woman" is "woman enough"?  How many criteria must one meet before one is "real"; how many criteria must one violate before one is "fake"?  How do we take into account the different ways different people rank the importance of different criteria?  How do we allow for the ways that race, ethnicity, class, religion, sexuality, regional location, etc influence the threshold of each criterion?  To whom do we defer authority to answer these and further questions on authentic womanhood, and how do we process dissent?  Certainly Jacob Hale was in no position to answer all of these, and certainly I am neither, but that's the way I rather prefer it to be.

On the Meaning of Cis

Eminism has a post up about further clarifying the meaning of the word "cis".  It highlights an increasing problem in some feminisms lately, where cis women (who have always identified as female and who were designated female at birth) are rejecting the "cis" identity, because the gender roles assigned to women in our society are oppressive and they cannot relate to those roles.  And yet... there are trans women who feel exactly the same way about women's gender roles in our society.  And they are still women.  I agree that most gender roles are oppressive, and I am perfectly fine with people rejecting any and every role to their hearts' desires.

But this post isn't about Some Feminists™.  Quite frankly, most feminists accept the reality of cis privilege, and the few who don't are being confronted regularly enough that I'm not motivated to continue that battle in this particular post.  I am, however, concerned with Eminism's insistence that people whose experiences aren't "trans enough" - defined by her as "someone who does not suffer from (or must manage possibility of suffering from) transphobia on a regular basis" - must accept their ascribed identity as cis.  Taking thie counter-scenario to its extreme: what if literally everyone who claimed not to be cis was actually not cis? I don't care what they base their claim on. Maybe they're a butch-identified lesbian, maybe they're a gender abolitionist, maybe whatever. What portion of the population would all the non-cis people be? TINY. Cis privilege would still exist for that huge portion of the population that is most definitely cis, within a society that systematically delegitimatizes non-cis people's genders.

This is why I am not the gender police. While I do agree that some cis-but-not feminists are trying to have their cake and eat it too, and that the harm they are causing is as real as the cis privilege they are denying, I have exactly zero interest in spending my energy trying to slap a cis label on anyone I personally don't feel experiences "enough" trans discrimination. There are too many innocent bystanders who will get caught up in the casualties.  It also places the focus yet again on cis people's experiences, instead of centering the dialog around genderqueer and trans experiences.

It is difficult occupying the grey areas between cis and trans... As with a friend I know who is a very-light-skinned black person, and another who has an invisible disability, I am a genderqueer person who often "passes" for cis in society. Often times we have to say things like "no, I'm actually black" or "no, I'm actually in a lot of pain right now and need to sit down" and "no, I'm actually genderqueer" in order to trigger our swift decent from privilege. Other times, we risk being socially ostracized for living out our authentic selves without even saying a word, as we let the accusations come forth that we're doing white wrong, or doing ability wrong, or doing woman wrong.

Yes, I can hear you protest "but actual white and able-bodied and woman persons are policed too!"  Funny thing though: as soon as I came out as a not-a-woman genderqueer person, the tune society was singing changed from "you need to do X to be a woman" to "even if you don't do X, you're still a woman".  This is cis privilege: knowing that no matter how much the kyriarchy threatens to revoke your Woman Card, they will never actually do it; the moment you try to take them up on that offer, they'll drag you kicking and screaming right back into Womanhood.

If I got to define "cis" and "trans", here's what I would say (with a huge disclaimer that I'm not the Word-Defining Authority who represents all feminism):

• Cis people are the people whose genders are accepted on the whole by our society, and who are allowed to live day-to-day as their own gender without additional hurdles of "proof" required to validate their gender before gaining access to gendered resources.
• Trans people are the people who are told on a regular basis that cis people know what their "actual" gender is better than the trans people themselves, and who have to gather additional "proof" for cis gatekeepers before gaining access to those same gendered resources cis people take for granted.

Does this mean a butch lesbian who was designated female at birth [I keep using this example because the original article did] occasionally has trans experiences, such as people attempting to kick her out of a women's restroom for looking like a man? Yeppers! That does not necessarily mean her identity is trans, mind you - if she says she's a woman, she's a woman. But ultimately, anyone who dares transgress gender norms will be thrown from grace, and that deserves compassion and understanding beyond "but you do realize you're cis, right?"

So as a genderqueer person, I still do periodically ask myself am I cis? am I trans? I experience both. But ultimately, they become something else entirely in the long run: a constant reminder that I can never be a boring ol' regular person so long as systematic inequality exists in our society.

tl;dr - Binaries don't work.