Even though trans people face a range of fundamental structural barriers, public toilets have become the symbol of cultural clash. Why these spaces specifically?
A public toilet isn’t a neutral space. It’s a border, a checkpoint. And it’s precisely there that trans people often lose their dignity. Sometimes even their lives.
Public toilets are one of the few public spaces where gender segregation is institutionalised. The division into “men” and “women” is literal here and visually controllable. This makes them problematic spaces for anyone who doesn’t fit into this binary system. Trans and non-binary people often face suspicion, verbal attacks, ejections—and in some cases even physical violence.
Why does right-wing criticism of “gender ideology” so often turn to who’s allowed to piss where?
In 2018, trans woman Amia Tyrae Berryman was killed in the US shortly after being accused of “inappropriate behaviour” in women’s toilets. A year later, trans woman Muhlaysia Booker was brutally beaten in public after leaving public toilets in Dallas (she was found shot dead a month later). There are dozens of similar incidents annually—in 2023 alone, the Human Rights Campaign recorded 32 murders of trans people in the US, most of them Black trans women.
Why does right-wing criticism of “gender ideology” so often turn to who’s allowed to piss where?
In 2018, trans woman Amia Tyrae Berryman was killed in the US shortly after being accused of “inappropriate behaviour” in women’s toilets. A year later, trans woman Muhlaysia Booker was brutally beaten in public after leaving public toilets in Dallas (she was found shot dead a month later). There are dozens of similar incidents annually—in 2023 alone, the Human Rights Campaign recorded 32 murders of trans people in the US, most of them Black trans women.
Continue @ ESSF.
This argument is always articulated well, emotion used to obscure the absence of all the parts of who what when were and why. In reality its an area of competing rights. Some women aren't ok with it, it's not the first time men have put on a frock to take advantage of people.
ReplyDeleteCan't argue with wearing whatever cut of cloth you want.
Applauding a man punching women in a boxing ring and then giving him a medal for it was wrong.
There are competing rights in this argument and an adversarial winner takes all answer isn't going to stand the test of time