The bathroom and how it has become a battleground for trans rights

[Texas leaders on Tuesday are set to take the next step in clarifying the state’s bathroom policy. CBS-DALLAS]

Eight years ago when he began his transition to living life as a man, Jan Buterman lost his teaching job. Using the public washroom was not a top-of-mind concern.

But with debate raging south of the border over a bill that would restrict access to gendered washrooms, the loo has become an unlikely battleground for transgender people.

“There’s certainly fear in the community,” Buterman, president of the Trans Equality Society of Alberta, tells Yahoo Canada News.

Battleground bathroom came to a head in March, when lawmakers in North Carolina enacted legislation requiring people to use only bathrooms corresponding to the gender assigned on their birth certificates. More than a dozen other states have discussed such legislation but none have yet followed suit.

In Canada, the debate has been stirred by quite the opposite: in recent years dozens of universities and public schools have adopted policies making washrooms gender-neutral. Just this week, Regina city officials announced that the Saskatchewan Roughriders’ new stadium will have gender-neutral restrooms.

Provincial governments in Alberta, Ontario and others have introduced legislation to explicitly offer human rights protections to transgender people.

Federally, the Liberal government introduced a bill last week that would guarantee legal and human rights to transgender people.

All of this has sparked a conservative backlash in Canada from groups, such as Institute for Canadian Values and REAL Women, along with former Conservative MP Rob Anders and Conservative Sen. Don Plett.

Plett pushed for an amendment to previous legislation that would have exempted the protections from applying to “sex-specific” facilities such as public restrooms. He voted against a previous iteration of the bill and has said his views have not changed. He has said in committee that allowing transgender women to use the women’s washroom “allows for pedophiles to take advantage of legislation that we have in place.”

The case for the North Carolina law is similar and Buterman calls it “panic mongering.”

“I’m happy to talk about trans rights but I’m actually really frustrated that a lot of that discussion is being very much co-opted by a group of people with a very specific agenda and with a very specific imaginary script that they’re following, that’s being treated like it’s real simply because we repeat it a lot.”

It would seem the public might agree.

A new Ipsos/Yahoo Canada survey asked more than 2,000 Canadians about the bathroom brouhaha.

Three in 10 said people should be allowed to use the washroom of the gender they identify as, while 34 per cent were indifferent to the matter.

Just 15 per cent said people should be required to use the washroom of the gender they were assigned at birth, as per the North Carolina law.

Another 16 per cent said there should be a third category of washroom specifically for people who identify as transgender. Five per cent preferred some other option.

The results were similar when asked about public changing facilities such as locker rooms.

One in four [26 per cent] said people should be permitted to use the facility of the gender they identify as while 15 per cent said they should be required to use the facility of the gender at birth.

Once again, the largest percentage — 34 per cent — said they didn’t care one way or another.

“It is a completely, 100 per cent made up controversy,” Buterman says.

Trans folks and their most feared public spaces

But if Canadians in general aren’t seized with the issue, that is not the case for trans Canadians.

A survey by the Trans Pulse Project, an Ontario health initiative, found that 57 per cent of trans people avoided public washrooms out of fear of being harassed — by far their most feared public sphere.

“People talked about not being able to go out of the house, in some cases. People have to steel themselves to go out and face the world, especially if they’re going to be read by others as being trans,” says Greta Bauer, an associate professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at Western University and a researcher on the project.

Gyms [44 per cent], malls or clothing stores [36 per cent], travelling abroad [26 per cent] and restaurants or bars [23 per cent] round out the top five public spaces that project participants feared.

It’s a real fear, Bauer says. The Trans Pulse Project team estimates that 20 per cent of trans Ontarians have been physically or sexually assaulted because they are trans and another 34 per cent have been harassed or threatened.

“It’s something that happens,” she says. “And there are certain spaces that are more heavily policed around gender than other spaces and where people are more likely to run into trouble.”

The issue is tied to policies on official identity documents, which are assigned at birth, she says. Trans people fear being “outed” by a driver’s licence or birth certificate.

Several provinces have moved to change that. Newfoundland and Labrador, Ontario, Nova Scotia, British Columbia and the Northwest Territories have moved to allow transgender people to change documents without surgery, which Bauer applauds.

“Why do we have these Ms and Fs all over everything?” she asks.

A good barometer for a tolerant society

While the washroom may seem an unlikely beachhead, it shouldn’t. Women, African-Americans, members of the Jewish faith and the disabled have all fought similar battles for access.

Jim Crow laws in the American South segregated public restrooms. In the 1960s and 70s, washrooms were the domain of police looking for gay men.

The toilet is a good barometer for how tolerant a given society is, says Sheila Cavanagh author of “Queering Bathrooms: Gender, Sexuality, and the Hygienic Imagination.”

In her research, the first reference Cavanagh could find to gendered washrooms was at a 1739 Parisian ball. Since then, it’s caught on, in North America in particular – unfortunately, “in ways that are transphobic and exclude vast swaths of the population,” she says.

Some of the stories she heard while researching her book remain with her today.

“One trans woman in her 60s told me how someone called the police when she was using the ladies room. She was forcefully removed from the bathroom and humiliated in the process,” she tells Yahoo Canada News.

“One trans man talked about how he was denied access to a toilet in his workplace. He was accused of being a predator when using the women’s restroom and told not to use the men’s room because he wasn’t a ‘real’ man. He had to file a human rights complaint just to use a toilet in his workplace. Through interviews I discovered that many people who are trans restrict their water intake over the course of the work day to avoid having to use public toilets.”

Cavanagh advocates both gender-neutral bathrooms and gendered facilities with the proviso that they needn’t be policed.

Buterman agrees.

“You shouldn’t have to prove who you are to random strangers. What are you actually demanding? You’re demanding to look at someone else’s genitals before they can pee? What the [expletive]!”

READ MORE: Canadians have little interest in battling over bathrooms and gay rights: Ipsos/Yahoo Canada poll