I spent the last month traveling from Washington, D.C., to New England, to Texas, to Louisiana. I haven’t traveled like this in a long time. It’s not typical that all my speaking events fall just right to be one long trip instead of several trips to O’Hare. But apparently, everyone decided this was the ideal 2-week period for events, sandwiched just after Easter but before the graduations begin.
As much as I love the speaking part, there’s one part I just don’t love: public restrooms. Not just because they’re filthy. As a trans person, they are a place that adds an extra layer of stress to all the normal travel for me just trying to take a pee without someone staring at me or asking if I’m in the wrong place.
I can remember the first time I considered that bathrooms could be a scary place, but not the way it is now. I was maybe 11, my brother was 6. We were at a rest stop on the long drive down I-95 on our way back from my grandmother’s house. On this day, my brother decided he was no longer going to join us in the women’s restroom. He was big enough now. He could go to the men’s room by himself.
As an adult today, I can imagine just how scary this was for my mom. I remember her body language. It was clear she was not ready for this day where her little boy started making decisions. My mom insisted I wait at the door for him. Casually, I stood leaning against a wall across from the door thinking nothing of this moment. Then, my brother took a little too long. My mom panicked and stuck her head in the men’s bathroom to shout my brother’s name. He was mortified, of course. The men at the urinal were, too.
For many years, I didn’t really think about bathrooms as scary unless they weren’t clean. When I had long curly hair and wore pink, women’s restrooms were a place where people went to bond. I have great memories in women’s restrooms. In busy bars around the world, I have made friends with strangers in line. Some of whom I still follow on Instagram today. The girl’s bathroom was a safe place until it wasn’t.
The road to short hair was not planned. I didn’t realize it was going to change my life when I cut my ponytail off after a bad break up. From that day forward, it seemed like every other feminine feature of my body somehow disappeared in the eyes of others. All they saw was short hair and assumed I was a man.
In retrospect, it was one big step toward understanding my identity as something other than a lesbian. I felt some relief to be gendered as a man inside my head, but as someone socialized as a woman? I felt ugly. I was mortified when, at a SHRM conference many years ago, someone told me I was in the wrong restroom. A few weeks later in NYC with my friend Steve Levy, we almost got into a bar fight with someone that said, “wrong bathroom, buddy.”
For many years I brushed it off. I could explain it away, pretending people were just trying to keep others safe. I told myself they had good intentions and wanted to make sure I wasn’t confused or lost in the bathroom. But in the last 5 years or so, it went from casual to frightening. I could feel the threat. The anger. In Alaska two years ago, a woman asked my girlfriend if “he was stupid or something” with disgust after I left the restroom. I was just outside the door. I heard everything, including my girlfriend’s very harsh response. Go Lauren! Get ’em!
It got to a point where I would try not to use the bathroom at all in public places. I didn’t want to deal with the stares. Last year, I gave up. There’s no holding it when you travel like I do, so I started going into the men’s room. There’s an entirely different social construct that exists in men’s restrooms. They are not friendly. There’s a social order to how close you can stand to another person. It’s also silent. Not a hi, not a nod, no eye contact. Not even to tell someone they are in the wrong place.
I feel safer in that silence, even if I do miss the camaraderie inherent in the girl’s bathroom. But even in those silent places, there’s some part of me that worries they will see some aspect of my body and know I am in the wrong place. That I don’t belong. I was raised as a woman. I still feel scared of men. There’s a reason women choose the bear.
Then the laws started. Felonies in some states just for using the restroom where I won’t be questioned or stared at. What choice do I have? Do I go into the women’s or men’s restroom with my shaved hair that’s receding at the hairline? It feels panic-inducing to know I’m breaking the law and risking a $1,000 fine just to pee. I am a rule follower.
All last week, I just kept thinking this will be the last time I have to worry about someone seeing something. I’m having top surgery in 1 week and maybe, just maybe, I’ll stop thinking so hard about where I will go pee.