The Restroom Question

The State of Maryland says that schools should teach about "sexual variation," but there isn't much indication of what that would really mean. Variation? Montgomery County has decided, more or less arbitrarily, it seems to me, to define variation as orientation. Thus the classes that are being developed will focus on heterosexuality, homosexuality, bisexuality, subjects that are defined by who you are attracted to.

But there is another question altogether, which would be, not who you're attracted to, but who do you feel like? Not everyone feels like what they look like, some people really feel that they are the opposite gender from their bodies. This feeling is not very common, but it's not as rare as you think, either.

In some cases, the physical sex of the individual is ambiguous; some people are born with both male and female anatomical features. Parents usually have to decide which way to raise their child, since it seems everything in our society is split between the sexes, including, most problematically, our language, which requires that any pronoun referring to a single person must identify their gender. In this ambiguous physical condition, called intersex, parents might decide one way at birth, and as the child grows up it turns out they guessed wrong, and the child subjectively turns out the opposite gender from what was assigned. But not all cases are anatomically ambiguous. Sometimes, it seems, the brain and the rest of the body are just tuned to different frequencies; the person's experience is pervasively, unwaveringly consistent over time, and inconsistent with the kind of body they have.

I suppose a person who feels they have been assigned to the wrong gender category can just do what people expect them to do, and play the role that has been given them, even if that means that their own experience is always discontinuous with how people perceive them. I don't know, but I have the feeling almost everyone in this situation tries that, at least for a while. I would guess that a lot of people never do make the transition, living secret lives that no one ever guesses.

Others take the plunge. It's interesting, a lot of times these are people who are older, who are just tired of living a fake life, and they go ahead and make the transition. Change their name, take hormones, have surgery, take on a new identity.

In New York, a transgender woman was recently arrested for using the ladies' room in the subway station, leading to an interesting new development. Just a tiny step forward, I think. Here's the New York Daily News:

The line for the girls' room just got longer.

Men who live as women can now legally use women's rest rooms in New York's transit system under an unprecedented deal revealed yesterday.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority agreed to allow riders to use MTA rest rooms "consistent with their gender expression," the Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund announced yesterday.

The group filed a complaint against the MTA on behalf of a 70-year-old telephone repair technician who was arrested for using the women's room at Grand Central Terminal.

The technician, who is assigned to the terminal by Verizon, was born Henry McGuinness but now goes by Helena Stone.

"I'm a 24-hour woman," Stone declared proudly. "I just feel like a woman and I like to wear women's clothes." Girls' room his, too: Transgender men free to use ALL of MTA's loos

OK, there's got to be a rule here, clearly, about who uses what bathroom. I mean, this is really one of our society's biggest problems, right? So, what do you think the rule should be? You use the bathroom you were born into? You use the bathroom you look like? You use the bathroom consistent with your anatomy? Consistent with your clothes?

The problem of course is that we feel a need to stuff everybody into one of two boxes, and not everybody fits there. We have norms and taboos in our way of life that require a gender dichotomy, and that is just not the case a hundred percent of the time.

So you need a rule. And I think they settled on the right rule: use the bathroom that is consistent with your gender expression.

Michael Sullivan, Stone's lawyer, called the settlement of the complaint with the Human Rights Commission a "milestone" toward recognition of the city law that prohibits discrimination against transgender men and women.

But some Metro-North riders at Grand Central yesterday were stunned by the ruling.

"I would not like that," said Gloria David, a retiree from Connecticut. "I have nothing against gay men or drag queens, but they can use the men's room. I just don't want to go to the bathroom next to a man."

One rider feared predators might dress as women and lurk in the women's room.

I'd have to say that someone who turned himself into a woman so he could hide in the stall and listen to women pee probably has, y'know, other problems.

I understand that Ms. David would be uncomfortable, but women-who-used-to-be-men have bladders, too, they also get uncomfortable. I think this is just the correct way to decide this. Besides, I doubt that this will really have a big impact on Ms. David's life, somehow.

But Rena Gantz, 23, a college student, shrugged off the settlement.

"It doesn't bother me because it is a reality," she said. "If they believe they are women, they should be treated as one."

That seems easy, doesn't it? It's a reality.