THE WESTWARD TRAVERSE Entry 1: What Gas Station Bathrooms can Teach us About Gender
So we recently returned from our month-long road trip, and I’ve had a lot on my mind. Particularly on gender and the current politics surrounding trans and non-binary people.
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You might not know that I identify as genderqueer… non-conforming… or non-binary, somewhere in there. Regardless, I don’t identify as either a girl or a boy. I fall somewhere in between and outside of the binary and have for over four years. My journey with gender hasn’t been linear. It likely won’t ever be. Everything from my coming out to my expression today is fluid, which is generally a beautiful thing. I’m less bound by the gender stereotypes we all face and I therefore can be more authentic in how I live.
But the euphoria and freedom come at a price. Trans youth are over five times as likely to die from suicide, experience higher levels of harassment and discrimination, and are much more likely to experience mental health challenges. This year alone there has been around 140 anti-trans law proposals. For me, this weighs heavily and only increases with my racial identity.
While there are the not-so-fun, ever-looming issues, there are also the day-to-day things that make it almost impossible to forget you are in fact, a bit different. One of those is bathrooms. I HATE BATHROOMS! Not the actual bathroom but the culture that surrounds it. Because I’m an extremely masculine presenting person, I frequently get asked, or more often told, that I am actually in the women’s restroom. So couldn’t I just go into the men’s, well, we both know that isn’t a systemic solution but there’s also another big reason I don’t and that’s violence. I feel much safer in a women’s restroom than a men’s, mainly because of various acts of violence or violation that might occur in a men’s restroom over a women’s. Ultimately, women can’t give me too much shit since, well, under the baggy sweatshirt, I have tits too.
So why do I bring this up, and why have bathrooms and gender been on my mind? See well, part of living in a van involves stopping at many odd spots to pee. Sometimes these are spots that feel more conservative and a lot less safe. (I’m aware that most of the time gas stations are fine, but the risk is too high to risk it.) Interestingly, people's perceptions of gender seem much more mixed in certain conservative areas. Take, for example, the time we stopped in St. Regis Montana. From the questionable t-shirts to the ungodly amount of living fish (stored in an aquarium), this place wasn’t an ideal spot, and yet, in walks a 200+ lbs woman in a baseball cap and t-shirt. She certainly didn’t scream feminine, and yet, she sure was. It was such a fascinating situation to experience. I would have loved to sit down with her and chat about her experiences with other perceptions, gender, and bathrooms.
Instead, I speed-ran my time in the bathroom. I’ve spent too many years facing the day-to-day traumas and fatigues, to take the time to just go to the bathroom. This also applies to wearing nail polish or doing anything that doesn’t fall into the set identity I’ve decided on.
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For the first time, I used the “men’s” restroom. I know, it doesn’t sound like a big deal. Girls do that all the time, especially at concerts where lines get ungodly long, but when you’re not secure in where you land on the gender spectrum, that becomes a different story. I’m sure I could walk in the men’s if I identified as a woman, but I don’t, and I honestly don’t know where I fall on that spectrum and therefore, it was a big deal. I also painted my nails, in like forever. And it was nice. I did have this weird experience where I was glad that people didn’t make a big deal about it, especially with the restroom incident, but honestly, I felt a little saddened by the lack of compliments on my nails. It was strange, longing for normalization but simultaneously hoping someone else will recognize that it’s a big deal for you and validate that. Is funny since there’s no way anyone else could read your mind and figure that out.
Regardless, it’s good to learn more about yourself, even if it’s from a stranger in St. Regis Montana.
