I’ve been following the story from The Toronto Star this week, how their ethics contributor may have been duped by a story about a senior woman being harassed by a transwoman in the changeroom of a local YMCA. The whole thing flip-flopped in good in bad ways. But how it is related in this excellent piece by Paris Lees—and the whole idea of where transfolk should relieve themselves—we get a much better picture of the hysteria that has been attached to the whole situation.
At first the story was headlined with “Transgender Man”—but the paper did change and apologize for that. Then, as Lees notes, the advice given is, by and large, pretty sound and respectful of the trans community. However, that is entirely overshadowed by the possibility that this whole situation was a ruse to bait people into demonizing trans people and setting up that fear again.
I’m glad that Lees wrote this piece with so much knowledge of what has been happening for years in other parts of the world. A high school has been handling this bathroom issue for a decade, yet here in Toronto it is still a major issue in a major paper.
We all shit, we all piss, some of us use bathrooms to “freshen up,” some of us use them to “drop the kids at the pool.” Hell, some of us buy awful colognes, mints, tampons and condoms in them. Some of us even fuck in them. Regardless of all that, we all use them and why the hell do we care who is in there with us?
