Don’t you just love using public toilets? I know I do. Unlike your throne at home, there’s so much more permanent marker, so much more perverted scrawl on the walls, and so many more phone numbers ready to call in case you get lonely. And let’s not forget that persistent aroma of ammonia that seems to leech into whatever you’re wearing whenever you enter one.
And don’t you just love having a poo in public between two piss-scented plywood walls some pervert has drilled little holes through to see you doing said poo? I know I do. And wouldn’t it be sheer ecstasy if, perchance, there might be a little camera watching you while you do said poo too?
Okay, Let’s Cut The Crap
No sane human being likes using a public toilet. If you do, you’re either not sane or you’re a pervert. It doesn’t matter if you’re a man or a woman. If you’re either and you’re remotely normal, you either try to hold it until you get home or, over time, you cultivate a mental list of ‘safe shitting places.’
You know exactly what I mean, because we all do it. When you start a new job, you try and figure out which is the least frequented restroom in the building, so you you can drop the kids off at the pool as discretely as possible when you need to.
Likewise, when nature starts beating the bum drum when you are out in public, you stop off at your mum’s on the way home if you have to. Either that ooryou seek out that clean supermarket or public convenience, where when you were last there, you were pleasantly relieved by the lack of anyone else answering nature’s call.
This, though, begs a very important question. Namely, if you’re a trans woman, what is it that makes it imperative for you to gain access to the very grotty public spaces that the rest of the human race would rather go through hell or high water to avoid?
Can’t you just head for the disabled loo too, like the rest of us always try to? It’s so much cleaner and quiet, and private.
JK Rowling Won – Get Over It
If I could pen a letter to Daniel Radcliffe, the supposed trans rights advocate who JK Rowling initially made famous, I wouldn’t ask him to define what a woman is. Instead, I’d ask him to define dignity.
I was homeless for a while once, and when you’re homeless, you gain a certain understanding of what constitutes a good public toilet over a bad one. Wilkinsons in Sunderland was always the best. Possibly it was because everyone was so wowed by the low prices of everything that they didn’t have time to pee.
Whatever it was that kept people away, it didn’t matter. I could have a full sink shower there every day and wash my clothes without anyone noticing. It was heaven. Sadly, on the other end of the public toilet spectrum, there was a restroom in a nearby park where once I tried to do a number two, only to have some old man appear above me, having climbed onto the toilet in the next stall to feverishly wave 20 quid at me over the plywood divider.
Needless to say, I exited quickly and made an immediate beeline for Wilkinsons.
This, though, is what makes me and everyone not on TV so perplexed about the whole trans rights toilet and changing room debate.
I mean, we’re not really talking about giving X, Y, or whatever sex/gender access to a so-called ‘safe space.’ We’re talking about already unsafe spaces that no one really wants to use unless they have to, having their doors thrown wide open to potentially a lot more perverts.
And let’s cut the crap. If you have public toilet or public changing room idealization, you’re a pervert. For the rest of us, these are nasty places to be, unless we have to be in them out of necessity. So why on earth would you go through hell or high water to get into one?
Mmmhh?