A Urinary Tranifesto: A Response to President Golden Showers
Some Background:
A SPECTRE IS HAUNTING OUR BATHROOMS.
Yesterday President He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named reversed the most basic protection of trans students: the right to pee.
Despite the fact that just a year ago, Candidate Whatshisface said “that transgender people should be allowed to use whatever bathroom they feel most comfortable with — including at Trump Tower in New York,” now he says it’s an issue of states’ rights and if states want to discriminate, they can discriminate.
And boy/girl/whatever are some states just itching to discriminate. Texas already has the “Privacy Act” ready to go which would prevent trans people from peeing in the bathroom they are most comfortable in and of course North Carolina has already tried this anti-trans shit.
Just so you know, in schools this will affect the 150,000 youth who identify as trans, not to mention the countless others who are gender queer or non-conforming. Many civil rights groups worry that the change will lead to increased bullying of trans and gender non-conforming students. And many of the bathroom bills and laws police all public restrooms. One 2015 study showed
59% of trans people have avoided bathrooms in the past year because they were afraid of confrontations in public restrooms. That 31% have avoided eating or drinking so they would not need to use a public restroom and that 8% have suffered urinary tract or or kidney infection or other kidney related problems as a result of avoiding the restroom.
In other words, this is an issue of social justice and we must all take a stand (or a sit) to OCCUPY THE TOILET.
Toilets have historically been a space for segregating by race (colored vs. white) and by ability (handicap accessible or not), but they also have been a space for enforcing the gender binary. It is at the entrance to public toilets that our gender and the “opposite” gender are written onto our bodies and into our psyches.
But like the segregated lunch counter, it is time to SIT IN (or stand in if that is how you pee)!
We must all put our own bodies on the line- cis and trans alike- to finally desegregate urinary space. High school students and their teachers as well as each and every citizen who wants to prevent the spread of this sort of toxic anti-trans sentiment over the land must pee in the “other” bathroom.
It will be uncomfortable. It will, in some states, be illegal. But all the
must go into the
And all the
must go into the
Regardless of your genitals now or at birth!
We must destroy urinary gender segregation and therefore liberate the toilet from state control!
Republicans will pass their discrimination into law, but when they enter the bathrooms to police them, to demand our birth certificates, we will present them with such a confusing mix of genders and bodies in urinary spaces that they will have no choice but to cede to the will of We the People! (or Wee the Peeple if I am going to push the urinary pun to its limit)
So if you can, if you have enough privilege to risk peeing in the “wrong” bathroom, join the urinary revolution. Insist on desegregating bathrooms wherever you go.
Get stared at. Get yelled at. GET ARRESTED! We who have cis-privilege have nothing to lose but our chains! And our trans sisters and brothers need our protection from President Golden Showers and his army of gender policing trolls.
