A timelessly tedious trans topic
“This is kind of a random question, but which toilet do you use?”
My son asks this as we are walking through a shopping centre. I suppress a laugh as I think of all the times I have dodged the question of ‘which one’ by avoiding toilets in malls altogether. “I know it’s a random question”, he pauses, “but it’s very necessary”.
Children so often can cut through layers of complexity and social conditioning, identifying what’s important. My son’s unfiltered eye sees where complexity lies, and homes in on that. Until I began transitioning, I had only glimpsed what complex and political spaces are public restrooms. Laws say who can use what; public signs are needed to remind people of those laws; misguided and cruel public campaigns rage over the perceived safety (or lack of) that gender diverse people bring to binary restrooms. But as my son realises, when you’ve gotta go, you’ve gotta go.
I figure I can be as direct answering as he was in asking, replying that it depends on how I appear. If I am not presenting as strongly feminine I might use male toilets, but otherwise I would use the women’s, unless I can locate my preferred option – unisex facilities.
He nods.
If only leaders in our community could take diversity in their stride the same way he does. Which puts me in mind of an evening two years prior.
Friends had invited me to join them to celebrate my birthday. All of us juggling careers, children and busy lives, we nevertheless managed to schedule an evening. With encouragement from both, I prepare to go out in public in a dress for the first time. Which of course means half the wardrobe is strewn across my room as one option after another is rejected.
One of my friends comes over and helps. We settle on a dress. She looks me up and down, at the heels, stockings and floral print, and gives a bright smile: we are good to go.
We drive to one of the city’s best restaurants. Much later I will come to understand the thought my friends had put into choosing this venue. They were selecting somewhere worthy of frocking up, but in a discreet location with nearby parking so that I didn’t have to traipse out in the open for blocks on my first outing. Now, as we take the ten meagre steps from car to restaurant door, it dawns on all three of us that perhaps a longer walk was warranted, and that this short hike might actually be a let-down. What I remain present to now, as I was then, is how much my friends wanted my first outing in a dress to be a positive experience for me in every way.
Inside, a waiter shows us to our table. I’m looking across at their radiantly happy faces; I feel elated and very much in need of sharing sparkling wine to celebrate being here. We are discussing the fabulous choices on the menu when a look comes over one friend’s face. They briefly confer. I’m thinking – have I smeared the makeup? Can they not decide how to tell me that my five o’clock shadow is, well, a shadow? Then they mouth something and point very discretely.
Turning to look behind you in a quiet restaurant is not easily achieved inconspicuously, but I do my best.
At the table behind us, just a few feet away, is Peter Dutton.
Seriously? The first time I leave the house in a frock, I have plonked down next to one of the country’s most abrasive, conservative, obnoxious members of parliament. A man who fought consistently against same-sex marriage. A man whose remarks about African migrants in Melbourne were publicly labelled as racist. A man who pushed migration law to the limit in keeping out – or kicking out – of Australia people he did not care for. Given one of my friends at the table is a human rights lawyer and the other a children’s advocate, between us we are electric with antipathy.
He is backgrounding a journalist over dinner. His protection detail are sitting at another table.
We try not to keep glancing or staring.
After we eat, that tedious transgender topic starts to press on my mind and bladder alike. I grimace and lean toward my friends. “Which toilet should I use?”
As one, my friends agree – definitely the male one. “Wait until Dutton goes in. Stand at the urinal next to him and hoik up your frock. Say hello from us.”
