“Do I piss myself or risk getting hit?” That’s a question I have to ask myself nearly every time I go out into the world.
As a transgender woman living in the liberal Bay Area, you’d think it’d be relatively easy to find a bathroom that feels safe to use, given the influx of gender-neutral stalls. But even here, it’s hard — so hard that I know people who have pissed in their cars, into big-ass a McDonald’s soda cup, or on the side of the road, just to avoid the drama that can come from using a public restroom.
Every time I do use a restroom in public, it’s like sticking a fork in a socket and waiting for the jolt. No, I have never gotten hit. I have never been beaten. But that doesn’t stop myself for bracing for it every time, knowing that people are people. Across the country, you hear stories about people who bring guns into bathrooms or call the cops on someone who looks like they shouldn’t be there.
Most of the trans women I know take longer to leave the house because they need to make sure they aren’t going to have to go to the bathroom when they’re out. I even know girls who have almost had medical emergencies because they’ve held it for two hours.
Do you know what it’s like to receive a gift of a spa treatment and not be able to use it because you don’t know if you’ll be allowed to? I don’t, because I’m a peasant, but I know someone who has that issue. I know someone who won’t go to a single gym because she knows she won’t be allowed in the showers and can’t stand to think of driving home covered in sweat.
You might think that the safe place for trans people is California, the golden land of liberals and Pride, with its many rainbow flags. Everyone loves the gays here, right? Where else would I want to piss? Well, it turns out that that’s not really true.
In general, being trans is a great thing for, like, one reason, and then the worst thing on earth for about six billion other reasons, including this little medicine named Spironolactone, one of the only things we can take to help block testosterone. Ingesting it is basically like deep-throating a candy cane. It makes your stomach feel like you ate a solid pound of mud. And worse, it makes you have to piss every 3.47 seconds.
Our other options are hearing a doctor say, “Ooo, I don’t know if I can prescribe that” or cutting our balls out. (A lot of us go for the latter for a lot of reasons, but for me, the main driving force behind my upcoming orchiectomy is how nasty these pills are in taste and effect. I just want to be able to sit through a Marvel movie without having to go pee twice.)
Spironolactone is used by the majority of medically transitioning trans women, which makes the bathroom bills — like the ones that North Carolina used like a heat-seeking missile to attack every non-gender-conforming woman-appearing person in the state — especially painful.
So what’s a trans woman to do when every time she leaves the house, she needs to pee approximately 1,857 times? Is there anywhere that’s safe for us?
You might think that the safe place for trans people is California, the golden land of liberals and Pride, with its many rainbow flags. Everyone loves the gays here, right? Where else would I want to piss?
Well, it turns out that that’s not really true.
I drove across the country once from Florida to California. I stopped at a small gas station in a place you could argue was a town. There was a lot of dirt and a highway and another gas station about a stone’s throw away. That’s all you could see. It seemed like that’s all there was for miles. I had to pee, and I was in this ostentatious octopus tentacle dress, which is all the rage in rural Louisiana, I tell you. Something about this felt less dangerous than in the city, though.
See, there’s this thing where, in less progressive places, people don’t know what transgender people look like. You could get away with peeing in front of them, and they would just ask you if you need something for your severe UTI. You could go out in a dress, at 6'5", and not get much more than a glance. It’s hard to break the rules of femininity in a place where people just don’t expect to see queer people, let alone trans women. We’re the monsters of the cities and the sewers.
That’s why it has always felt much more dangerous to go pee in a “progressive” place than a combination gas station / chicken stand in the middle of Louisiana swampland.
People know what to look for — the tells. The first time I was ever dissed for being a tranny was in a big city. They’re not safer, because everyone knows that’s where you live — that’s where you’re a target. That’s where they’re looking for you.
So peeing in the Bay Area, a place that some consider a mecca for trans and queer people, is a puzzle. But over the years, I’ve come up with a list of places that I consider OK to pee in as an unshaven, six-foot-tall mess wearing a Green Day shirt and a ripped-up skirt, but not many.
One of my personal favorites is a little outside the city. Down Highway 1 a bit in Half Moon Bay, there’s a little Taco Bell on the beach. It’s probably my favorite — lots of parking, two nice single-person bathrooms, a good view of the beach cliffs and the ocean, and—hey—Taco Bell! Who doesn’t like Taco Bell, aside from people looking to live after age 35?
Concerts, packed bars, and so on? You cannot pee. You can never pee. I’m so sorry — you can buy Depends.
A Starbucks is always good as well. One of the neat things about being trans and having to pee all the time is that since you’re trans, you probably never have any money. But you can use Starbucks bathrooms without paying, and aside from the fact that they’re single-person bathrooms, Starbucks employees aren’t allowed to turn you away for being a degenerate. Plus, you can get a big cup of freezing-cold water for free, which is great for hot days and Pride marches, and for those of us who are dirt fucking poor (or even homeless) and who need—ya know—water to survive.
CVS is another good option. The one I use has two large single restrooms, and there’s almost no one in the place except bored cashiers and 80-year-olds.
Queer events are safe, sometimes. Zinefests. Trans gatherings. But as for non-queer events? Concerts, packed bars, and so on? You cannot pee. You can never pee. I’m so sorry—you can buy Depends.
Sometimes I look around for porta potties. It’s the worst, but I’ve used them before, and it’s either those or walking over to the park’s bathroom, where all the families are.
People talk about health care and housing as human rights. What about the right to piss without endangering ourselves?
Any place with single-use bathrooms where you don’t have to ask for a key or a passcode—or explain which of the bathrooms you’re going to use before going in—is A-OK with me. Gas stations in richer neighborhoods are good.
If you’re in a nice restaurant, you can feel rather safe using the bathroom. In general, if you’re rich or appear to be so, people are always nicer to you. But some of us don’t have the money to get water or homes or weed — God save us. Some of us are going to piss outside. Or in cans. Or not at all. Or down our thighs.
Which brings up another point: peeing as a homeless person — I can say this as a former homeless person — sucks. Think of all the places you go into that have signs that read, “NO PUBLIC RESTROOMS” or “BATHROOMS FOR PAYING CUSTOMERS” or “PISS OUTSIDE LIKE THE DOG YOU ARE. BATHROOMS ARE FOR PEOPLE WHO MATTER, DEVIANT.” If you go into a store appearing to be homeless, then you’ve got eyes on you. Locked doors. Police on hold. (Well, the back of a police car is a pretty OK place to pee in if you’ve got no other choices.)
There are even apps — including Charmin-branded ones — dedicated to finding bathrooms, allowing you to sort for bathrooms where you don’t need to rent the stall (which will become truth at some point). Peeing as a moneyless person is harder than peeing as a trans women, but a lot of us aren’t one or the other — we’re both. Like I said, I’ve been homeless. It’s hard enough to find a bathroom that doesn’t seem immediately dangerous to a trans person. Finding one you can even get into as a homeless person? Forget it.
People talk about health care and housing as human rights. What about the right to piss without endangering ourselves? You shouldn’t have to pay or put your life in danger to pee.
