My partner and I found a lovely city park with a picnic area and gazebo to eat breakfast in after camping on National Forest land nearby. After a mug of coffee, I visited the public restroom. I didn’t expect a stranger to yell at me through the flimsy stall door.
“Hello? Are you a male or female?”
I was the only person using the restroom — the kids who had been in there a minute ago had left. I felt this man’s eyes on my sneakers and blue hiking pants under the stall. I was scared this harassment could escalate if I didn’t say something to diffuse the situation. I gulped and called back, “Hello?”
“Oh, you’re a female. My bad.” He sounded reassured by my quavering voice. I heard his footsteps leaving the room. My heart raced as I fumbled with toilet paper, fingers shaking. I felt nauseated.
My voice had immediately identified me as the “female” I didn’t feel myself to be — and all it took was two syllables. But my “female” voice had also saved me from further harassment. Would that man have dragged me out of the stall if I sounded “like a man” or remained quiet? Would he have looked under the stall? Would he have tried to check what was between my legs while my pants were down? Did he have any idea how much of a violation these real and imagined threats were to me?
And why was a man even in the women’s room, questioning me? Did a kid’s mother report me to her husband for looking too much like a man in the women’s room? Perhaps they were alarmed that I, with my short hair, had been in the restroom with their young kids. I felt physically ill at the troubling thought that someone would assume I would do anything harmful to children. I hadn’t said anything, made eye contact with anyone or done anything other than sit quietly in the stall in the room that matches my assigned sex at birth.
I felt bad for looking masculine to make myself more comfortable, because I didn’t want to make anyone else uncomfortable. Some part of me longed to return to my habit of looking more like a woman, but I also felt sick from not feeling right in my body.
I can empathize with these strangers viewing me and my body as a threat because I have also viewed my body as a threat. I have been unhappy with the shape of my body, my appearance in the mirror and the tone of my voice. And to have that thrown back in my face in such a vulnerable moment — pants down, defenseless, forced by my body’s very personal needs to be in this gendered room — hit close to home.