Susan's Place Transgender Resources

A few of my friends are driving me crazy over using the ladies in malls etc. They say what I doing is unethical and not right since I am yet to get my bottom surgery done and identify as a trans lesbian.... They say I will get arrested or something...

I get so frustrated by their banter that I just lock my self up and just keep silent.... Not sure how to respond to their stupid phobic behavior. Any help???

(https://www.susans.org/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Ftransgenderlawcenter.org%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2012%2F05%2FTLC-285.jpg&hash=746eb9dd2e61ba4ada9da2183ee2b1735c50349f)

This is Masen Davis.  He is a trans man who has not had bottom surgery.  Ask them for whom they feel it is more appropriate to use the ladies room, you or him.

I sooo totally will ask them.. My friends' behavior so drives me nuts..

If it was me I'd just tell them, "I am a woman and I will use the women's bathroom." I really don't get why some people are so hung up on this. It's no one's business what's below your skirt. Also, what does you being a lesbian have to do with anything? Do they think you're going to pick up chicks in the bathroom? Just point out how dumb they're being. That's my advice. There's nothing unethical about using a bathroom.

By the way, I should mention the only reason I am using that example is because Davis was the former director of the Transgender Law Center and would frequently use himself as an example why gender policing bathrooms is wrong.  I'm not just taking some random trans dude and making an example out of him.

Do you look female? Remembering that females come in all shapes, sizes, some with facial hair, some look very manly.
Yes - use the women

Quote from: skin on November 17, 2014, 12:18:25 AM
By the way, I should mention the only reason I am using that example is because Davis was the former director of the Transgender Law Center and would frequently use himself as an example why gender policing bathrooms is wrong.  I'm not just taking some random trans dude and making an example out of him.

Thank you .. I really appreciate it.. [emoji5] [emoji5]

Quote from: Nicole on November 17, 2014, 12:23:41 AM
Do you look female? Remembering that females come in all shapes, sizes, some with facial hair, some look very manly.
Yes - use the women

Nicole .. I guess I do pass like 90% of the time... Using the men in a skirt and heels will be super weird for me... That will definitely get me arrested.. Lol

Agreed. If you pass as female and are presenting as such then it is unreasonable to expect you to not use the ladies. Tell your friends to mind their own business.

As the others have said, use the ladies. Your friends are ......not friends!

You are a transgender woman, a female, females use the female toilet - unless you are at a concert and the ladies is packed, you then use female privilege and use the stalls in the guys, which often causes some disruption to their ablutions :laugh:

I'm agreeing with these ladies, if you look like a woman (feminine features, breast, and female clothes) then going into the men's room is just asking for some perv to take advantage and you mentioned you haven't had bottoms done yet would send some into an outrage. If they are truely your freinds I'm sure they wouldn't want you beaten to death for using the bathroom so I don't see why they are raising such a fuss.

If you want to still keep a middle ground though I'd suggested looking for the handicap stall. Its a single person stall used by the disabled, or special needs people, or those whom feel totally uncomfortable with using the main public restrooms like I do. Most place have one next to the main bathrooms.

How do people KNOW what you have down below?

It's immaterial. If you are a woman, use the women's washroom. Surgery has nothing to do with whether you are a woman.

Quote from: ssneha23 on November 17, 2014, 12:42:47 AM
Nicole .. I guess I do pass like 90% of the time... Using the men in a skirt and heels will be super weird for me... That will definitely get me arrested.. Lol

You don't have much to worry about being arrested using the men's if you look like a woman. However, it is a real possibility that you might be arrested if using the women's looking like a man.

The best situation would be to have all public restrooms be mult-user unisex with adequately private stalls. There is no real reason for any additional segregation.

Here's my two cents on the subject your preferred gender is female you present female you identify female. Therefore, you are female, and as such you are afforded all the rights and privileges of every other female on the planet. This includes using the women's washroom. If your friends are giving you that much grief. I agree they are not really friends a friend will support you have your back and be there to comfort you in times of need. This would include having to use the washroom.

Hugs,

Melissa Ann

Use the ladies... you go in a locked stall with a door. Nobody sees your privates.

Use the lady's room... not very lady like to be in the men's :)

Quote from: Ms Grace on November 17, 2014, 01:02:48 AM
Agreed. If you pass as female and are presenting as such then it is unreasonable to expect you to not use the ladies. Tell your friends to mind their own business.

I wouldn't even say 'if you pass".
I say if you are dressed as a female, you look female, you use the women's, even if others feel "off" by it, its your safety that you need to look after.

If someone has an issue with you doing it, you are not breaking a single law as far as I'm aware of, if you are, I'm sure the UN would have something in their human rights laws that'll cover it.

Quote from: ssneha23 on November 17, 2014, 12:04:11 AM
A few of my friends are driving me crazy over using the ladies in malls etc. They say what I doing is unethical and not right since I am yet to get my bottom surgery done and identify as a trans lesbian.... They say I will get arrested or something...

I get so frustrated by their banter that I just lock my self up and just keep silent.... Not sure how to respond to their stupid phobic behavior. Any help???

You are not doing anything unethical. You are a woman cis or trans. You go into a men's restroom looking like you do in your avatar, you are looking for trouble. You will or shouldn't get freaking aressted. Besides jail is safer than some men's restroom. I apologize to all our brothers, but even as male I have been almost assalted in a rest area men's restroom.

Their stupid banter? How to respond to thier stupid behaviour? Find some better friends. That is how I would respond. Jesus, are these girls too? If so... I would find some new friends that would accept me as me regardless. Especially some that would look out for me. The malls were I grew up the restrooms were down a hallway away from the main part and anyone could get raped there without your cries being heard.

Sometimes friends are not our real friends. Your real friends would stand outside the door if they knew you were trans and keep other women from coming in if you didn;t pass. Or just don't say anything at all if you do like in your avatar. Who the hell is gonna' know anyway. That would require you to strip and unless you did something really wrong. For using the bathroom without incident, I believe that would violate your rights. Peeing ain't wrong.

Thank you so much for all your responses ladies. That quietened down the stupid back of the voice that I was doing going wrong. All the friends who said this to me are guys. My female friends drag me to the ladies room all the time...

Quote from: ssneha23 on November 17, 2014, 06:44:37 PM
Thank you so much for all your responses ladies. That quietened down the stupid back of the voice that I was doing going wrong. All the friends who said this to me are guys. My female friends drag me to the ladies room all the time...

That makes sense. The only one that ever gave me crap about using the women's showers over on  the NPS national seashore has been my brother. Any other women never had an issue with it, although I always disrobed in the shower stall and dressed there too with the way its set up. Guys tend to have way more hangups about it.

Quote from: ssneha23 on November 17, 2014, 06:44:37 PM
Thank you so much for all your responses ladies. That quietened down the stupid back of the voice that I was doing going wrong. All the friends who said this to me are guys. My female friends drag me to the ladies room all the time...

Listen to your female friends. Yeah, don't listen to your guy friends, just follow your female friends. Let them drag you to the right restroom. There may be a reason. ;)

Well today I got to the bottom of why my guy friends kept pestering me on using the ladies.

Unfortunately.. I was sooo hurt when they basically said that they view me as a guy in a dress and not a woman. That is the reason they were pestering me.
I am so badly hurt with their response.

I have told them that they could take whatever time they need to come to terms with me and accept me as a 100% girl or I would lose them as friends.

The reality of possibly losing friends over the transition is finally setting in. And it sucks..

ssneha I know how you feel somewhat. I watched one of my trans friends go back and fowardth with someone he was friends with since elementary. They have gotten into fights, broke off the friendship and came back a few times. Truth be told a friendship is like any relationship just not sexual in most cases. (Ie friends with benifits)

What you need to do is figure out if you're able to be whom you want to be while still maintaining this relationship with your guy and girl fiends. If yes, that's awesome and congratulations you have great friends. On the flip side and we see this from time to time on the forums is both friend and spousal don't quite make it and we move on. You make other friends and are happy but this is not always the case. As I've noticed in life is its not always possible to do everything you want to do without hurting someones feelings and its better to speak the truth vs hiding it because where the truth does finally come out it makes things much worse. I've experienced this one recently myself.  :(

Whenever you make choices it has consequences, especially about being and becoming yourself. You filter out the people who love you either way and that proves their support and most likely you will be better friends afterwards and like them even more :) . But like with every filter you also work people out the system, who can't seem to take the hurdle you provided them...

Try to focus on your friends who accept you nontheless and let the friends you might have lost in the past. It only hurts as much as you let it hurt you.
Good luck

Quote from: ssneha23 on November 18, 2014, 03:50:16 AM
Well today I got to the bottom of why my guy friends kept pestering me on using the ladies.

Unfortunately.. I was sooo hurt when they basically said that they view me as a guy in a dress and not a woman. That is the reason they were pestering me.
I am so badly hurt with their response.

I have told them that they could take whatever time they need to come to terms with me and accept me as a 100% girl or I would lose them as friends.

The reality of possibly losing friends over the transition is finally setting in. And it sucks..

Maybe they are envious of you being able to use the women's restrooms and showers. I would like to be able to do that.

And you call those people "friends"? If you look like a woman it is imparative to use the ladies regardless of your genitals which by the way no one will see anyway whilst in the cubicle. Most of all you can definitely get into trouble if you went into the gents presenting as a girl, people might think you're mental or you've just gone into the wrong one.

Quote from: ssneha23 on November 18, 2014, 03:50:16 AM
I have told them that they could take whatever time they need to come to terms with me and accept me as a 100% girl or I would lose them as friends.

Good move.

QuoteThe reality of possibly losing friends over the transition is finally setting in. And it sucks..

Friends come and go. Do you really want people like that as your friends in your life?

Bravo, I'm glad to see you were able to get to the bottom of it. No one needs to be treated the way they were treating you. It's amazing how are transitions bring out the true colors of those people we called friends going into our transitions.
Mariah

Quote from: ssneha23 on November 18, 2014, 03:50:16 AM
Well today I got to the bottom of why my guy friends kept pestering me on using the ladies.

Unfortunately.. I was sooo hurt when they basically said that they view me as a guy in a dress and not a woman. That is the reason they were pestering me.
I am so badly hurt with their response.

I have told them that they could take whatever time they need to come to terms with me and accept me as a 100% girl or I would lose them as friends.

The reality of possibly losing friends over the transition is finally setting in. And it sucks..

Quote from: ssneha23 on November 18, 2014, 03:50:16 AM
Well today I got to the bottom of why my guy friends kept pestering me on using the ladies.

Unfortunately.. I was sooo hurt when they basically said that they view me as a guy in a dress and not a woman. That is the reason they were pestering me.
I am so badly hurt with their response.

Try a last-ditch solution. Get dressed very girly and the next time one of them is going to the loo go in with him. After all they say you should use the gents, then use it with them. I doubt you will get past the door once they panic but at that point you can force a decision and ask if they do not want you to use the gents or the ladies then what DO they want you to do?

Quote from: ssneha23 on November 18, 2014, 03:50:16 AM
The reality of possibly losing friends over the transition is finally setting in. And it sucks..

Indeed.

Quote from: ntppxx on November 23, 2014, 11:11:07 AM
Try a last-ditch solution. Get dressed very girly and the next time one of them is going to the loo go in with him. After all they say you should use the gents, then use it with them. I doubt you will get past the door once they panic but at that point you can force a decision and ask if they do not want you to use the gents or the ladies then what DO they want you to do?


Indeed.

Lol.. I can only begin to imagine the look on their faces..

You could always tell the story of this one trans girl that walked into the men's room n scared the ->-bleeped-<- out of n old man washing his hands n yep that girl was me lol  :laugh:

I tend to use the disabled toilets if I can but iv always had a weird thing about using a room with other people in it, like I've seen heaps of able people use em, I guess it's the same thing 

Ssneha I'm happy you got to the bottom of why your guy friends were upsetting you over this, and as many others have said, they're not your friends. If they were they'd care about your safety. Looking the way you do it could be dangerous for you to use the mens room. I know it would be for me and almost was when I wandered into a poorly marked mens room once purely by mistake at a boat ramp while on vacation down at Lake Okeechobee a few years back.

Bottom line, your a woman so use the ladies room. And also I agree with a few others here; listen to your girl friends.

Ally ;)

I feel so nervous going with my 4 y.o. daughters to the men's rooms in places where there are no family restrooms. Oh well, won't have that issue in a few months.  ;D

Another thing to remember is that not all trans persons will get bottom surgery. There is a full mosaic of trans people in the world. Just because you haven't had bottom surgery does not make you any less a woman. Full SRS surgery is out of reach or not what these individual s decide is right for them. Bottom line is that regardless of whether you had bottom surgery or not, if you are presenting as female, you should use the ladies restroom. No one is doing spot checks on genitals. Also, your friends need to realize that this will be the norm from now on. If they don't then you'll always be one of the guys for them. Yes it's hard to lose friends, but you need allies by your side. 

I would research the law, just to be 100% certain it's on your side (it can vary by state). Then I'd keep a copy of it and shove that under their noses every time they said something, but I'm a smartass like that. :)

Other than that, I'm glad to see you're mostly over it, but I'm with everyone else : a woman uses the woman's bathroom, period. Imagine how intrusive and offensive it would be - to cis people too! - if they examined everybody's genitalia at the door.  Failing that, in the *women's* room at least nobody sees what is in anyone else's pants (it may be that, as guys, they just don't realize how much privacy there is in there?!).

Quote from: ssneha23 on November 17, 2014, 12:42:47 AM
Nicole .. I guess I do pass like 90% of the time... Using the men in a skirt and heels will be super weird for me... That will definitely get me arrested.. Lol

I tried using the men's room once and the reaction was predictable.  "This is the men's room girl you can't come in here". 

Quote from: ssneha23 on November 18, 2014, 03:50:16 AM
Well today I got to the bottom of why my guy friends kept pestering me on using the ladies.

Unfortunately.. I was sooo hurt when they basically said that they view me as a guy in a dress and not a woman. That is the reason they were pestering me.
I am so badly hurt with their response.

I have told them that they could take whatever time they need to come to terms with me and accept me as a 100% girl or I would lose them as friends.

The reality of possibly losing friends over the transition is finally setting in. And it sucks..

The bottom line here^^___^^ is they were never really your friends in the first place with attitudes like theirs. So far during my transition I've only lost a total of two as I call them, "false friends." Both are men who actually feel I've betrayed some sort of 'male code/privilage' or something a long those lines. And yet these two were the only guys I knew who make jeers/cat calls at women also make with the sexual remarks referring to their privates and male prowess behind their backs. These were also the type of 'so called' friends whom only called me when they wanted something or to borrow money. My life has been much richer, and better, also much more stress free without them in it as I suspect yours will be too given a lil time. Yes, initially, the loss of someone whom you think is a friend over your transition is a bit of a shock. But remember this: a true friend would want to see you happy and living a full life rather than keep you in misery just to satisfy some ancient male stereotype. So if they will not accept you as 100% girl, Hun, your better off without them dragging you down.

Feel lucky you got to the bottom of this when you did before more of your valuable time was wasted on them.

Just my $.02.

Ally :icon_flower:

Quote from: Allyda on November 28, 2014, 08:37:11 AM
The bottom line here^^___^^ is they were never really your friends in the first place with attitudes like theirs. So far during my transition I've only lost a total of two as I call them, "false friends." Both are men who actually feel I've betrayed some sort of 'male code/privilage' or something a long those lines. And yet these two were the only guys I knew who make jeers/cat calls at women also make with the sexual remarks referring to their privates and male prowess behind their backs. These were also the type of 'so called' friends whom only called me when they wanted something or to borrow money. My life has been much richer, and better, also much more stress free without them in it as I suspect yours will be too given a lil time. Yes, initially, the loss of someone whom you think is a friend over your transition is a bit of a shock. But remember this: a true friend would want to see you happy and living a full life rather than keep you in misery just to satisfy some ancient male stereotype. So if they will not accept you as 100% girl, Hun, your better off without them dragging you down.

Feel lucky you got to the bottom of this when you did before more of your valuable time was wasted on them.

Just my $.02.

Ally :icon_flower:

Thanks Ally.. I think your $.02 are actually worth a million. You are so right. We all have the right to experience our lives to the fullest. Anyone dragging me down is not going to part of my life. That's for sure.. [emoji5] [emoji5]

Yes. It is a tough question in my daily life. All students know that I am a dad, and in the campus, which room should I use while wearing skirt?

Even in male mode, my long hair alone caused some confusion and fuss in men's room, not just in my country, but also in other countries.

In some cases, there are a room for handicapped people, and I prefer it.

Yesterday I happened to meet one of my female colleagues at women's restroom. She said she was surprised at seeing me, but no further comment. All of my friends know who I am.

Sometimes I chat with a female friend at the next stall.

barbie~~

Your friends are ignorant as hell. How dare they, honestly. Can't see why you'd consider such ignorant people your friends? You're a GIRL. Male genitalia or not, you're a girl. I had a similar situation where an old friend asked me in a shocked tone, "You use the girls bathroom??" & I just looked at him like ,  no ->-bleeped-<-. If I walked into a guys bathroom they'd tell me to get out because they'd think I was a girl, no doubt about it. Explaining to him that even though I have a penis I'm still a girl was annoying. I can't understand how people can be so stupid as to not understand that a guy can have a vagina & a girl can have a penis. It's not like you're gonna whip it out to anyone there.

Sorry, but this post hit close to home because in the past I was told I wasn't allowed to use a woman restroom on atleast 3 different occasions in my life. People can be really stupid.

I don't pass at all as I'm only on HRT for 1 week now. I've been using the women's at work and everyone has gotten used to it. However when I went to Atlanta for my HRT appointment, I needed to use the restroom in Wendy's on the way back. I used the women's and was concerned about which room to use and if I could get attacked over it as both Georgia and Alabama aren't friendly to LGBT in general. Fortunately I live in a non southern pocket that doesn't seem to mind me presenting as Ashley 100% of the time. But the way I see it, I'm wearing dresses and skirts so I use the women's.

Use the womens. Its just too odd to go back in the mens when you are you. Never understood why women got so upset on this idsue. They use stalls that are divided, and i've never yet encountered someone hopping over the divider for some reason. Women were pissed at work until they figured out its a non-issue, now they would think it odd if i used the mens.

Have to go into mens?  Put on your best pouty face and tell them theres a line in the womens and you have to go now or you're afraid you might pee yourself   ;D