SOMETIMES, a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.
Earlier this month, transgender individual Gretchen Diez was told to use the men’s room by a janitor at a Quezon City mall. Ms. Diez allegedly retaliated by taking a Facebook Live video of the janitor — a livestream that has since been seen by a lot of people, including Rep. Geraldine Roman, the country’s first transgender individual in congress. The incident between Ms. Diez and the female janitor led to Ms. Diez’s arrest. They were subsequently released.
The incident has opened up a lot of questions, the most basic being — if you identify differently from the gender assigned from your birth, where should you pee?
There are two sides to the story. First, individuals like Ms. Diez are expressing their right to use bathrooms as any other individual. Furthermore, it’s also a safety issue: the world isn’t always nice to people who are different, so for transgender individuals, there is a fear of being harassed in a bathroom meant for something that they no longer relate to. On the other hand, people outside the LGBTQ+ spectrum cite safety concerns of their own — on internet comment sections and pronouncements by various personalities, including Senate President Vicente Sotto III they bring up possible scenarios of harassment against straight, cisgendered people sharing those bathrooms with trans individuals. Furthermore, it becomes an issue about gender: for these people, transwomen are not women, simply by virtue of whatever is in between their thighs.
BusinessWorld attended a meeting last Saturday called by Philippine LGBT Chamber of Commerce chair Brian Tenorio called “Usapang Banyo” (Bathroom Talk). Also present was fashion designer and transgender individual Mara Chua, who says, “It’s a very real reminder of the harsh realities that a lot of other transpeople experience.”
Ms. Chua had strong points on the scenario that men might disguise themselves as women and use the transgender card to gain access to women while they use the bathroom. “It’s an imagined scenario. Men don’t need to pretend to be women to harass women. They do it so easily every day.” A CNN article states that “70% of [transgender and gender non-conforming American] respondents reported being denied access, verbally harassed, or physically assaulted in public restrooms.” On the flipside, the cases of voyeurism and harassment committed by people claiming to be transgender are far rarer, with one case each from Idaho and Seattle.
“I kind of liken two-gendered bathrooms as outdated technology,” said Ms. Chua. “Education is very important. They’re very hard-set on the biological aspects of gender.”
Meanwhile, celebrity and actor Addy Raj, who identifies as an LGBTQ+ ally, cited an incident where his former manager went inside a men’s room to assist him with his hair and makeup. “You could see that they were not comfortable with her being there with me, and I could see there was judgment in the air.”
“People are tolerated, but not accepted,” he said, citing what he observes as a general attitude by Filipinos towards LGBTQ+ individuals. Noting that he works a lot with transgendered people in fashion, beauty, and showbiz, he points out that gender and sexuality can close off many opportunities for individuals. “How many transgender doctors and lawyers do you know?”
A solution proposed by both Ms. Chua and Mr. Tenorio would be changing the signage outside the bathroom doors, and reassigning bathrooms as all-gender bathrooms. Ms. Chua, citing studies in the field of semiotics, said, “That is the only thing that defines it as a male and female bathroom.” As for Mr. Tenorio, the proposal of the Chamber includes changing the purpose of PWD-restrooms, reclaiming them as all-gender bathrooms with PWD access.
A solution cited by others is to build a separate bathroom, but then, Amadeus Pagente, Supervising Health Program Officer for Mental Health under the Depatment of Health (DoH) said, “We’re trying to change mindsets, not trying to give solutions by creating another structure.”
“The long-term goal is to educate people about what it is to be trans. At the same time, you have to accept that it’s a design problem,” said Ms. Chua.
Quite literally, changing the sign of the bathrooms sounds like a band-aid solution, in that you unstick one old sticker and replace it with another. Mr. Tenorio says, “At least for now, as we move forward. It will solve a few things.”
“These are solutions for the beginning of the day, and as we progress. A lot of the solutions can begin developmentally, they happen in phases. It’s hard to implement everything in one shot… but you want to start with what’s easy to pass first, and then build from that.
In a later text to BusinessWorld, Mr. Tenorio said: “I think changing the signage of some comfort rooms is the workable solution for now because you don’t have to change infrastructure that much. But with changing signages, you can change how people interact with these spaces and eventually you get to influence too their ideas of how they are and how they interact with other people. Later on, this can be a way to design a better society that is just more considerate and accepting .” — JLG
