Catherine Newman’s son explained he was actually a boy, but the guy still proceeded to call him an “it”.
–
I just want to start by applauding your decision to shout at us right off the bat. “She was in the men’s room! Your daughter was in the men’s room! A girl in the men’s room!” For one thing, how else will we learn? For another, how else will we be covered in spittle? Plus, I think it’s good, if you see something unexpected, to proceed with violent certainty rather than with, say, wonder or even doubt. Like the time I found that slightly darker O in my bowl of Cheerios and freaked out because I knew for sure that it was a wheel from the landing gear of a miniature UFO that was going to abduct me and probe my anus; if it were cereal, it would look like the rest of the cereal. Likewise, if you see a doll with short hair, even if it’s lying next to a pair of scissors, you should think, “Ew. When did Ken’s boobs get so big?”
It made sense, too, to continue to insist that he was a girl, even after he calmly explained that he had been in the men’s room because he was a boy. (“It’s Ken! But Ken has boobs!”) And your distress over imagining that a preadolescent girl saw your man parts—“I was naked in there! She saw me naked!”—makes such an important point about the prevalence of peeping-Tommery in young girls, and the ways that middle-aged men are vulnerable to them.
To answer your question, “Are you its mom?” more unambiguously: Yes. But you’re smart to ask, because maybe the whole family is a transgendered house of mirrors and I’m really “its” dad! (Last laugh—i.e. my having it—alert!) Certainly, though, it made a lot of sense to imagine that I had colluded in the perversion of sending a girl into the men’s room because, after all, what parent doesn’t want their daughter to be in a tiled room full of urinating men?
In conclusion, thank you for your valuable input. I can only hope that my son will leave behind his girly days of placid confidence and grow into somebody as manly as you—with the kind of balls it takes to scream at a child in public.
yours truly,
Its Mother
Originally appeared at Ben and Birdy
Photo: Flickr/AntonJuncher
Come on, this is just funny. No need to overanalyze it.
Let the son stand up for himsrlf. If he can’t or doesn’t want to then he can just wait 5min till the other guy is gone. No big deal.
Now George,
Big scary screaming strangers may be okay for the Bill O’Reilly show, but not for public bathrooms and children. That’s a “no, no”.
Honestly, what IS it with straight people and bathrooms? Reading about this AND the new transphobic “law” in Arizona in less than 24 hours is breathtaking.
Sad to say it, but I’ve seen crap like this in gay & lesbian clubs too. Well, not to do with kids, obviously…but signs on bathroom doors that are transphobic and all about gender enforcement.
But yeah, in general I think the queer community’s coming around a lot faster than the mainstream.
Heather – I once had an experience like this in a lesbian bar and thought the same thing: what the F difference does it make which bathroom I use? There might be transgendered people here! When I’m in a gay bar I don’t yell at the women for using the restroom. Frankly, I couldn’t care less. But this woman was SO insistent that I was in her lesbian bathroom when, in fact, the sign on the door said, “MEN” because the bar gets a mixed crowd. The overriding issue is going to take a while for straight people to accept… Read more »
Well we all know bathrooms aren’t just used as bathrooms, if you get what I’m saying. So I think a lot of the gender enforcement is a misguided attempt to have a mixed bar, while keeping the bathrooms spaces where you can go for a quicky. Which is pretty ridiculous. Unless you’re a total newbie, you know what’s going on and just ignore it…or just don’t go the bars where it happens.
In a gay bar, you have women and, often, drag queens , using the men’s restroom, and the men don’t freak out. But, unlike the story of the kid being screamed at by grown men, you’re not going to ever have a transsexual in a gay bar being chased out of hir gender-appropriate bathroom, much less arrested for it as s/he would be in a public restroom in Arizona.
Um, I’ve definitely seen people who do not conform to gender norms being harassed and kicked out of gay bars for using the “wrong” bathroom. Not often, but I’ve seen it.
But yeah, I’ve never seen anyone arrested for it in a gay bar. And that law in Arizona is just horrible.
FORGET BATHROOMS, WHAT IS IT WITH STRAIGHT PEOPLE AND YELLING? (I’m straight, so I’m yelling this question.)
Thanks for the great letter, Catherine. The odds are this guy will never see it, but wouldn’t it be nice if we could make him “Clockwork Orange” read it?
OKAY! THANKS! BYE NOW!