by Ramin Mazaheri
I must admit that I have only ever read just one article on transgender bathrooms – it seemed like such a minor issue that I didn’t see the need to follow it. There are only so many hours in the day, and I prefer to report on anti-imperialist and pro-socialist issues.
It certainly seems like a fair assumption that many other journalists and activists in the West are covering the transgender bathroom issue quite extensively, no? So it’s not as if my involvement is essential.
I assumed that my stance as a leftist – someone who necessarily opposes all forms of prejudice – would make my ignorance regarding the transgender bathroom situation permissible.
Not so, according to an email I received….In the interest of balance, I would like to reprint it here:
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Date: November 5, 2017
Dear Mr. Mazaheri, (Or Ms. Mazaheri, if that is what you secretly prefer to be called.)
I am a militant in the transgender bathroom underground.
I have read and watched your reports, and for someone claiming to be a leftist I notice that you have never reported on transgender bathroom issues?
Therefore, I insist that you publish this letter to rectify this telling omission. If not, you can expect protests and public disruptions against your work, which may begin as soon as the next time you go to the bathroom.
We in the transgender bathroom community believe that the bathroom is the ultimate repository for all serious political thought in the West. Indeed, we insist that the bathroom has always been the informal polling station of society – well, we are making it formal by bringing politics into our toilets. I’m sorry to inform an obvious reactionary like yourself: “Our time in the water closet is over.”
What you fail to realize (despite your alleged leftism) is that this issue is obviously the apex of cultural Marxism, which is the most modern and therefore the highest form of Marxism. We American Marxists were right to remove all the economic aspects.
All I can say in your favor is: at least you haven’t done reports which deride our bathroom movements as “identity politics”?
Yes, we identify as transgender, what’s fundamentally unclear about that? We work around the clock to make sure everyone knows how things are going for us in the bathroom, and we ask you to not try and change the subject.
I will get to the point: Transgender bathrooms are the Selma of my generation!
Someday they will make an Oscar-winning movie about our struggle, and what could be a better representation of the American dream than to watch freedom finally flow in the bathroom? And on the big screen no less! Just as African-Americans faced down on water hoses, our water hoses will no longer be switched on in non-transgender-denominated bathrooms!
Don’t you dare call me crude! The crimes against humanity my people have endured are the ultimate crudeness! What is Hiroshima and Nagasaki compared to our own disaster? How many times have we been forced to sit in a stall next to you and endure your own personal Hiroshimas and Nagasakis! And, on top of it all, we can only assume that you are not even transgender. Oh no, we will not tolerate accusations of being low-minded here!
Shame and condemnation for those who say that this is a juvenile topic! High school students are not bringing up the transgender bathroom issue as a way to distract their parents from their bad grades – that is a common fallacy.
“I’m too worried about going to the bathroom,” is a completely justified response to a parent who asks, “Shouldn’t you be studying instead of still being on your smart phone?” But the non-transgendered can never understand us, as you surely floated through high school and were never teased for your physical appearance or your failure to reach society’s highest ideals.
Stop wasting the human resources of the transgendered! We demand that billions of dollars taxes immediately be re-routed from less worthy programs in order to install gender-neutral bathrooms everywhere.
And we insist on high-class commodes! We want bathrooms with toilets and urinals, like they have in Europe, the classiest place on earth ever. Nothing says “class’ more than going to the bathroom with someone of the opposite sex two feet away and at the same time.
Because what good is it to feed a starving transgender when you don’t give them a place to safely evacuate that food? What good is getting a job for an unemployed transgender when they would much rather have their own bathroom? Why choose diplomacy over war, when some people are fighting a war every day just to go to the bathroom? The pressure is killing us….
Do you really think that transgenders care more about the price of health insurance, university education, child care, senior care and other such nonsense when they are not perfectly pleased with the state and condition of public restrooms? You, Mr. (or Ms.) Mazaheri, are quite, quite naïve….
Of course, we transgender bathroom militants respect cultural differences: India will require transgender walls to urinate on in public; Turkey will actually save a lot of money because all they need is a sign – a hole in the floor is like any other hole in the floor, after all; hillbilly regions around the world will need to rely on the honor system as to which bush can safely and comfortably be used by transgender people.
But transgender bathrooms are more important than all the wars are going on in the world right now! I don’t want to say that it is more important than the Holocaust, because that would be a gross exaggeration, but it’s clearly worth at least a Nakba or three, no?
You might be surprised to learn that I was a Hillary supporter. Because the enemies of transgender bathroom-ism sabotaged her campaign, I can now reveal that her first act in a conquered Syria would have been to introduce transgender bathroom regulation. Surely, she would have been received as a transgender queen/king by the Syrian people for doing this! This missed opportunity to make Syria the leading transgender bathroom nation in the Muslim world must truly be considered as the biggest tragedy of the conflict, I’m sure all will agree.
Syria clearly reveals that there can be no piecemeal, Stalinist, “transgender bathroom in one nation at a time” approach; the tenets of universal, immediate, Trotskyist transgender bathroom revolution insist on a global humanitarian intervention immediately!
The kingdom of the porcelain throne is a reactionary monarchy! End the bathroom apartheid! No defecation without desegregation!
Every time we hear the “whoosh” of a toilet flushing, to us it is the clarion call of unfettered freedom! Cast off your shackles and leave the bathroom lighter in body and spirit!
Mr. (or Ms.) Mazaheri, I can prove the absolute primacy of our struggle with a joke taken from your own Iranian people:
“Which is the most important need on earth – the need for air, water, food or sex? The answer is…none of them: When you really have to go to the bathroom, nothing else matters!!!!!”
Clearly, there is a world of truth in this joke from an ancient people whose abilities in the bathroom would have been legendary had bathroom politics had not been so cruelly oppressed….
Ultimately, the oppression of our people means that we have no choice: we will soon declare a transgender homeland.
We simply must have a transgender state, and our people are scouting a region in the Amazon right now. We were thinking about the current centre of the movement – Manhattan – but the Amazon’s running water will provide the superb bathroom facilities my people have been cruelly denied. I cannot wait for that sacred day – when Transgender Nation comes into existence!
In Transgender Nation it’s not just the bathrooms that will be geared towards our identity – everything will. We want transgender toilet bowl brushes and transgender toilet paper – but we won’t stop there: we must have transgender spare tires for transgender cars, food genetically modified by transgendered scientists for transgender needs, transgender video games to be played on transgender TVs which will broadcast gender-neutral reports from our transgender State.
In fact, the Transgendered must no longer be afraid declare openly our physical, intellectual and moral superiority. We are the true 1% destined to rule!
This has a historical basis: eunuchs, after all, were some of the most influential politicians in the ancient world. Hermaphrodites were presumed to have mystical spiritual powers. We must return to the wisdom of our ancestors, and we should start in the bathroom!
All we need is unity – against the 99%. Against their absurdly rigid bathroom behavior. After all: What is “normal” when it comes to the bathroom?!
I think we know it when we see it, but until we see transgender bathrooms everywhere…we would be looking for meaning in vain.
What’s certain is that, since time immemorial, the social struggle does not change…it only takes bathroom breaks.
Mr. (or Ms.) Mazaheri, your silence on transgender bathrooms is appalling, and I hereby denounce you as a fake-leftist and a bathroom supremacist.
If you don’t change your ways I suggest you watch your back the next time you are in a public bathroom.
Sincerely,
Mark Rube Lin-Terwilligerwicz
Democratic Party Superdelegate – 2016 election
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To be honest, this email raised as many questions for me as it did answers….
I’m still not sure if the goal is to add a third bathroom everywhere, or if all bathrooms are supposed to become unisex? I don’t understand how this is going to be regulated – bathroom monitors? What exactly are they going to monitor, and am I going to be monitored? Frankly, I would assume that the old “honor system” worked well enough when it came to trusting if people really needed to use the bathroom for humane, apolitical purposes.
Finally, I don’t even recall the last time someone even asked my permission to go to the bathroom? And I certainly didn’t say “No, you can’t.”
But I guess I have a lot of learning to do? I would have thought that after so many years of going to the bathroom I would’ve figured it out by now….
Ramin Mazaheri is the chief correspondent in Paris for Press TV and has lived in France since 2009. He has been a daily newspaper reporter in the US, and has reported from Iran, Cuba, Egypt, Tunisia, South Korea and elsewhere. His work has appeared in various journals, magazines and websites, as well as on radio and television. He can be reached on Facebook.
I support lgbt and the sexual choice of the people, because it is a subject that has been in history forever and has been very painful for lots of people in different regions of the world. We all know that, and their struggle overlaps with others that are covered excellently in this blog. But man… that letter was insanely stupid. Absolutly zero Analysis, auto critic or sense for that matter. This is a very good illustration of the kind of mentality that the collapsing empire is generating. I was deeply offended by the ignorance and very cheesy sense of humor of that person. Keep up the good reporting.
lgbt ?? You mean, Liquor, Guns, Bacon & Titis ??
Bwahahahahahahaha!!!!!
LOL, thanks
you made my day :-)
Cheers,
The Saker
Reynard means fox…
Haha,I think this is a “tongue in cheek” article. No one would actually send a letter like that if they were serious.
There is no Mark Rube Lin-Terwilligerwicz in the list of superdelegates, and so you are have it nailed.
And both Mark and Rube are slang for “sucker”….
LOL, but be fair, the anti-tranny/anti-unisex loo crowd are even more silly and deserve equal time. ;-D
All the fuss about transgender/unisex toilets needs flushing.
I grew up with a backyard dunny – 100 yards from the house (scary at night) … a can that had to be emptied, redback spiders lurking under the seat and squares of newspaper hanging on a nail.
What do these people want?
Warm seats and soft Kleenex wipes or maybe a bidet — and a sign that says ‘yes you too can use this’…
Better a long drop than a can. Wriglies can tickle when the can is getting full.
Gender Identity Disorder is usually triggered by early sexual abuse.
I’ve met a few trannies when I lied in LA and they were all unhappy, manic and very controlling
Back in the days, Zion’s entertain-the-goy-while-robbing-him troll projects had at least exciting things to sell. Enlightenment! Reformation! The workers’ paradise! The American dream! Freedom and democracy! Nowadays Zion’s brightest try to hook the forlorn masses with… yes, toilets of the third kind! Oy vey!
This is a simply ‘problem’ to address. If the stem is or was on the apple so to speak, it uses the boys room. If it will, is or was menstruating, it uses the girls room. It doesn’t matter what you think you are or what your shrink thinks you think you are, it matters what you are.
In this AO we don’t particularly care what you do as long as both participants in the reproductive act are over 16 years and you have a signed release from the goat and/or the Buddha vase…and you keep your amorous intentions behind closed doors, keep the noise down and pay to have your partner’s soiled Valencia dancing slippers cleaned.
Auslander
With respect, you are behind the times, Mr Auslander. In the west we now allow transgender-identifying people to keep their apple stalks and at the same time to identify and demand recognition as women. All that is required is a declaration that one is henceforth female.
I had a friend who sadly committed suicide. He was a disappointed man who decided to transition into a woman in his early 20’s but did not want the surgery. After a few years he declared himself a lesbian and pursued, not very successfully, only relationships with women. I don’t really know how confused he was but it seemed very manipulative and definitely confused me to the point that I walked away from him as a friend.
I still feel sorry for him though, he was very unhappy.
Funny piece, Mr (or Ms) Mazaheri, we have definitely lost the plot, if we ever had a coherent one.
“If you don’t change your ways I suggest you watch your back the next time you are in a public bathroom.”
That guy is threatening you.
This issue of Mark Rube Lin-Terwilligerwicz is a fake issue as can readily be ascertained by looking at what are real issues.
“Mark Rube Lin-Terwilligerwicz
Democratic Party Superdelegate – 2016 election”
– when you know what the superdelegate system is about, it tells you everything you need to know.
a cursory glance here, i think i may have entered the wrong room….excuse me
I can’t see what all the fuss is about.
I have a ‘transgender bathroom’ in my house. We affectionately refer to it as the Loo – (something to do with cockney rhyming slang and Waterloo?). Anyone who is a guest in our house can use it whatever their gender or combination thereof.
I suggest the authorities that decide on these things save a load of money on those flashy signs and just put up one simple ‘Toilet’ sign. Problem (if there really is one) solved.
It comes from ‘gardyloo’, (a corruption of garde à l’eau, beware of the water ) a warning shouted before the chamberpot contents were hurled into the street, before Bazalgette got busy constructing sewer systems.
Its the public multi stall etiquette that is presenting the currrent problem, not single stalls that lock.
What bemuses me is that we hear nothing from female-to-male transitioners demanding access to male loos, aren’t they bothered or have they managed to quietly go about their business without scaring the horses?
I have questions for the transgender community.
1. A transvestite dresses in the attire of the opposite sex but is sexually attracted to those persons who have the same “congenital plumbing”. Does that person consider him/herself to be a homosexual or a bisexual?
2. What does a transvestite call him/herself who decides to go the next step and transition to a transsexual?
3. If a transsexual completes their psychological and physiological augmentation to end-stage, gender metamorphism, do they consider themselves; heterosexual, homosexual or bisexual?
As described in the examples above, how should the majority of heterosexuals (1) know if the person is not a natural heterosexual (2) address such a person in everyday social parlance (3) appropriately react if that person hides their true persona from the heterosexual to gain a romantic favor by deception?
It seems to me the transsexual sub-culture has an obligation to identify their preferred, social address up front to obfuscate an embarrassing or even dangerous situation when interacting with the majority of the heterosexual population. Perhaps they could wear a “rainbow butterfly” on their person that has their first name displayed on it. The same goes for written or oral correspondence to avoid any surprises or confusion in the future.
We heterosexuals interact with transgenders (e.g., gay men, lesbian women and bisexuals) everyday and are pretty much civil to one another because these transgenders don’t hide who they are, the exception being transvestites. We can handle it and have dealt with it for a a millennia. But the emergence of transsexuals beyond a curiosity is going to be a problem if they don’t carefully think how they are going to be perceived, treated and tolerated. For them to seek the heavy-handedness of legal redress to force compliance is going to severely backfire and cause them emotional pain and suffering to no end. We witness this phenomenon already in their high suicide rate.
A lot of the responsibility falls on parents of children and the medical community as well. Children and teenagers are easily swayed by social influence and liberal values that cause them to question their birth-sex. Doctors also have an obligation to not seek the profit of surgical augmentation ahead of correctly evaluating whether the pre-transsexual patient is mentally stable and fit for a life-alternating change.
The non-heterosexual lifestyle is all centered around their personal perception and acceptance of their sexual orientation. I don’t care as long as this minority culture doesn’t place unreasonable social and legal demands on me to recognize their sexual preference. I may be obligated to be tolerant of them as a member of our overall society but any fleeting hope they offer an alternate choice of modus vivendi is an enterprise in failure, for sure.
Although I am not a member of this community I do have some familiarity with it. To address some of your questions:
1. You’ve selected a very non-representative scenario. By far the majority of transvestites are heterosexual men. They are sexually attracted to women, identify as men and have no desire to become women. They dress as women for purposes of sexual titillation. To your example though, a transvestite that is not a transsexual and that is attracted to men is a homosexual.
2. Transsexuals identify as the opposite sex (as women for male-to-females).
3. Male to female transsexuals that are attracted to women identify as lesbian. About half male-to-females are bisexual. Male-to-females that are attracted to men consider themselves to be heterosexual.
(1) know if the person is not a natural heterosexual
In a casual encounter, why would you need to know that, or any other details of a person’s medical history?
(2) address such a person in everyday social parlance
Address them as the gender in which they present themselves.
(3) appropriately react if that person hides their true persona from the heterosexual to gain a romantic favor by deception?
Any deceptive behavior in romantic relations should be unacceptable. Not as grounds for physical violence though.
I suspect every person who reads this uses a ‘transgender’ bathroom on a regular basis and it doesn’t bother them at all.
Or, does your home have little Mens and Womens signs on the bathroom doors? Think about it.