When teaching “The Politics of the Bathroom,” my students and I realized that nearly every social justice movement of the century has involved bathrooms.
Jim Crow laws and apartheid dictated separate bathrooms for whites and non-whites. Women’s liberation also fueled debate over bathrooms. Feminists coined the term “potty parity” to protest inequalities in the distribution of restroom facilities (restrooms for female senators were not provided in the U.S. Senate until 1992), while opponents of the Equal Rights Amendment argued that its passage would spell an end to separate bathrooms for men and women. Disability activists fought to make bathrooms accessible for individuals with physical handicaps.
Today, nothing is more symbolic of transgender politics in the U.S. than bathrooms. For a transgender individual, every trip to the bathroom is accompanied by anxiety and dread, so much so that many simply avoid public restrooms altogether, often risking their health. If transgender individuals cannot use public facilities, they cannot participate fully in public life. They cannot be regular consumers — or citizens.
Public bathrooms both reflect and construct sexual dimorphism, our sense that nature produces bodies of only two kinds. Those supporting “bathroom bills” — the legislation of separate bathroom facilities for men and women in public buildings — see sex as fixed and immutable. For supporters of transgender rights, the biology of sex is not so cut and dried: Genes, anatomy and hormones do not always line up neatly on one side or the other of an absolute divide. The concept of “gender” attempts to recognize that life can’t be defined in simple either/or terms; it’s a more complex, messier project.
Ultimately, public restrooms create social anxieties because they are spaces in which the public and private collide in the most intimate ways. While the need to eliminate unites us all, the design and distribution of bathrooms carve space according to social hierarchies of gender, race, class and ability, making the toilet a historic symbol of public debate
A: CHRIS PALUDI ’20 | Political Science Major from Los Angeles
Just completed a final exam on a similar question in my “International Relations” class, where we talked extensively about this issue. Though we didn’t achieve world peace in a semester, the class did shed some light on why the largest nations in the world have enjoyed a long period of peace and prosperity after World War II, but why the world is, in some ways, a much less stable place than it was 20 years ago.
The world is a dangerous place, and countries’ first priority in their international relations is their own security. With no one to protect them, they have to protect themselves, and to do so, they arm themselves. If everyone is arming themselves, there is no way to really know whether or not someone with the ability to hurt you is simply protecting themselves or is preparing to attack. The only way to be safe is to make sure you’re the strongest one around. If you’re thinking, “That sounds like an arms race,” well, you’d be right. That’s why most countries agree on rules that help everybody feel safer.
Ever since World War II, the U.S. has been a “global policeman” that enforces these rules. To prevent the insecurity that makes the international system so dangerous, the U.S. makes it clear that we're ready to use our power to stand up for our allies if they're attacked. Since the 1940s, America has accumulated binding promises to protect almost 70 countries across the globe, from NATO nations to Japan and South Korea. And since the U.S. is not a country others have wanted to mess with, things have been pretty peaceful from a historical perspective.
The world also has a neighborhood watch in the United Nations, which helps countries talk things out as much as possible. Countries also trade more today than ever before, and are pretty interdependent in ways that have made peace and prosperity not only possible but probable. That wasn’t something you could count on for most of history. And when that situation gets more dicey, like today, countries flex their muscles in nonviolent ways to maintain the status quo. We’ve found that smart, strong sanctions and even public pressure can often prove really useful to changing behaviors.
Unfortunately, humans haven’t figured out how to simply negotiate our way out of every disagreement. We may never will. Acknowledging this ugly reality, we should all be more empathetic and seek to understand and respect other states and other cultures. Doing so may help prevent misunderstandings and adversarial attitudes that lead to violence where it need not arise.