Coming Out to the Streets by Brandon Andrew Robinson

Author:Brandon Andrew Robinson
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9780520971073
Publisher: University of California Press
Published: 2020-11-16T16:00:00+00:00

BRAVING BATHROOMS

“Texans should feel safe and secure when they enter any intimate facility,” stated Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in relation to the “Privacy Protection Act,” or what became known as a “bathroom bill,” which would prohibit transgender and gender-expansive people from using public bathrooms in line with their gender identity. In trying to justify the legislation, Paxton said that the state wanted to fight “to protect women and children from those who might use access to such facilities for nefarious purposes.”17

During this study, bathroom bills began popping up across the country. Part of the discourse around bathroom bills generated a moral panic about transgender people being pedophiles and rapists. This moral panic—a fear that a dominant group utilizes to construct a marginalized group as a threat to society—further pathologizes and marginalizes transgender people. Relying on this moral panic, certain conservative politicians attempted to ban transgender and gender-expansive people from public bathrooms. Youth experiencing homelessness often struggle to find a restroom, as many businesses only allow paying customers to use theirs. Bathroom bills and the accompanying moral panic have dire consequences for LGBTQ youth experiencing homelessness, since they often do not have access to private bathrooms and showers.

LGBTQ youth experiencing homelessness also struggle with accessing restrooms because they fear harassment and discrimination in these public facilities. Jasper—the twenty-three-year-old mixed-race homosexual who discussed not going to shelters and preferred living alone on the streets—talked with me about the harassment he experienced in the bathroom at his court-ordered recovery program. “I’d go to use the restroom at the same time as someone else. And they’d be like, ‘Oh, hell no.’ And like walk away.” Jessie, an eighteen-year-old white gay gender-fluid youth, commented on his fears of using the showers at the courtyard on the homelessness campus in San Antonio. “I didn’t look anyone in their eyes,” he exclaimed to me while we sat in a private therapy-style interview room. “I just went in there and showered and got the fuck out. Plus, I was scared they were going to rape me.” Kareem, a twenty-one-year-old Black gay youth, also discussed the courtyard showers. He stated, “People looked at [me and my boyfriend] funny. I hated it there. Because the showers—like ugh, ew! I’m not about to shower where anybody can see me. So, we was dirty for a couple days.”

Some LGBTQ people experience public bathrooms as dangerous spaces and sites of surveillance. Jasper said men walked out of the bathroom when he went to use it—marking him as an object of disgust. These actions highlight the fear that some men have of using a bathroom with a Brown gay man, whom people stereotype as hypersexual. As youth experiencing homelessness often do not have access to private bathrooms, they can face these types of discriminatory encounters daily. Such acts mark LGBTQ people of color as deviant.

Moreover, Jessie and Kareem—whom I both met at the LGBTQ shelter in San Antonio—discussed their feelings of being watched in the courtyard bathroom. Indeed, the structure of public bathrooms,

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