Gender Neutral?

Hurray for the London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival. If I wasn’t already happily civilly partnered I’d marry them. And why – they introduced Gender-Neutral toilets at the BFI for the duration of the festival. This single radical act transformed my experience of the festival. Using the GN convenience I felt the weight of Gender Neutral. I normally feel so very not in the right space, whether using the Ladies, the Gents or Babychange/Disabled toilets. At the festival finally I was right where I should be.

Single acts inform changes that transform lives. The BFI provided all the usual facilities: gender segregated and unisex disabled spaces, in addition they TRANSformed one of the women’s toilets to Gender Non-Specific. (Transforming the Gents would mean women having to walk past urinals in use and women after all are used to the privacy of a cubical). Gender Neutral is not a new issue for the LBGT communities and its right such a forward thinking act should happen at the LLGFF. When lesbians take over spaces women use the mens and Trans girls slap on the slap alongside femmes in the Ladies. It’s a Gay thing.

Binary gender locks people into boxes defined by their biology. Segregated toilets provide safety for women, and it’s likely women-only conveniences will be needed for the foreseeable future. For those of us not passing, the pain and anxiety of being challenged in our own bio gender designated space is a daily burden. I can be needing the toilet and be too intimidated or just plain too tired to run the gauntlet of the straight world’s confusion and disgust.

The gay world has always pushed beyond binary gender stereotypes. Women and men can be masculine, feminine or varying degrees of inbetweenee, and most of us love us all, wherever we are on a gender scale. It’s the beloved exchange of culture and perspective that rocks my world. It’s hard to imagine then that anyone gay would question such progressive thinking, like the Guardian columnist who questioned why ‘transgender folk need a gender neutral loo at a gay film festival’. Where in the Guardian was the voice of transpeople, butches and all the dykes I spoke to who loved the GN toilets? And where was the reporting on the rest of the festival? It’s no accident that the Lesbian and Gay Film Festival organisers were the festival organisers that pioneered Gender Neutral toilets at the BFI. Ironically it was assumed the Gay communities would be on board.

At the film festival’s closing gala this uninformed column was widely talked about. And that’s a good thing. So many more people will now hear about the BFI’s progressive action. Maybe that’s the most beautiful thing of all.

Public Inconvenience

This is the launch of the new column Butch About Town. Today’s top topic is Public Toilets.
OK, so I look like a man. That is both a style and a lifestyle choice on my part. I am what I am, and down with being butch. But what to do when a boi is out and about and nature calls? What choice is there, for a butch like me, between the Ladies & the Gents?
Tha Ladies: Nothing gets my palms sweating faster than a hot femme in a short skirt. Whoops, did I say that out loud. I meant to say - Nothing makes my palms sweat and my heart beat more than the prospect of pushing open the door with a little picture of a silhouetted woman with strangely square shoulders and a very triangular skirt.
Why? Because women in the Ladies ask me to leave. Worse, there’s a moment of fear, and I never want to see fear in a woman’s eyes.
I’ve tried smiling. I’ve tried a hearty “Hello!” I’ve never resorted, as a butch friend of mine used to do, to flashing my breasts. (She never got arrested but she did get a few phone numbers). Strangely in this situation I’m embarrassed. Having been asked to leave often, redirected occasionally and once hauled out of a cubical by a male bouncer and marched to the Gents – my top tactic is to scurry straight in, wait till I can’t hear anyone at the dryer and dash out again (washing my hands first).
Tha Men’s: I don’t feel any happier going into the Gents. There’s something of a hygiene difference. I have not yet felt unsafe, though it lurks in the back of my mind that I could be. As it is, straight men don’t seem to stare at a guy dashing head-down into a cubical. I get out as quick as I get in. I’m butch but don’t feel like embracing the masculinity of the Gents. I rather like the women’s toilets. It’s like sitting round the kitchen table with all your aunts while they put on make-up and share their most intimate confidences.
Hurray for train toilets, plane toilets, gender-neutral disabled toilets. Can we have more unisex toilets like on Ally Mcbeal please? I don’t even mind line dancing to Barry White tunes if that’s required. For women’s safety and while male hygiene remains dubious we still need the Ladies, and the long queues that accompany them. Men are truly welcome to their urinals and the strange disinfectant blocks that float in them. But please please please, can’t we work something out so us poor butch bois can go in peace.