Bathroom anxieties: a genderqueer janitor’s perspective (pt. 3 / summer edition)

The bathrooms (all except for two) at the school I work at are getting a complete makeover this summer!  (This is only a part of the remodeling / demolition that’s been going on – it’s been a fairly chaotic and atypical few months.  Most of the time it feels like, how is all of this going to be completed by September 4th?!)

Here’s a quick rundown of the bathroom count:
3 boys gang bathrooms
3 girls gang bathrooms
1 mens staff bathroom
1 womens staff bathroom
2 gender-neutral staff bathrooms
1 girls gym teacher bathroom
1 boys gym teacher bathroom
1 nurse’s office gender-neutral bathroom
7 classroom gender-neutral bathrooms
2 girls single-use bathrooms
1 boys single-use bathroom

I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that my workplace has more bathroom options than pretty much anywhere else, ever.  As a genderqueer person, I have never stressed out about where I was going to go pee.  Never, until this summer.  All bathrooms are out of commission except for one girls gang bathroom and one boys gang bathroom.  “Gang,” in this case, means that more than one person can enter and use the bathroom at a time.  I am missing my gender-neutral option!

Before I came out at work, I was using both womens and gender-neutral bathrooms.  After I came out at work, I gradually transitioned to only using gender-neutral bathrooms.  One good thing about all this upheaval is that when they’re done, there will be 4 more gender-neutral bathrooms than there had been previously.  !!!  !!!

Until then though, I’ve had to make some tough decisions.  As the bathroom options started to shrink (due to demolition), I was getting creative, for a while.  For example, I realized there was still a toilet not yet destroyed in on of the classrooms, and I was using that for a while.  My co-worker, who knew I’d been only using gender-neutral options, asked me, “So which bathroom are you going to use?”  Being semi-facetious, I replied, “I’ll use the womens for #1 and the mens for #2.”  And I actually was doing that for a while.

But then I started running into other people who were also using the bathroom as the pickings got slim.  And I started getting nervous.  I’d rather people saw me as male and used he/him/his pronouns for me than not.  Some people get that I’m neither, and that’s great, but I don’t need the whole school understanding this nuance.  Things have been so much better for me since coming out; I just want to keep up that momentum.

So I made a stark, black and white decision, that I was going to use the boys gang bathroom, no matter who was around or who wasn’t around.  It was tough to wrap my head around because, since top surgery, coming out, and being on a regular dose of T (in that order), I’ve been in all sorts of bathrooms depending on the context, how I’m feeling, and what the options are.  But I STILL prefer and gravitate towards womens rooms.  And I STILL have not been stopped or questioned once.

But, in this case, I’ve been feeling like I gotta do this because I’m trying to assert and simplify my identity so everyone gets the picture / is on the same page.  It’s been working.  Almost everyone (except my former supervisor who keeps leeching onto the building) uses he/him/his pronouns for me.  Essentially, I haven’t been wanting to confuse people or have them question where I’m at.  Even the contractors – all of them have been calling me “buddy,” and that actually feels really good!

It defintely has been nervewracking though.  A few times, I almost ran into the girls room when I heard that someone was in the boys.  I’ve never been in a mens/boys room with other males.  (Er, actually, maybe a handful of times when I was traveling in Turkey, but that’s it.)  But I stuck it out and passed them at the urinal in order to use the stall.  Or was in the stall and heard them using the urinal.  Or at the sink, etc.  I went into the boys room while B&G (buildings and grounds – for the district) workers were around, while my co-workers were around, while (female) teachers were around.

And in the end, it’s all been OK.  (It was a little less nerve-wracking, overall, because contractors were made to use a port-a-potty outside.  Sucks to be them!)  All I mean by that was that there were way less males using the school’s boys bathroom.

As soon as I can though, I will be right back in those gender-neutral, single stall bathrooms, which will be all over the place!!!

Wanna see other posts I’ve made in this series?  Here they are:
Bathroom anxieties:  a genderqueer janitor’s perspective
Bathroom anxieties:  a genderqueer janitor’s perspective (pt. 2)

Oh, and, as always, I’ve been all over both the girls and the boys bathroom, in order to clean them, daily.