We ladies can police ourselves, thank you very much
Tina McCormick | April 30, 2016
One of the many reminders I leave for my sons at home.
A letter to all women,
Do you ever wonder “Why am I sticking to my toilet seat?” If you are a mother of boys, such thoughts might, indeed, have crossed your mind. No matter how stringent your domestic rules; no matter how appealing or threatening the Post-It notes; no matter how despairing and hysterical the reprimands, there’s something seemingly unavoidable about males and bathroom usage. There’s much fuss now about laws allowing men who want to be women and women who used to be men into the ladies’ room. But ladies, let’s get real. Do we really need such a law?
The least we can expect from a male on his way to womanhood is to shape up and give in to the basics of our fairer sex. We smell better, we look better, we are more discrete, and we know how to keep secrets. It’s the unwritten law of femininity and anyone who wants to be one of us better get with the program. Why should any law regulate who uses which bathroom? Who, after all, would even be able to enforce any new “bathroom laws” to make sure only men who REALLY want to be women use the ladies’ room? Checking birth certificates at the door? Anyway, the whole concept seems confusing.
Any male who wants to walk through that door better know he abides by the rules of femininity or we’ll call him out. We’ll do our own policing, thanks! Recently, one of my adolescent sons informed me that he was going to leave the department store because the men’s room there “smelled bad” and that he would, instead, use the bathroom at Victoria’s Secret next door. Good luck with that! So, trans women beware, the test is with us. Wipe that seat and sit pretty, and we might let you into the last bastion of womanhood. This is our space and we should not let anyone legislate who joins us there.
I fear that some brilliant minds will come up with what they see as a workable compromise – unisex bathrooms across the board. That, too, just won’t sit right with us ladies; am I correct? Many institutions already use such bathrooms and you can never be sure what’s going on beyond the wall of your stall. Presumably, you don’t want to know. It’s sanitary insanity, if you ask me.
Let’s make sure that our bathrooms stay clean, smell well, and afford us space for the things that women do in bathrooms, ranging from physical maintenance to private chats. It is time to inject some common sense into this issue of gendered toilet use. I cringe having to imagine what goes on in the men’s room and I prefer my separate space. It’s enough trouble enforcing such “sanitary safety zones” in my own home. Let’s defend our sanitary sisterhood and set the bar for what constitutes criteria for female toilet use.
