My work-wife (and Sapphic Sista) Jasmyne Cannick is over in BET’s shop making it
happen. She’s a great writer and sistren in the struggle (such that it is), if
often misguided.
Case in point:
Her
latest blog on BET is about Tanya White, a butch sister who got kicked out a
women’s bathroom for looking to much like a man. White was “shocked and
humiliated” that, even after someone vouched for her and she showed picture
identification, she was escorted from the premises. She’s
suing, naturally. This, not altogether different from the story of Khadijah Farmer, who was
kicked out of a restaurant bathroom in NYC’s Greenwich Village for exactly the
same reason: looking too much like a man. I wrote about this on my personal blog
some time ago, but in light of current events, I need to revisit this, I think.
There are two things happening here: women are trying to
live comfortably in their skin by adapting what we crudely call “butch drag,”
and then, the broader society’s visceral reaction to same. Live and let live, right? I say, if you are a woman dressed as a man,
getting kicked out of a woman’s bathrooms? Drinks are on you--mission
accomplished. You prop up the façade or masculinity and manhood, you wear this
masque for the world, and the world believes you, treating you as if you were a
biological man. No tears: You won.
Who has time or inclination to “check your credentials?” You
thought Homeland Security was invasive--who is going to check panties to see if
bathroom patrons have the requisite naughty bits? Who gets that job? Is your stomach churning yet? I don’t want to
have to think about it. My guess is neither does hotel or restaurant
management, not in an era of perverted cellphone videos and women getting
assaulted in bathrooms. Thank God someone is being diligent.
Now, there is the
piece about post-Stonewall shifting of hetero-normative paradigms—but life
ain’t Gay Theory
class, and the world isn’t necessarily the laboratory—people are not ready yet.
That said, if you want to dance, you have to pay the piper. Those aren’t my
rules. My Butch Sapphic Sistas have to either pee in the men’s room, hold it or be prepared to suffer the consequences of an uninformed, paranoid society not always willing to "check the neck."
Sorry. On balance, I’d say, as far as people trying to start successful movements and broaden conversations, the
ladies of Lesbos are winning. So maybe
the take-home lesson here is if you are a woman living life dressed as a man,
you can’t cry like a girl when you are treated like a man. You gotta take it
like a man. I know, I know. You want to live in a world where you have the
option of behaving like a boy or a girl to universal acceptance.
Well. Ok. That’s fine by me.
Just make sure you have a restroom in that world of yours.
What's the solution to this problem?
