Here are the testimonials from the article (which doesn’t seem to originate from a feminist or a feminist campaign group, as far as I can see?’
Recently I was in a women’s washroom which was busy, and had a lineup. I left with a femme presenting person who was walking in front of me. We had to pass by the waiting lineup. There was a pair of women in the lineup and one of them looked at my companion with a smile, and then her face fell when she saw me. She said loudly to her friend, “Well, I thought that this was the women’s washroom, but apparently you can’t be sure what you’ll get these days.” “
“Most of the time people think I’m a guy and kindly try to redirect me. If not they won’t make eye contact with me, they get quiet when I walk in and I worry I’m making them feel unsafe, even if its due to some misconception that any masculine-presenting person is a predator. But I guess society teaches women that it’s better safe than sorry.”
“I’ve had three occasions where people have left the bathroom when they notice me washing my hands/leaving a stall/etc. and refuse to come back in until I’ve left. Also, I heard one person whispering not so quietly, wondering if I was allowed to be in there. It’s only happened a handful of times but it stays with me and gives me anxiety to enter busy ones for sure.”
“The funniest to me is when I’m standing in a line of women, after examining the ONLY MARKER that distinguishes the two rooms which is the stick figure with the DRESS ON IT, and I’m just standing there waiting in the absence of other men or urinals, and someone will still think to ask me if I’m in the right place. Like OH WHOOPS YOU’RE RIGHT, SHIT MY BAD. SORRY LADIES. I’ve got some good comebacks if anyone needs ’em, though I’m rarely brave enough to use them. “Are you in the right place?” “Yeah, are you in the right decade?” “This is the Ladies” “Then maybe you should act like one.” BAZAM. I always think of them after-the-fact, though; after I’ve muttered something and slunked away humiliated, not making eye contact, only to spend the rest of the night stewing over it. And what gets me is that I really don’t believe that anyone could actually think that I would be in the “wrong place” – consciously or not, they’re policing my gender.”
“It’s a pretty regular experience for me: clients who walk into the bathroom I’m in always ask if they are in the right one, dressing rooms are consistently a place where I have to confront it, usually I just say “No, I go over here (walk to the women’s side)” when they tell me to go the men’s side. Also, at the gym, women won’t change near me, and I used to get asked to leave. I’m not bothered by it anymore, I get “sir’d” or “young man’d” daily so I’ve stopped paying as much attention. The worst of it was in high school gym and sports: changing in the locker room was synonymous with beating, usually by teammates.”
“I think a lot about how I act in bathrooms to prevent getting a negative reaction. I avoid looking at other people, especially making eye contact, because I worry about people thinking I’m checking them out. Or sometimes when I’m going into a bathroom, or passing someone while leaving, I do things that I think will make me be read as female, like sticking my chest out a little, or kind of smiling a little? It sounds silly, but it helps ease the anxiety. Getting misgendered, especially in bathroom situations, can sometimes put me in a negative place all day.”
“It’s weird because I get all this feedback in the women’s room that makes me sort of feel like I should be using the men’s room, but then I have this fear of not passing/potential more violent repercussions from men which is coming from a weird mixture of being a gender non-conforming queermo AND a traditional justification of separate bathroom spaces based on this “threatening men” stereotype. Like I would still be initially weirded out if I saw a man in the women’s room even though intellectually I know these separations are at their most fundamental arbitrary. Though obviously there are some social functions that have emerged for women to use these non-men spaces.”
The solutions to these problems are short term: third spaces, long term: prioritising SEX over gendered stereotypes.
Letting feminine men use women’s facilities helps none of these women, in fact it reinforces their negative feedback loop that ‘butch’ equals ‘non woman’.