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Amoris Laetitia and the Trans-Bathroom Can of Worms

Amoris Laetitia and the Trans-Bathroom Can of Worms

Last updated on: May 1, 2016 at 1:28 pm by Jennifer Fitz

Amoris Laetitia and the Trans-Bathroom Can of Worms 2016-05-01T13:28:41-05:00 Jennifer Fitz

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Humans, all humans, have a need to feel safe when we go to the bathroom. It’s a viscerally rooted survival instinct.

Back when we were young and childless, if a transvestite friend came to the house there were never any issues. But now we have these young Catholics filling our home, lovely children but still growing in their life of virtue, still easily swayed from the narrow road; we have to think carefully about how that affects our social choices. And thus, when such a friend asks to use the bathroom, I can’t just say, “Down the hall, first door on the left.” I say that, but then I pause, and hold up my hand, and add, “But let me go check and make sure it’s still cleanish.”

No one wants surprise or horror when they go to the bathroom. No one wants social awkwardness. We just want to go to the bathroom. Quickly, if it can be helped.

Catholics being both/and people can assert with confidence that (a) you can’t change your gender, you get what God gave you and (b) you can’t wait until you get your moral life in order before you run to the restroom.

When Amoris Laetitia talks about pastoral accompaniment, the bathroom problem is right up there. What do you do with someone during the long stretch between “I’d like to be Catholic maybe?” and “Hey, look, I’ve finally got my life together!”

The answer is that you do your best to help the person grow closer to the faith. The only way to do that work is one soul at a time. You have to know the person, be in a relationship with the person, and be working together on this path towards holiness.

This is how, until the recent public drama began, we as a culture have handled the bathroom problem.

***

A friend of mine whose gender-difficulties I don’t approve of but whom I hold in high regard for a long list of reasons that would make you blush in embarrassment at your own sorry attempt at Christianity, shared online an awkward moment in North Carolina.

I’ve never known my friend to be anything but perfectly gracious about moral debates, and thus in my experience she is very particular about finding a balance between self-expression and respect for others.

Without going into details, she found herself stuck between wanting to respect (as best she could manage) the norms of her hosts at a religious event and wanting to not get arrested. The question of bathrooms would have probably been handled far more comfortably if the event hosts had been free to make their own decision about where and how she relieve herself.

The transgender bathroom wars have formed lines around the question of two different, but not truly conflicting, moral norms. One is the question of whether a person can change their gender (um, no, you can’t — but there’s obviously a segment of the citizenry who disagrees on that, my respected friend included) and the other norm is concern for the safety of public bathroom-users.

So here’s a bathroom-safety story:

I’m chatting with a friend some years ago, mother of a recent graduate of one of our “better” public high schools. The friend’s daughter came home from school one day and said, “Mom, the kids are having sex in the bathrooms.” The mother was initially certain the daughter was overstating the case. But she spoke to an administrator. The school’s response: Well yes, we know about that, what can you do? Teenagers, you know.

People, all people, even students required by law to attend the local public high school, have a right to be free from physical aggression, theft, harassment, and having to watch other people have sex — whether they are in the bathroom or out of it.

The quest to legislate every social quandary is harmful. The government has a legitimate role to play in protecting citizens from real harm. But I would propose that in the bathroom problem, the details of how that protection from harm play out are better solved on the very most local level.

The odd thing is that we Americans understand that there needs to be some fluidity about bathroom accommodations. Whether a boy ought to go into the ladies’ room with mom or into the men’s room alone is one of the case-by-case, location-by-location decisions. Whether your establishment ought to offer just a men’s and women’s room or a pile of single-user “unisex” or “family” bathrooms, or some combination, depends on your clientele and their needs and the kind of space that you have. Should there be a pissoir ’round back for the gentlemen? Just depends.

I’m not proposing it, but some of my husband’s ancestors had a bar with one of these:

Erickson’s featured a trough that ran along the bar – a urinal trough. That way loggers and sailors and miners drinking at the bar didn’t have to take a break from their drinking and dainty lunch repasting – they could just whip it out and piss right at the bar. A wonderful old-timey accoutrement that really is a harbinger of “days gone by…”

Everyone, everywhere, needs to go to the bathroom. It’s ludicrous to think that one could write a law that somehow took into account all the vast and complex bathroom situations that arise among the humans.

I’ll go one further, taking a cue from Amoris: It is harmful to take away from people their duty to work through problems with one another.

It’s fair to say that parents ought to provide safe housing for their children. But if you pass a law telling my kids how often they need to scrub the toilet, they lose the opportunity to learn for themselves how often to do the job. Pass a law telling every citizen of the state how to respond to conflict with their neighbor over gender norms, and we lose the opportunity to get to know our neighbor, and listen to our neighbor, and come to a peaceful way of living together for now, during that long stretch when we are not yet of one mind.

Artwork: Elevation, section and plan drawings of an octagonal pissoir in Berlin, 1896, via Wikimedia [Public Domain].

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