Assigned at Birth: From Girlhood to Manhood in Middle America

New York Times headline June 14, 2016

“Being Transgendered as a fact of Nature: The current bathroom controversy reflects prejudice and misinformation about people who identify as transsexuals”

Unedited Facebook comments about the story:

Sam Allen: Everybody is trying to make excuses or apologize for this transgender thing. It won’t work. It is a mental illness. It is an abomination. It is not part of God’s plan for humankind.

Brent Howard: These freaks of nature should be shiped to a remote island

The public restroom: the panic producer, an ultimate fear, the pit in Buffalo Bill’s “Silence of the Lambs” basement. Not only did my face, my walk and my general appearance suggest I had no business being in the women’s room, I didn’t want to be in the women’s room. I didn’t really want to be in the men’s room, either. I sucked it up one day at the student union and walked through the forbidden door with the male figure on it. I wasn’t alone. I kept my eyes forward. As imagined, there were more urinals than stalls. Thankfully, one of the two stalls had a door. Pee puddles dotted the toilet seat. Two toilet paper squares were left on the roll. The door wouldn’t stay shut. I had to straddle the seat without touching it and stretch my arm to hold the door closed at the same time. My body refused to relieve itself quickly; it had stage fright.

What if a line forms for the only stall with a door and eyes peer in through the gaps in the frame, wondering what’s taking so long? What if my pee stream sounds different when it hits the porcelain? Is it too wide or too strong or too light? Can guys stop and restart their stream? What if any one of those things gets me beat up? Raped? Arrested? I gave a couple of subtle grunts to suggest I was doing something other than peeing. A fart would’ve been helpful. I looked to see if shoes were huddling near the stall door. I listened for hand dryers, flushes and running faucets to time the expelling of urine. Start. Stop. Start. Stop. Start. Stop. That was the longest, most uncomfortable pee of my life. But I made it out alive.