I must admit that I have only ever read just one article on transgender bathrooms – it seemed like such a minor issue that I didn’t see the need to follow it. There are only so many hours in the day, and I prefer to report on anti-imperialist and pro-socialist issues.
It certainly seems like a fair assumption that many other journalists and activists in the West are covering the transgender bathroom issue quite extensively, no? So it’s not as if my involvement is essential.
I assumed that my stance as a leftist – someone who necessarily opposes all forms of prejudice – would make my ignorance regarding the transgender bathroom situation permissible.
Not so, according to an email I received….In the interest of balance, I would like to reprint it here:
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Date: November 5, 2017
Dear Mr. Mazaheri, (Or Ms. Mazaheri, if that is what you secretly prefer to be called.)
I am a militant in the transgender bathroom underground.
I have read and watched your reports, and for someone claiming to be a leftist I notice that you have never reported on transgender bathroom issues?
Therefore, I insist that you publish this letter to rectify this telling omission. If not, you can expect protests and public disruptions against your work, which may begin as soon as the next time you go to the bathroom.
We in the transgender bathroom community believe that the bathroom is the ultimate repository for all serious political thought in the West. Indeed, we insist that the bathroom has always been the informal polling station of society – well, we are making it formal by bringing politics into our toilets. I’m sorry to inform an obvious reactionary like yourself: “Our time in the water closet is over.”
What you fail to realize (despite your alleged leftism) is that this issue is obviously the apex of cultural Marxism, which is the most modern and therefore the highest form of Marxism. We American Marxists were right to remove all the economic aspects.
All I can say in your favor is: at least you haven’t done reports which deride our bathroom movements as “identity politics”?
Yes, we identify as transgender, what’s fundamentally unclear about that? We work around the clock to make sure everyone knows how things are going for us in the bathroom, and we ask you to not try and change the subject.
I will get to the point: Transgender bathrooms are the Selma of my generation!
Someday they will make an Oscar-winning movie about our struggle, and what could be a better representation of the American dream than to watch freedom finally flow in the bathroom? And on the big screen no less! Just as African-Americans faced down on water hoses, our water hoses will no longer be switched on in non-transgender-denominated bathrooms!
Don’t you dare call me crude! The crimes against humanity my people have endured are the ultimate crudeness! What is Hiroshima and Nagasaki compared to our own disaster? How many times have we been forced to sit in a stall next to you and endure your own personal Hiroshimas and Nagasakis! And, on top of it all, we can only assume that you are not even transgender. Oh no, we will not tolerate accusations of being low-minded here!
Shame and condemnation for those who say that this is a juvenile topic! High school students are not bringing up the transgender bathroom issue as a way to distract their parents from their bad grades – that is a common fallacy.
“I’m too worried about going to the bathroom,” is a completely justified response to a parent who asks, “Shouldn’t you be studying instead of still being on your smart phone?” But the non-transgendered can never understand us, as you surely floated through high school and were never teased for your physical appearance or your failure to reach society’s highest ideals.
Stop wasting the human resources of the transgendered! We demand that billions of dollars taxes immediately be re-routed from less worthy programs in order to install gender-neutral bathrooms everywhere.
And we insist on high-class commodes! We want bathrooms with toilets and urinals, like they have in Europe, the classiest place on earth ever. Nothing says “class’ more than going to the bathroom with someone of the opposite sex two feet away and at the same time.
Because what good is it to feed a starving transgender when you don’t give them a place to safely evacuate that food? What good is getting a job for an unemployed transgender when they would much rather have their own bathroom? Why choose diplomacy over war, when some people are fighting a war every day just to go to the bathroom? The pressure is killing us….
Do you really think that transgenders care more about the price of health insurance, university education, child care, senior care and other such nonsense when they are not perfectly pleased with the state and condition of public restrooms? You, Mr. (or Ms.) Mazaheri, are quite, quite naïve….
Of course, we transgender bathroom militants respect cultural differences: India will require transgender walls to urinate on in public; Turkey will actually save a lot of money because all they need is a sign – a hole in the floor is like any other hole in the floor, after all; hillbilly regions around the world will need to rely on the honor system as to which bush can safely and comfortably be used by transgender people.
But transgender bathrooms are more important than all the wars are going on in the world right now! I don’t want to say that it is more important than the Holocaust, because that would be a gross exaggeration, but it’s clearly worth at least a Nakba or three, no?
You might be surprised to learn that I was a Hillary supporter. Because the enemies of transgender bathroom-ism sabotaged her campaign, I can now reveal that her first act in a conquered Syria would have been to introduce transgender bathroom regulation. Surely, she would have been received as a transgender queen/king by the Syrian people for doing this! This missed opportunity to make Syria the leading transgender bathroom nation in the Muslim world must truly be considered as the biggest tragedy of the conflict, I’m sure all will agree.
Syria clearly reveals that there can be no piecemeal, Stalinist, “transgender bathroom in one nation at a time” approach; the tenets of universal, immediate, Trotskyist transgender bathroom revolution insist on a global humanitarian intervention immediately!
The kingdom of the porcelain throne is a reactionary monarchy! End the bathroom apartheid! No defecation without desegregation!
Every time we hear the “whoosh” of a toilet flushing, to us it is the clarion call of unfettered freedom! Cast off your shackles and leave the bathroom lighter in body and spirit!
Mr. (or Ms.) Mazaheri, I can prove the absolute primacy of our struggle with a joke taken from your own Iranian people:
“Which is the most important need on earth – the need for air, water, food or sex? The answer is…none of them: When you really have to go to the bathroom, nothing else matters!!!!!”
Clearly, there is a world of truth in this joke from an ancient people whose abilities in the bathroom would have been legendary had bathroom politics had not been so cruelly oppressed….
Ultimately, the oppression of our people means that we have no choice: we will soon declare a transgender homeland.
We simply must have a transgender state, and our people are scouting a region in the Amazon right now. We were thinking about the current centre of the movement – Manhattan – but the Amazon’s running water will provide the superb bathroom facilities my people have been cruelly denied. I cannot wait for that sacred day – when Transgender Nation comes into existence!
In Transgender Nation it’s not just the bathrooms that will be geared towards our identity – everything will. We want transgender toilet bowl brushes and transgender toilet paper – but we won’t stop there: we must have transgender spare tires for transgender cars, food genetically modified by transgendered scientists for transgender needs, transgender video games to be played on transgender TVs which will broadcast gender-neutral reports from our transgender State.
In fact, the Transgendered must no longer be afraid declare openly our physical, intellectual and moral superiority. We are the true 1% destined to rule!
This has a historical basis: eunuchs, after all, were some of the most influential politicians in the ancient world. Hermaphrodites were presumed to have mystical spiritual powers. We must return to the wisdom of our ancestors, and we should start in the bathroom!
All we need is unity – against the 99%. Against their absurdly rigid bathroom behavior. After all: What is “normal” when it comes to the bathroom?!
I think we know it when we see it, but until we see transgender bathrooms everywhere…we would be looking for meaning in vain.
What’s certain is that, since time immemorial, the social struggle does not change…it only takes bathroom breaks.
Mr. (or Ms.) Mazaheri, your silence on transgender bathrooms is appalling, and I hereby denounce you as a fake-leftist and a bathroom supremacist.
If you don’t change your ways I suggest you watch your back the next time you are in a public bathroom.
Sincerely,
Mark Rube Lin-Terwilligerwicz
Democratic Party Superdelegate – 2016 election
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To be honest, this email raised as many questions for me as it did answers….
I’m still not sure if the goal is to add a third bathroom everywhere, or if all bathrooms are supposed to become unisex? I don’t understand how this is going to be regulated – bathroom monitors? What exactly are they going to monitor, and am I going to be monitored? Frankly, I would assume that the old “honor system” worked well enough when it came to trusting if people really needed to use the bathroom for humane, apolitical purposes.
Finally, I don’t even recall the last time someone even asked my permission to go to the bathroom? And I certainly didn’t say “No, you can’t.”
But I guess I have a lot of learning to do? I would have thought that after so many years of going to the bathroom I would’ve figured it out by now….
Ramin Mazaheri is the chief correspondent in Paris for Press TV and has lived in France since 2009. He has been a daily newspaper reporter in the US, and has reported from Iran, Cuba, Egypt, Tunisia, South Korea and elsewhere. His work has appeared in various journals, magazines and websites, as well as on radio and television.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
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