I cannot speak for any other trans-woman out there, but for me early on this was a very difficult issue to deal with. The first couple of months weren't all that bad as I simply managed to keep my outings short for the most part and could avoid the bathroom until I got home, or in a pinch we - and I say "we" because my early outings were always with J, M, or both - would find somewhere that had a "family" bathroom such as a Wal-Mart. It's not that I didn't want to use the women's bathroom, but I just wasn't comfortable doing so, mainly due to my appearance. I may or may not be "passable" these days - but looking back at my older photos I definitely *was not* back when I chose to transition or even when I made the decision to live as Madison full time. I was deathly afraid of having some sort of "incident" if I were to try and use the women's bathroom so I simply avoided it as I said.
Sometimes this presented a rather large challenge as I've been on blood pressure medicine for a *long* time and it made me use the bathroom quite a bit. Once I went on Spiro the issue became even worse as it's a diuretic as well and between the two I used the bathroom *a lot*. In fact it was such an issue that if we had planned in advance to go out, then I'd alter my schedule for my medicine to either take it well before we left or wait until we were home for the evening depending upon when we were going out. Not a great solution, but it's the one I went with at the time.
Over time I became more confident in my appearance, and I'd like to think that the pictures I've shared here and elsewhere would indicate that, but I still wasn't comfortable in the "ladies room". I convinced myself that no matter how good I did (or didn't) look, there still might be an issue and as my drivers license had my male name, photo, and gender on it I was scared of a possible issue. This was despite the fact that Kelly my therapist had written me a very nice "carry letter" at the same time she wrote my HRT letter. I did carry it with me, but I just wasn't confident that it would be enough to prevent a real issue if somebody took exception to me being in the women's bathroom. I did briefly looked into getting my license changed, but the statute in the state of Missouri regarding legally changing gender - specifically 193.215(9) - said at the time (and currently still does):
Upon receipt of a certified copy of an order of a court of competent jurisdiction indicating the sex of an individual born in this state has been changed by surgical procedure and that such individual's name has been changed, the certificate of birth of such individual shall be amended.Well, that meant I'd need to get my name changed - which at the time I wasn't prepared to do; *AND* have SRS, which I wasn't in a position to do for various reasons. Because of that, I simply continued to avoid using the women's bathroom.
Over time I relented a bit, partially by necessity as the first time was at Dr. Swenson's office in Columbia - for those that aren't familiar with this blog, she's the GP supervising my HRT and is about 90 minutes from here. I happened to go up there alone which isn't normal, but J was working and M had an appointment and couldn't go. When I went to head home from my appointment I knew I wouldn't make it the 90 minutes home without stopping and I was wearing a particularly feminine outfit that day so even if I were to take off the wig and clean off the makeup I would look out of place in a men's room. So I decided to use the women's bathroom there before I headed home. I figured they deal with enough trans-women that if I had an issue they hopefully could/would help defuse it. Turned out to be much worry over nothing, the bathroom was empty anyway and I was able to use it without incident.
After that I did use the women's room on occasion when we were out, but I always had either J or M go with me - I guess that's one privilege of presenting female - that doesn't necessarily seem out of place. However, I was still not comfortable going by myself. Finally about a year ago, I read on Susan's Place that a trans-woman (Jamie Glistenburg) had been able to basically "circumvent" the above mentioned statute and get her gender marker changed on her birth certificate, license, etc., in Missouri via the courts without having had SRS. I traded emails with her and decided to pursue it myself. My day in court and such is documented elsewhere in this blog - specifically HERE - so I won't go into that here as it's not really the point anyway. Even though I walked out of court that day with Madison as officially my name, and a bit over a month later, I had the court order for my gender change in hand, I still wasn't confident about things. I did get my name changed on my license right away, but when I got the gender change court order I held off on getting that done for a few months for specific reasons that aren't really relevant here.
Now after getting the court order for my gender change, but before I got my license gender/photo changed, I was a little more confident in using the women's room. I still went with J and/or M, but I didn't avoid it like I used to. Part of it was again, I felt I was more "passable" by now, but the bigger thing was the court order, but still without the license being changed I wasn't willing to brave that on my own. Finally at the end of March my license was eligible to be renewed - Missouri allows it six months early - and I finally got my gender marker and photo changed (as detailed HERE), but again that's not really the point. But what is the point is that when I finally got this done it did wonders for me as far as being confident enough to use the women's room. Now, by the time this occurred I already had went and had my orchiectomy, which also helped alleviate my "concerns" as even though I had gotten my gender legally changed, it was a bit of a "stretch" to do so. Now, an "orchi" may not necessarily meet the requirement in the above statute, but at least the argument could be made that it does and that made me feel better.
Now that my license has been changed I am much more confident about using the women's bathroom and even do so on my own quite a bit. I won't say that I still don't give it at least some thought before I do - there are places I still might choose not to; although most of those places are places that I generally don't frequent anyway - but it's definitely no longer the trauma for me that it once was. That all being said, it would be nice if bathroom usage wasn't an issue for so many trans-women (and trans-men for that matter).
- M
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