Women in Philosophy: Trans Philosophers and The Politics of Bathrooms

by Tamsin Kimoto

Trans scholars have written extensively on the politics of bathrooms and other sites of administrating gender. Perry Zurn, for example, has done extensive archival and genealogical research into the emergence of gender-segregated bathrooms in order to problematize our assumptions about the obviousness of gender-segregation.* Trans feminine people are often the most explicit targets of the collective social anxiety of cis people surrounding the management of femininity and sexuality, which Julia Serano has termed “trans-misogyny.” Trans scholars like C. Riley Snorton and Nat Raha and community activists also point consistently to the ways in which anti-trans violence and trans-misogyny are racialized and classed and disproportionately affect poor trans feminine people of color, especially poor Black trans women. The real possibility of violence for trans people, something very apparent to those of us who’ve lived it, must be on the table because the material conditions of trans people’s lives must be guiding our discussions of trans philosophers and conference bathrooms if we are to have genuinely productive and informed conversations.

I don’t know that I can describe adequately the anxiety that gender-segregated public bathrooms produce for me as a trans feminine person of color in public. At my home university, I have the locations of gender-neutral bathrooms on campus memorized. When I go out with friends, I often have them scout out the bathroom situation at the place we’re going (Are the bathrooms gender-segregated? If yes, single- or multi-stall? If multi-stall, who is coming with me? Will you protect me?). Much of my anxiety stems from the fact that bathrooms also seem to produce a particular set of “anxieties” transphobia for cis people who find themselves confronted with the possibility of sharing bathrooms with us.

At the most recent meeting of the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association, held in Savannah, GA during an unexpected snowstorm, I faced a dilemma. None of the bathrooms, at least none that I could readily see (the one set of neutral bathrooms was marked in the program I had left in my hotel room), were gender-neutral and my hotel room was an icy car ride away, yet I needed very much to use the bathroom. It was the last day of the conference and many of the few who had made it to Savannah had dispersed. I decided to chance a quick stop to one of the gender-segregated bathrooms hoping that it would be quick and painless. I found myself, instead, followed to the women’s bathroom by one of the security guards. While he seemed content that I was simply trying to pee and left, the situation could have easily escalated into one in which he had, at best, confronted me and asked a series of invasive questions or chased me from the room. At worst, I might have joined the perpetually growing ranks of trans feminine people, especially of color, who are arrested, assaulted, or murdered for appearing in public.

The APA is hardly unique in having historically failed to ensure gender-neutral facilities at its annual meetings. I can report with great confidence that many of the philosophy conferences I’ve attended over the last few years haven’t had gender-neutral bathroom facilities. Occasionally, a conference has a single gender-neutral bathroom. At a conference with several hundred, or even several dozen, participants, one bathroom is far from sufficient, especially if it’s a single-stall bathroom and even more so if that’s also the bathroom intended as accessible to disabled attendees (which is often the case). In cases where a single, multi-stall bathroom is made gender-neutral, the choice of which one is also equally telling. For example, the choice to make only a bathroom that is a men’s room the rest of the time gender-neutral reinforces the implicit understanding that cis women need to be protected from trans people, especially those who do not present in ways that are easily read as “woman” (but also those who do).

When I think about how to address this problem, as someone who organizes and attends conferences, the solution seems shockingly simple: commit to substantive forms of accessibility. I take my cue here from disabled philosophers and philosophers of disability. In a recent interview, Christine Wieseler describes the various aspects of conferences that produce barriers to access for disabled philosophers. These barriers often appear because conference organizers do not reflect critically on how the space of the conference is designed: stairs, lack of closed captioning, non-accessible hotel accommodations are all examples of philosophical ableism in action. Shelley Tremain has similarly argued that philosophy, in particular, has a long way to go in terms of making genuine inroads to building a more accessible profession and has even proven particularly resistant to making necessary changes, even within spaces like feminist philosophy. The point in describing gender-neutral bathroom facilities in terms of accessibility is not to erase the concerns of disabled philosophers or appropriate the language of access; instead, I hope to amplify those concerns by putting them in alliance with those of trans philosophers. Substantive forms of accessibility require thinking seriously about how the spaces in which philosophers gather are presently set-up to exclude or discount many of us from participating in the profession.

Again, gender-neutral bathrooms are not simply about making trans philosophers feel included in the profession, though that does also matter; they are about ensuring that we are safe at conferences—at least as much as we can be through avenues like organizing conferences. While gender-neutral bathrooms cannot ultimately guarantee safety for trans people, given the prevalence of transphobia and trans-misogyny, they are a necessary step for transforming the discipline of philosophy. Ultimately, a commitment to substantive forms of access entails a commitment to understanding trans philosophers as philosophers rather than merely as objects of study—a phenomenon that Amy Marvin has critiqued in our field—insofar as it helps ensure our full participation. Thus, committing to hosting conferences only in locations where we can guarantee that bathroom facilities will be gender-neutral is a form of substantive accessibility. I want to contrast this briefly with cosmetic forms of access. The pronoun stickers at the recent divisional meetings of the APA received a lot of attention on social media. While I was heartened to see them at the conference and sported the “they” sticker on my name badge, I’m largely ambivalent about their use and am especially suspicious of the idea that they are in themselves signs that professional philosophy cares about trans people. They remain merely cosmetic insofar as they are not part of broader conversations about pronouns in the field led by trans philosophers; non-binary philosophers still often have to argue for the use of gender-neutral pronouns like “they” or “ze” with journals and departments. Pronoun stickers are merely cosmetic while trans philosophers are treated as objects of inquiry or attacked on the internet by cis philosophers for responding to that treatment. Moreover, my pronoun sticker would not have protected me from that security guard who followed me. It certainly didn’t stop him from following me in the first place.

• Thanks to Adriel Trott for providing the space for me to think out loud about bathrooms and trans philosophers at conferences. Many thanks also to Perry Zurn, Blake Hereth, and others for their thoughtful comments on an earlier draft of this post.

Tamsin Kimoto is a PhD student in the Philosophy Department at Emory University, a co-founder and organizer of Emory’s MAP chapter, and a newly elected member of the APA’s Graduate Student Council. Their areas of specialization are trans studies and philosophy, Women of Color feminisms, and social and political philosophy. Their current projects include a dissertation on the intersections of utopian political theories and critical trans politics and articles on queer of color critique and the practice of philosophy.