I don’t exactly know how one has “fun” in a bathroom — it seems to serve a rather utilitarian purpose to me — nor can I ever remember having engaged in competitions in defense of my manhood while sitting on the toilet. I must concede, however, that I have yet to use every public restroom on campus and perhaps, in some obscure building in the school, there are restrooms more perilous than the ones I’ve been fortunate enough to find. I’ve certainly never hesitated to use the bathroom when I’ve felt the need and so I have to wonder why anyone would.
Granted, you might argue that I am not of the female or homosexual persuasion. You might say that I don’t know what it feels like to be the object of persecution on a bathroom wall and that, if I did, I would cross the campus in search of a more private venue every time I felt the urge to relieve myself. You would, however, be wrong. You don’t need to be a woman, a homosexual or any other number of quantifiable terms to understand what it means to be the object of derisive comments. In fact, take the final paragraph of Trent Grassian’s Wespeak [“Bathroom Bigotry, Oct. 7, 2008, Volume CXLIV, Number 11], which conflates “people who use men’s bathrooms” with the small handful of people who vent some unknown frustration by writing on a bathroom stall. Is this assertion fair, or does it perhaps persecute a larger group of people — a group I proudly belong to — for the crimes of a minority?
Trent, you concede that there can never be a perfectly “safe space” but you fail to understand why this is so. There will always be an ignorant minority who find some strange relief in scratching messages of hate on bathroom walls. In fact, even in this bastion of liberal thinking and progressive attitudes, they still exist!
Are you really going to allow yourself to be intimidated by these comments? Do a few ignorant remarks crudely scratched on a wall render a bathroom unsafe? Those remarks exist to evoke an emotional response from people and have only as much power as you give them. I would suggest, as you near your graduation, that you take these words to heart, because I can certainly foresee some moment in your future where you will really, really need to use a bathroom in a public venue.
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