Public Bathroom Precis (2016)
Note from 8/30/2025: I wrote this precis in college, while I was still closeted. I was a passionate "ally" of trans people, who found myself uncomfortable in both the men and women's rooms -- I remember feeling like a gender imposter, frustrated that nothing in my life could come easily, not even walking into a restroom. When I wrote this in 2016, I hadn't yet acknowledged that growing uneasiness within myself, hadn't yet confronted that I was writing about my own experiences. I tried to be as dispassionate as possible, while still mentioning the bathroom fears I knew trans people have. Reading this back now, I'm acutely aware of how much I was leaving out for the sake of professionalism. I've added some notes from my perspective today, but I've bolded them so as to differentiate between the Me of 2016 and the Me of 2025.
Prerequisite reading for this essay: "The Private Lives of Public Bathrooms", by Julie Beck.
Situation
This article presents the psychology behind bathroom behaviors in America. It was written in April of 2014, by Julie Beck, the current senior associate editor at The Atlantic. The Atlantic is a Washington, D.C. based magazine that covers a variety of stories including arts, economy, foreign affairs, and technology, per the publication's Wikipedia page. Beck generally covers health interest stories, which indicates that the audience for this article consists of health professionals or those interested in health issues. The Atlantic caters to a wealthier, left-leaning readership. People living with paruresis might also read this article for validation. Beck addresses paruresis and other issues associated with modern public bathrooms, to bring awareness to certain issues and raise questions about behaviors.
The article explores gender roles, societal expectations, and the psychology behind bathroom habits in America. The end of the article also attempts to illuminate gender differences and how ingrained homophobia can affect the behavior of certain men in public restrooms. There are very few constraints for the article, since Beck cites a multitude of experts and studies conducted by reliable sources.
Issue
Beck raises and answers some interesting questions in her article. She mentions that the separation of men and women is needless and simply cultural. The current need for a gender-neutral bathroom suggests an upcoming change in the layout and location of public bathrooms. Will gender even be considered in the future of bathrooms?
How optimistic I was...the pendulum has swung in the opposite direction by now. In 2025, American attitudes towards gendered restrooms have become frighteningly fascistic. Earlier this year, my home state nearly passed a bill that would have enforced restrooms and locker rooms to be single-sex spaces based on sex assigned at birth. My governer vetoed this bill, but other states have not been as kind. Today, an article was published about the Texas state House passing a bill requiring "transgender-identifying residents on government property to use private facilities that correspond with their biological sex" (Washington Examiner). Those "government" spaces include public schools, universities, prisons, jails, and private shelters.
Gender politics within the confines of the public bathroom are also analyzed within this article. Why are men so afraid to go to their own bathroom? What perpetuates this cycle of fear in certain men, in spaces they should feel safe in? The article hints loosely at the many faults of American patriarchy generating this behavior. Perhaps if women generally felt more at ease outside of public bathrooms, men would also feel more comfortable going into these restrooms. The main factor is how men feel they have to treat women in order to be held to a respectable societal standard of masculinity and meet their peers’ expectations. If American society can alter the perceptions of masculinity, perhaps everyone would feel more comfortable being themselves, whether they are in or out of the bathroom.
Having lived as a man now since 2017, and suffering exclusively in men's rooms ever since starting T that August, I can say with confidence now that the above is very correct. All of the men's rooms rituals described in Beck's article are purely for the man exercising them to come off as non-threatening ("I will not hurt you, I am not a creep"), but also not to be fucked with ("Please don't hurt me, do not be a creep"). Every man is on edge in the restroom (unless you're my coworkers, who love to hold their penises at the urinal and look me in the eyes for unrelated conversation. Please don't look at me while you're holding your penis!). I've never been super comfortable in public restrooms myself, but someone else entering the bathroom while I am in there will automatically have me following these same rules: no talking, no eye contact, don't spend more time in there than you absolutely have to.
Fear of being preyed upon is not the only anxiety suffered in the public restroom. Paruresis, or bathroom anxiety or “shyness”, affects twenty million US citizens. Paruresis is a medical condition defined within the article as a bathroom-related “social anxiety disorder” that affects “about 20 million people in the U.S.”. Parcopresis is the fecal equivalent to paruresis, although it is not a “medically recognized condition”. Although rarely talked about, Beck introduces her article with this concept. Beck brings awareness to this medically confirmed condition, and asks what changes could be made to help accommodate people who suffer from this condition.
Thesis
In the beginning of her article, Beck introduces paruresis, a “social anxiety disorder [contained within] the DSM-V, the American Psychiatric Association’s diagnostic guide” (Beck 2). Beck quotes Steve Soifer, the “CEO of the International Paruresis Association” (Beck 2) as saying there are 20 million sufferers of this condition in the US alone. Beck also mentions the counterpart to paruresis: parcopresis, or “poop-shyness” (Beck 3).
Beck describes paruresis as "a sort of performance anxiety, a fear of being scrutinized by others while you go" (Beck 1). I believe this to be the entire crux of the problem with American public restrooms. Americans have a lot of anxiety around natural human bodily functions - menstruation, sex, bowel movements...all of it. We can't be known to do these things, or something terrible will happen. To a greater degree, American trans people struggle tenfold with the same -- everything we do is put under a microscope and studied for perverse intent. Something as innocent as needing to poop can be read into and percieved as sexual predation, simply because of the genitals we happened to be born with.
Beck goes on to describe the particular behaviors people practice in public bathrooms, such as “leaving space at the urinals, [and] avoiding conversation even with people you know” (Beck 3). Beck investigates why people engage in such behaviors by describing the discomfort as about both physical and mental boundaries.
Beck looks back on the history of the bathroom and people’s behaviors toward bodily functions in an attempt to make sense of our behaviors today. She explains, “We want privacy for our own elimination, and privacy from other people doing theirs” (Beck 5). She looks at a 1985 study to determine that a lot of our behavior in bathrooms depend on the way other people respect our personal space.
Beck then continues to examine why we in the US have gender-separated bathrooms, and how culturally we have created “unique single-sex spaces. There is perhaps no other arena that so stridently reinforces gender separation and difference” (Beck 7). Beck investigates the attitudes of men and women within their respective spaces, and finds that “for women it’s often liberating; for men it’s often anxiety-inducing” (Beck 7). The differences in behavior between men and women in public bathrooms are staggering. Men have a tendency to be uneasy in their surroundings, seeing as there are no women to be preyed upon as in the mixed-gender outside world. Certain men harbor a fear of becoming the target of other men’s advances, or being treated the way women are treated on a daily basis. Conversely, women in the restroom generally feel more comfortable being in a female-only safe space, and have none of the fears or anxieties the men experience. Beck discusses the “urinal rule”: do not stand too close or directly next to someone using a urinal. She also says this practice “smacks of homophobia” (Beck 10) because of men’s constant fear of sexual violence in the bathroom.
Beck takes the discussion about homophobia and adds that transgender people also face difficult reactions to simply using the bathroom, suggesting that single-stall unisex bathrooms might cut down on this being an issue. Not only would the LGBT+ community feel more comfortable, but those suffering from paruresis or its equivalent would feel less pressure than in a public bathroom setting. Changes as simple as this can make a world of difference to those with paruresis or outside the gender spectrum.
I believe there should be a happy medium between the single-stall and the current standard public bathroom. Firstly, people need to stop panicking about other people's genitals, sex presentation, gender identity, whatever. Anybody who has to poop should be able to use any available toilet. Secondly, we need to stop building bathrooms with those cheap litle stall dividers and turn each stall into its own little room, with a proper door and everything. Each room should be hooked up to the sound system and playing some relaxing tunes to drown out any noises. All of these little rooms would come with a toilet and a little trash can for menstrual products. We need places to stop cheaping out on bathroom design and get serious about poopers' comfort.