‘One day, I will live in a world where all people are deemed equal – including trans people’

Public bathrooms and the violence and fear they can represent, juxtaposed with friendship and safety they can simultaneously offer, is something most transgender people, especially trans women and femmes, are aware of.

In recent years, women’s bathrooms have become the battle ground of trans rights, at least in the public eye and mainstream media.

Policing who can and can’t access public bathrooms remain at the centre of debate, framed by the implication that trans women are a danger to cisgender (non-trans) women (a claim that has been proven to be false) , while ignoring the fact that trans women are often the ones in most need of protection –

In the UK, two thirds of trans people are afraid to use public bathrooms, but it’s often the cis voice put at the heart of the conversation, rather than the experiences of trans people.

This hasn’t been helped by the UK’s strong anti-trans rhetoric which, as a trans person, is absolutely exhausting to live through.

For a group that makes up just one per cent of the population and, at a time when Covid-19, the climate crisis and far right are what we should be really focusing our energy on, it’s tiring to see constant “debates” over whether trans people can play sports, what JK Rowling thinks of us, or what bathrooms we should be able to use.

Trans people are tired and bored, writes Lowie Trevena. Photo: Nicky Ebbage

And so, it’s a Wednesday night in lockdown and on my laptop screen, Rosie takes the stage.

Rosie is the sole character in Travis Alabanza’s latest screenplay, Overflow.

“The best piss you can have?” asks Rosie to the virtual audience. “Obviously, it’s the pre-emptive one. You know, the one where you wee before you really need to go.”

It becomes clear that Rosie has locked herself in the bathroom and is waiting for it to be safe from men threatening her, before venturing back out. It makes the opening line about taking that pre-emptive piss even more noteworthy.

When going to a public place as a trans person, it’s always easier to have gone to the toilet before leaving the house – then you don’t have to worry about facing violence when the call of nature comes.

This isn’t the first play by Alabanza, an artist born and currently living in Bristol, to open up the conversation around trans rights and safety to a wider audience. Burgerz, their debut show, was a nuanced look at violence towards transgender people that was funny, intelligent and angry all at once. But what it was, above all else, was accessible.

Burgerz came to Bristol Old Vic is late 2019. Photo: Dorothea Tuch

A call for society to help marginalised groups, including trans people, rather than just being passive bystanders to violence and bigotry, Overflow is yet another piece of theatre that asks more of cis people at a time when almost one trans person is killed each day (in 2020, at least 350 trans people were killed).

What Overflow does, as well as being a call for society to do more to protect vulnerable groups, is portray the camaraderie of women’s toilets in a way that feminine people and women, both trans and cis, can relate to.

It’s a nuanced look at what the club toilets are to all women: a place of unspoken safety, fleeting friendships and unbridled joy.

Rosie, played by Reece Lyons, opens cis people’s eyes to the violence inflicted on trans femmes through her monologues: “If your friend is friends with a transphobe and hasn’t tried to change their mind, that probably makes her a transphobe too, right?”

“Before, I’d go to the women’s bathroom to escape the potential fists in the men’s. But now the choice is between a fist or a hug that sinks its claws in. That turns you inside out. Examines every part of you and decides if you can be here. Like police inside a space that used to be a sanctuary.”

“You’ve all forgotten what you were afraid of in the first place. At least with us you can feel like you’re solving it. Squashing us out feels obtainable. Can feel like you’re making headway. Like you’ve pushed through the glass ceiling just enough to cut us with the glass you broke.”

Transphobia is something that trans people experience every single day, not just in Twitter threads, transphobic columnists in the Guardian, or from the Government trying to roll back our hard-won rights.

While I continue to be a vocal and bold voice for trans rights, I’ll keep on pre-emptively pissing and reminding myself that trans rights are human rights.

“All human beings are born free and equal in dignity,” the UN says. And I hope and continue to believe that, one day, I will live in a world where all people are deemed worthy and equal, including trans people.

Lowie Trevena is Bristol24/7’s Production, Lifestyle and LGBTQ+ Editor.

Main photo: Nicky Ebbage

Read more: Review: Burgerz, Weston Studio