katydidnot:

SO i wanna discuss “punk bathrooms as a way of keeping an implicit male space” today because it is a topic i have been thinking about a lot. this discussion is kind of like, gender-binary-y, but i assume it works the same for all female-bodied people without like, a go girl or other similar device. 

in my punk house experience (and i am talking about roughly three different houses here that regularly hold punk shows) most of them have no toilet paper, like, ever, and of the ones that do it’s like a 50/50 shot it’ll be there. in two, the doors don’t lock. in one, there is no toilet seat at all AND the doors don’t lock. 

this is a way big deal for girls vs boys cause it is way easier to get around “gross toilet situation” if you are a dude—worst case scenario, you can just go outside (which frequently happens) you’ve got options. plus it takes you less time on average, so the likelihood of someone walking in on you is greatly decreased assuming the doors don’t lock.

i feel like this is a way to keep punk shows an implied male space, f’real. esp cause complaining that the bathroom is too gross for you to use is totally something that would get people being like OH WOMEN, EVERYTHING HAS TO BE UP TO THEIR ~HIGH STANDARDS~ or something. at least, i’ve heard women complain about that stuff to other women but never to like, the people who live at the houses or the show organizers or anything, and i’m assuming this is why. 

(solutions: getting go girls, peeing everywhere?) 

Thinking about punk houses, punk collective spaces, all-ages spaces, co-ops, gay bars, lesbian bars, college-town bars, and college-town bars that we are slowly converting into lesbian bars (almost any of my partying or punk experiences have happened in one of those settings). I learned how to pee outside at a shady-ass co-op party, I had never done it before. A girl took me into the snow and showed me how, it was prime sisterhood and I’ve never stopped having feelings for her since that. The co-op in question had problems with partygoers breaking their toilets so all our pees were banished to the yard. That could create such a predatory atmosphere for women and non-straight-cis-dudes, you know? That could be scary. I wonder how often the restriction of bathrooms is used as a way to make women (and especially anyone who doesn’t generally pee standing up) more vulnerable.

I learned how to pee outside at a seedy-ass co-op party in an act of romantic sisterhood but man, that’s been a really useful anarchist skill.