It’s 6 a.m. I drank a cup of strong black coffee, two slices of toast and a cigarette. There’s the pit-pat of feet and a knock-knock on the bathroom door. “Snookums, are you ready?” She always calls me Snookums in the pre-dawn darkness.
“I’m just finishing a chapter of War and Peace!” I reply. “It’s getting to the war part.”
You hear tapping your feet and rummaging around in the kitchen for a bucket.
These are the complications of modern life and interior installation. You sit there and think that you really need him and her. But we’re practical Iowans. I’ve heard of outhouses, chamber pots and the like. I’ve heard some of them are two-hole punches, so the bride and groom never have to be without each other.
We accepted a unisex bathroom in the office. Men and their goal are generally the problem, even when they are sober. It seems to be working despite us.
There were times, I must confess, when Casey’s men’s room was occupied for too long and I really don’t want to wade in those wakes, I used the powder room. It might be illegal. There’s probably security footage of me with my hat over my face, picking open the door with the clothing tag on it.
It’s a time-honoured state tradition to pee on gravel roads while the red-winged blackbirds scurry across the cornfields. You are free with your back to the wind. When we walked beans, boys and girls did their business at the back of the line and no one thought anything of it.
Which is why it’s hard to understand why anyone cares who pees where. Lawmakers passed a bill last week that says you need to freshen up a little in your birth-gender bathroom.
“I’m not interested in waiting for the child to be raped in a restroom by someone pretending to be transgender,” said Rep. Steven Holt, R-Denison.
Wow. It’s hard to know where to start. So back to some basics: What’s fundamentally wrong with unisex bathrooms? You have them in other places. You come out of the dressing room and a woman is washing her hands. Good morning was she a woman Was she transgender? She has clean hands, and that’s what matters.
Rural Mexican bars have a toilet with a short wall so you can watch during a break to make sure no one is cheating by the pool. It works out. Nobody gets a cheap thrill.
There is no evidence that unisex bathrooms lead to increased sexual abuse by anyone. There could be a problem in Denison with men posing as women raping children in bathrooms, but it is underreported.
What it comes down to is if you have to go, you have to go, it doesn’t matter what your perspective is. Whichever door is unlocked, select it. Put the lid back on when you’re done, gentlemen. And rinse it.
You’d think that with our bucolic appreciation for animals, we’d have a better understanding of digestion and such. She has to go, he has to go, and so does she, and neither of us should try to get in each other’s way.
Given our recent history with outbuildings and our contemporary experience with Port-A-Pots, this seems like a practical Midwest approach.
Morality must penetrate even our most basic functions. The ministers can tell you who you are, who to love, and even where to go.
The bathroom bill is silly and absurd, which is why Gov. Kim Reynolds is set to sign it.
I’d like to think it was born more out of ignorance than cruelty. I would like to think the same about a ban on gender-affirming care for transgender youth. Whatever the intention, the effect is the same: it’s cruel.
Patients of Storm Lake Dr. Sabrina Martinez say sex therapy saved her life. Martinez says she fears a ban on medical care will lead to suicides.
People take an idea dreamed up by a sexually frustrated old moral theologian and take it to the extreme. If you could step back and look at the bathroom bill and then realize how hilariously tragic it is, you can get a little more perspective.
We were raised homophobic. I learned a lot in the process. You know, you find out that your old college buddy from Twin Cities, hockey star who moved to San Francisco, turned out to be gay. He peed next to me! Or your old aunt who lived out there and rarely went back to Iowa. One of my closest friends had a son who got into serious trouble in high school. When he came out as transgender, the problems went away — she just got her master’s degree in public health and lives in New York, where she’s allowed to use the bathroom.
Rep. Megan Jones, R-Sioux Rapids, admits she still has a lot to learn. Humility is a rarity these days, especially in politics. She was among the five Republicans in the House of Representatives who voted against ignorance and overreaction. she has children She can understand how difficult it is for some people to be discriminated against without any reason, through no fault of their own.
It’s your problem if you can’t stand it when someone walks into a locker room in a soccer uniform and comes out in a prom dress. Let it be. As a result of this legislation, if someone dies who could be saved through medical care, it is everyone’s responsibility. It goes beyond the absurd into the macabre.
Art Cullen is editor and editor of the Storm Lake Times Pilot. He won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing and is the author of Storm Lake: A Chronicle of Change, Resilience, and Hope from a Heartland Newspaper. Cullen can be reached at times@stormlake.com.
