ABSTRACT
Recently, on my way to give a talk in Minneapolis, I was making a connection at Chicago's O'Hare Airport. I felt the need to use the facilities, to freshen up, to relieve myself and other euphemisms, and I strode purposefully into the women's bathroom. No sooner had I entered the stall than someone was knocking at the door: “Open up, security here!” I understood immediately what had happened. I had, once again, been mistaken for a man or a boy and some woman (fearing what exactly?) had called security. As soon as I spoke, the two guards at the bathroom stall realized their error, mumbled apologies and took off. On the way home from the same trip, in Denver's new airport, the same sequence of events was repeated. Needless to say, the policing of gender within bathrooms is intensified in the space of an airport where people are literally moving through space and time in ways that cause them to want to stabilize some boundaries (gender) even as they traverse others (national). However, having one's gender challenged in the women's rest room is a frequent occurrence in the lives of many androgynous or masculine women, indeed, it is so frequent that one wonders whether the category “woman” when used to designate public functions is completely outmoded. 1
