ABSTRACT
For the final chapter of this book, I engage with the contemporary debate surrounding transgender people and which bathrooms they are expected to use. I begin by providing a summary of the different views within the Lacanian community about transgender people, both from a clinical and social perspective. I suggest that the transperson, in particular the transwoman, has become an iteration of the monstrous-feminine in the 21st century. This can be examined through the representation of transpeople in popular internet memes and some of the discourse circulating about their appearances in public bathrooms, specifically the Ladies’ rooms across America. Much of this discourse relies on a concern about the signification of the phallus and the question of gender as determined by certain signifiers. This anxiety about the signification of the phallus, however, allows for a discussion on the contemporary discussion about the social construction of gender, asking how the recent representations of transgender people in the media may contribute to an opportunity for radical subjectivity for us all.
