Trans Agenda: The Bathroom Files

The Bathroom Files is one of several social practice projects aimed to gauge expected and unexpected responses to a simple prompt about gender identity. Combining basic ethnographic methods with an investigative art practice, this and other projects under The Trans Agenda facilitate a playful infiltration into the world of cisgender people (anyone who does not identify as trans). As a cis-passing trans person the artist can stealthily observe and collect evidence illuminating how cisgender people conceptualize life in false binaries, as well as how they underthink gender identity in general. Since most of the people they live, work, and interact with are cisgender, they are positioned well for this transgressive social sleuthing. The main curiosity driving this social practice study is exposing the gap between how cisgender people conceptualize shared reality differently from trans people. The prompt has cisgender women and men separate portraits of TGNC people into three categories; people who should use the mens room, people who use the women’s room, and unsure. After they have completed this task they fill out a short questionnaire about their experience which is generally followed by an informal conversation prompted by the participant, now curious by what the activity stirred up. Agenda accomplished.