by Ellen D.B. Riggle, PhD

A meditation on the iconic three panel comic entitled Nature’s Call by Jennifer Camper*

Cred: Internet Archive, Gay Comix #7
A dozen women in a white tablecloth restaurant simultaneously inform their male companions that they are “off to the ladies' room.” Without needing to verbalize the request, these women begin a spontaneous mass migration.

I have long presumed that apparently straight women take one another with them to the restroom to get a break from tiresome male associates and check things for each other, like zippers and makeup. It has also occurred to me there is safety in numbers: the unspoken rule is ‘no woman left behind.’

The aforementioned straight women are found in the LADIES room in various couplings and throuplings having sex in a variety of creative positions leading to orgasmic exclamations!

This had not previously been one of my assumptions about why apparently straight women go to the restroom in pairs. I’m pretty sure the drawing is simply licentious comedic license—and it is a memorable visual (“ooohhh…aaahhh”).

As suggested in the second image, women who have sex with women may have sexual encounters in public restrooms. Television shows and movies, like The L Word and Vida, have popularized the notion of women getting it on in restroom stalls or perched precariously on lavatory sinks. As an advocate for sexual safety, I hope those sinks are well anchored to the tile wall.

I, personally, have never seen such scenes in women’s restrooms, not even in queer bars. (This is definitely NOT an invitation to send me your torrid toilet tales! Please don’t!) If I were to analyze the trope, I would say script writers use the grunge of a public restroom to suggest this a passion that just could not wait for soft sheets. The setting provides semi privacy for expressing uncontrollable desires, and adds to the intensity with a breathless, ‘will they get caught?’

A dozen men sit alone at tables in the restaurant wondering, “What do women do in there anyway?,” and grousing, “Damn, she’s been in there forever.”

Apparently, it bothers these men that women can be in a space out of their sight and their control. It’s as if they fear women are having an orgy without them, or, perhaps, that women are passing coded notes under the stall dividers plotting the demise of patriarchy.

The modern public restroom has always been a site of contention. The men at the tables verbally assail their absent female companions with projected anxieties. In real life, fearmongers whip up frightful frenzies by claiming voyeuristic and rapacious men will dress up as women to invade the LADIES room. These unrighteous narratives are wielded as a blunt weapon against transwomen, and catch gender nonconforming and masculine presenting female bodies in their broad snares.

As a gender non-conforming, masculine presenting person, I am currently forced to take a gender obviously-conforming woman with me to the restroom to avoid being attacked by riled-up ladies and their so-called protectors. These femmes provide an essential escort service. They are required to engage in constant lighthearted chatter with me, demonstrating that I am in no way a threat and I must, by association, be a female person despite outward appearance. The lip-sticked warriors must then stand stoic guard duty during my nature call until I exit the facility, unconfronted but not unscathed.

For reasons of public safety, for myself and others, I am an advocate for having a separate restroom, with a sign that is the sun and the moon and the stars, for the butch lesbians, dykes, tomboys, studs and bois, masc presenting women and queer folks, transwomen, transmasculine and trans folks, nonbinary, gender expansive and gender nonconforming people, and let’s not forget the drag royalty, where we can pee in peace. And check zippers and makeup. We all seem to get along just fine. And, when I say this out loud, all my cis straight women friends want to join us. A (rest)room of our own will be very joyfully crowded.

*“Nature’s Call,” by Jennifer Camper. Originally printed in Gay Comix #7, edited by Robert Triptow, Bob Ross, 1986. Reprinted in Dyke Strippers: Lesbian Cartoonists A to Z, edited by Roz Warren, Cleis Press, 1995. Jennifer Camper is a cartoonist and graphic artist living in New York City. https://www.jennifercamper.com/

Ellen D.B. Riggle, PhD, is an award-winning educator and author. Their essays and poems can be read in ADVANCE Journal, Does It Have Pockets, Earth's Daughters, Pegasus, Rise Up Review, Sinister Wisdom (forthcoming), and Writers Resist. They are also the author of over 100 academic articles and two books, and executive producer of the short documentary, Becoming Myself: Positive Trans & Nonbinary Identities (available on YouTube).