What happened to the Lu Loo Tales?

For quite a while I—

When I go to the loo—

When I need the loo—

It’s hard to explain the strange sensation of starting from—

You know it’s really quite uncomfortable to talk about, but it’s been long enough since I started and abandoned the Lu Loo Tales that I— so I really ought to say something.

You see—

The truth is:

I never stopped having Lu Loo Tales. I just stopped writing them down, because they became so common that they stopped being novel or humorous to me, in any way, anymore. They became the norm.

And I only ever wrote down the “fun” ones (in the loosest sense). There were many others that I felt uncomfortable recording for various reasons that I won’t go into.

The truth is:

There was a period of time in my life, where the following was true:

If I go in the mens, people tell me to leave. If I go in the womens, people tell me to leave. Sometimes there’s a gender neutral toilet, or a disabled loo, but sometimes there’s not. Sometimes there’s not. Or people tell me not to use those too.

So I’ve developed strategies over time that help me to avoid problems like this. I bring a baggy hoodie around in my bag, that I put on, whenever I need the loo. And I keep up my hood. I hold out my hands inside that hoodie, hiding my head, my hair and my chest.

Or I peak inside the loo to see if it’s busy. To make sure there aren’t any women or men, inside the loo, to send me out.

My friends are largely useless, despite their best efforts.

They tell me it’s fine. “Just use the womens” and no one will mind. “You look like a woman to me” they say. “I see you as a woman” despite that not being what I am.

And I have lived experience to say that they’re wrong. The number of times I’ve been sent out the loo is the problem, not how I look, or who I am, or if I’m accepted. I just need the loo. I said I just need the loo. It doesn’t matter to me how you see me. I just need the bloody loo.

Or another thing they say is “it’s against the law” and “they can’t kick you out” and “that’s breaking the rules” and that’s great and whatever but it doesn’t seem to make any difference at all.

Why do people not believe me? I sometimes wonder. Even other trans people seem not to at times, but it’s usually the binary ones with internalised something who call people names or tell me I’m going through a phase.

It’s getting worse.

The current prime minister of the United Kingdom, Keir Starmer, was asked this very question.

“Which loo should Lu use?”

Or rather, they asked him:

“Do biological males with gender recognition certificates have the right to enter women-only spaces? It’s a simple yes/no question.”

And his answer was:

“No. They don’t have that right. They shouldn’t. That’s why I’ve always said biological women’s spaces need to be protected.” ¹

Now of course, many news organisations reported this as Keir Starmer stating that trans women aren’t allowed to use the womens loo. ²³

And if that’s true, then I’m truly fucked, and stuck in the mens, because I don’t even have one, a GRC, “gender recognition certificate”, and I doubt I ever will, because it’s too hard to get.

But in a way, that would be simpler. If it’s decreed by law, by the prime minister himself, that I must use the mens, then my life would be— my fate would be clear.

If anyone ever told me to leave the mens loo, then I could pull out my phone:

Here’s the statement
From Keir Starmer
Prime minister of the United Kingdom
Decreeing that I must use
The mens loo
So please leave me
Alone

I could print it out! and hang it round my neck in a lanyard.

So I needed to know if that’s what he really meant! I wanted to know what he meant. So I began asking him every day. I asked Keir Starmer (prime minister of the United Kingdom) what he meant by his statement. What do you mean, Keir Starmer, prime minister of the United Kingdom? Which loo should I use? What is the correct Lu loo?

I ended up asking him this question sixteen days in a row but alas, unfortunately he did not answer.

Of course:

Keir Starmer (prime minister of the United Kingdom) left it intentionally vague. ⁴⁵

That way, no one can truly claim that he said something wrong, because he said almost nothing at all, just a couple of dog whistles to try to win over the bigots. It’s a coward’s approach from a man too afraid to take a stance.

A world leader that fears leading!

As the hormones began to sink in more, I began to “pass” more, and I began to have fewer and fewer Lu Loo Tales.

But I don’t have none. It still happens. It’s not at zero.

Going to the loo is something I can’t take for granted. Every time feels like a safety hazard.

So I carry out my boring little risk assessment and it’s tiring. It’s so so tiring. What a waste of energy.

Okay, so my hairline is pretty far forward right now but I do have a little bit of beard shadow, and the lighting accentuates my brow quite a lot, and my voice is pretty gravelly from all the coffee but on the other hand, my top masks my shoulders pretty well, though this is a pretty conservative area, and two people have madame’d me but one has sir’d me, and I– Oh damn this is a close one.

Sometimes I ask a nearby friend for advice.

Hey which loo do you think I should go in? (based on what I look like right now)

I ask for practical purposes, but they tend to give me something else.

👏 You 👏 should 👏 use 👏 the 👏 loo 👏 you 👏 feel 👏 best 👏 in 👏 queen 👏 you 👏 are 👏 a 👏 woman 👏

And of course they’re right but— Ugh—

👏 You 👏 are 👏 beautiful 👏 queen 👏

Yes alright alright.

I’ll go in the mens.

And then.

👏 Yes 👏 queen 👏 wait! ✋ what!? 🫴

I know that many trans people have similar problems to me. They get stopped in the loo, or get told by different people to go in different ones.

But it’s not just trans people.

Increasingly, anti-trans hysteria is affecting non-trans people too when they go to the loo. If you look androgynous or you don’t follow gender norms in some way, you’re likely to get thrown out the loo. A masculine looking cisgender woman experiences the same problems as I do. Or actually, they experience it even worse. ⁶

And what if I don’t want to pass!?

Passing is bullshit! It just means you adhere to some societal standard that may or may not change or reflect who I am.

Toilet humour

I think stories about the loo are compelling because they tend to be very ridiculous.

Imagine there being such a fuss about such a mundane and boring part of our lives. Well we don’t need to imagine.

There are much bigger problems and fish to fry.

At the same time as I was asking Keir Starmer what loo to use, his colleague Wes Streeting was permanently banning hormone blockers for teenagers, a life-saving treatment. ⁷

If you’re not trans yourself, you may not realise how fundamentally cruel and torturous this is.

Yes, sometimes, all the toilet debates can seem like a distraction. The bigots want us to talk about— argue about toilets, because then we’ll be distracted from all the bigger things. In that same week, Keir Starmer’s toilet comments were a mask, shielding the government from eyeballs on the much more abhorrent acts they were committing to law.

It’s tempting to think we should ignore the toilet thing altogether, and keep our sights set on more crucial targets. It’s a pretty reasonable thing to think.

You might think we need to avoid the toilet “debate”. You might think that we can’t get bogged(!) down in it. But I don’t think it’s an either/or.

As with most things in life, it’s not one or the other.

Yes, we need to see the loo debates as what they are: As ridiculous.

Yes, we need to see the banning of trans healthcare as what it is too: As conversion therapy, as psychological torture.

We can do both! There are more of us than there are of them, but we need to be more vocal, more diligent and ruthless. We need more people doing this, more allies pulling their finger out of their arse and doing or saying something for once. More trans people sharing their story. Why haven’t you done anything? Why haven’t you said anything publicly about this?

Shame to all the bystanders.

Things may be fine for you now, whether you’re trans or cis. But it’s not for many others, trans and cis.

We need to be ruthless. We can’t give them an inch.

If the bigots want to argue over toilets, then fuck it. Let’s do it! They’re wrong on all counts and we’ll spell that out clearly.

Join me! Join me. For tode’s sake, join me.

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