Bathrooms Are Where We Feel Most Vulnerable. No Wonder Republicans Are Obsessed.
A few years ago, I attended an advertising conference in the South of France. I was staying at a glitzy hotel on a glittering boulevard along the Côte d’Azur.
I was in business attire, a navy pantsuit. On my way to a meeting, I ducked into the women’s bathroom off the lobby. Then I heard heavy footsteps and a breathless voice saying, in French, “There’s a man in the bathroom!” “Monsieur, monsieur,” another voice boomed.
The door of my stall rattled as a fist pounded it from outside. “I am a woman,” I replied in French, using the most feminine intonation I could muster, frantically gathering the trousers pooled around my ankles to get out of the stall as quickly as possible.
The woman who had been pounding on the door, a security guard, seemed skeptical, and waited until I left the stall just to make sure.
