I fell in love with the game of American football in 6th grade. My middle school didn't offer football for 6th graders so I played in a community league. After practices and games I would go home to shower. When I reached 7th grade I was excited to play with my school mates, but after the first practice I was met with a memorable trauma. The coaches insisted that the whole team shower, naked together in the locker room. I had never been naked in front of my friends and I was more than self-conscious. I was terrified. My heart palpitated and my mind spun. Even now, 25 years later, I remember the experience with crystal clarity. So it goes with trauma.
Teens' bodies are changing and so is their social awareness. They are aware of themselves, their transitioning bodies, and others and their bodies in a way that is strange, frightening, and sometimes exciting. They are also aware of the social status and how their bodies can affect their status among peers in new and uncertain ways. They are hyper-critical of themselves and others. According to the developmental psychologist Erik Erikson, teens are, developmentally developing their sense of who they are in the society around them. In the modern world of age segregation, this means they are finding their place among their peers.
Today there are raging debates about where transgender children should use the bathroom, where they should change and shower. There is concern on both sides about the effects of any solution. But, the reality, of course it's going to traumatizing. It's traumatizing for everyone. I don't mean to normalize it. I don't mean to say it's okay. I mean it's not okay.
During the teen years are when many people discover they are gay, or trans, or fatter than everyone else, and become aware of differences that might get them ostracized, or even beat up. While the real agenda for many bathroomers is to deny that trans people exist, others are genuinely concerned. The truth is, the problem is not anyone's gender.
The problem is that our culture institutionalized, humiliates, and dehumanized children (and prison inmates, similarly). There is an inherent power discrepancy between the gym teachers supervising, clothed, and the inmates (oops, I mean children!) enduring public nudity.
Adults in gyms demand the option of private changing stalls. Some use them and some do not. Who among you uses a gym with open air public showers? Every one I've been to has private shower stalls. Why do adults get this privilege but not our young, self-conscious, terrified youth?
This is just one small part of the attack on the individual, the attack on the sacredness of each person's human-ness that begins when we start school. Watch out for future explorations of age-based segregation, standardized curricula, and primacy of the teacher's role as authority in a classroom (ask any teacher what percentage of their time they spend on behavior management and tell me it doesn't sound like their primary job is assert authority!) and how that contributes to the collective trauma and neurosis each of us carries with us.
