ZINNIA: Hi, I’m Zinnia Jones – welcome to Gender Analysis. Joey Salads, whose channel
hosts “Pranks and Mind Blowing Social Experiments”, recently posted a video in which he dressed
“like a transgender” and entered women’s restrooms.
JOEY SALADS: I’m gonna see what they think about my dress.
ZINNIA: On four occasions, he followed women into a public restroom and allegedly received
a variety of negative reactions.
JOEY SALADS: Hey.
[screaming]
WOMAN: Get out!
ZINNIA: Based on these responses, he concludes that “most women are not comfortable sharing
a bathroom with a trans person”, and “there needs to be a better solution”. Unfortunately
for Mr. Salads, his supposed “social experiment” demonstrates nothing of the sort. From the
outset, his premises and experimental procedures are flawed and can provide no useful information
about attitudes toward trans women using public restrooms. Various features of his video and
its setting further suggest that these events likely did not occur as he claims. Indeed,
our own reconstruction of his filming location offers ample evidence that this could not
possibly be a real, candid scenario. Numerous media outlets have uncritically accepted this
video as genuine, yet it completely falls apart on closer examination.
ZINNIA: Joey Salads’ video cannot possibly offer any meaningful evidence on the subject
of trans women in restrooms, because nobody in the video is reacting to a trans woman
in a restroom. Mr. Salads is a cis man, not a trans woman, and no trans women were present
in his “social experiment”. For this reason, his video only provides evidence regarding
reactions to men in women’s restrooms. Completely aside from any policies or social attitudes
regarding trans people, men aren’t supposed to be in women’s bathrooms – who does
he believe is claiming otherwise? His omission of any trans women from his video is especially
baffling given that he claims to be talking on the phone with his friend, a trans woman,
prior to the experiment.
JOEY SALADS: I got my transgender friend on the phone.
ZINNIA: Rather than including actual trans women in this video, Mr. Salads chooses to
“dress and act like a transgender”, stating that “on the outside, people will still
think that I’m transgender”. His outfit consists of a bright purple dress and a poorly-fitting
blonde wig, which he apparently feels is sufficient to mimic the appearance of a trans woman.
JOEY SALADS: But on the outside, people will still think that I’m transgender.
ZINNIA: This does not reflect my own experiences as a trans woman, to put it mildly. I’ve
used women’s restrooms with a trans woman who was much taller than Joey Salads, and
she was hardly ever wearing any kind of dress. We encountered no issues at all. So how is
it that a 6’5” trans woman in a baggy Led Zeppelin shirt gets no reaction in women’s
restrooms on dozens of occasions, yet Mr. Salads manages to elicit immediate shrieks
of alarm?
[screaming]
WOMAN: Get out!
ZINNIA: While the video itself is almost certainly staged, even if it were not, there would still
be a number of behavioral factors at play here. Despite his stated intention to “act
like a transgender”, he conducts himself unlike any trans woman I know. For instance,
he emerges from a secluded hallway to follow women so closely that he enters the bathroom
before the door even closes. Sneaking up behind strangers in a bathroom is a great way to
get negative reactions, but it’s not something I’ve ever seen trans women do. When confronted,
he haltingly tries to explain himself in a rather obviously guilty tone, like a kid with
a skateboard getting kicked out of a church parking lot – not like someone who belongs
there.
JOEY SALADS: I do have a penis but I identify as a girl so I’m allowed in here. Why not?
I’m a girl.
WOMAN: No, you can’t be in here.
JOEY SALADS: But I’m a girl.
ZINNIA: Everything he does comes off as impolite and with a clear intent of mischief, which
does not reflect the cautious nature of how trans women typically behave in restrooms.
Even a trans woman who looked exactly like Joey Salads in this video would still tend
to behave as unobtrusively as possible - believe it or not, we pretty much stay out of everyone’s
way. No trans woman wants to be confronted in a public restroom.
ZINNIA: His footage of the “experiment” clearly shows a physician’s medical scale
in the background, suggesting that it was filmed in a doctor’s office or other medical
facility. Accepting this video as candid would require believing that this facility has simply
allowed him and his cameraperson to loiter outside their restrooms indefinitely, even
after repeatedly frightening other patrons. This is not consistent with the norms of most
medical facilities. In the introduction to the video, Mr. Salads makes reference to “a
doctor who I’m also friends with.”
JOEY SALADS: A doctor, who I’m also friends with…
ZINNIA: Is this how he gained access to the facilities contained therein? Over
the course of the four encounters he includes in the video, the lighting in the women’s
restroom visibly changes. We can clearly see that the light is on in the first clip, off
in the second, and on again in the third. The second clip features him following two
women into the restroom while this light is off, and the door then closes behind all three
of them.
WOMAN: Ew! Get out! What are you doing here? You’re not supposed to be in here.
JOEY SALADS: I’m trans.
WOMAN: You’re a guy.
JOEY SALADS: Okay, okay, okay.
ZINNIA: Were these two women just standing in a completely darkened and enclosed space
while they loudly argued with a stranger who they believed could pose some kind of threat?
ZINNIA: There are numerous clues that the women’s restroom in the video is not a multi-user
bathroom, but a single-user bathroom. The door features a handle and a large pane of
frosted glass, which are not typically seen in multi-user public restrooms. Additionally,
multi-user restrooms do not usually contain light switches that are operable by patrons.
We’ve also performed a highly precise evaluation of which type of restroom could fit behind
this door. According to the placard mounted outside the door, this restroom is handicap-accessible.
The Americans with Disabilities Act defines strict standards for the layout of such a
facility, such as the turning space required for a wheelchair and the necessary clearance
space around sinks and other fixtures. Based on these requirements, construction suppliers
like Bobrick Washroom Equipment have provided examples of handicap-accessible layouts for
single-user and multi-user restrooms. In these examples, multi-user accessible restroom designs
spanned a minimum of 10 feet and 7 inches along the shortest dimension, while individual
restrooms spanned a minimum of 7 feet 6 inches. So how much space is available for a restroom
in Mr. Salads’ filming location? Using the Blender computer graphics program, our 3D
modeler Penny Robo was able to reconstruct the hallway where this video took place. By
tracking fixed points in the video at various distances from the camera and calculating
parallax, Blender recreates both the fixed features of the environment and the camera's
motion through it, creating a 3D environment from a 2D video with a high degree of accuracy.
Once the space has been reconstructed, we can actually step inside the depicted hallway
and examine its dimensions. Based on the proportions of the bathroom door, we can determine that
this is a standard 7 foot by 3 foot office door. This can serve as a reference to measure
the size of the hallway and its features. In the foreground of the footage, a men’s
restroom door is visible, and when the women’s restroom door opens, we can see that the far
edge is nearly flush with an interior wall. Together, the far edge of the men’s room
door and the far edge of the women’s room door define the theoretical maximum width
of the women’s restroom: 9 feet 4 inches, with a 0.8-inch margin of error. Additionally,
walls containing plumbing are typically at least 6 and a half inches thick, reducing
the available space to 8 feet and 9 and a half inches. Even a small multi-user handicap-accessible
restroom could not fit within this space – it would substantially encroach into the men’s
room, extending more than a foot beyond the doorway. However, a smaller single-user restroom
fits easily inside the available area. Based on this model, we can conclude with high confidence
that Mr. Salads’ encounters took place in a single-user restroom, not a multi-user restroom
as he represents. Even if the reactions depicted were entirely genuine, this would not be an
issue of trans women and cis women sharing a restroom. This is a stranger following individuals
into a single-user bathroom – an unacceptable behavior completely aside from any matters
of gender.
ZINNIA: Mr. Salads has presented an “experiment” on the subject of trans women using women’s
public restrooms, involving no trans women and no multi-user restrooms. At Gender Analysis,
we believe in doing better than that. What would happen if we conducted Mr. Salads’
experiment using real trans women and real public restrooms? Let’s find out!
ZINNIA: So, I have my transgender outfit. Unfortunately I couldn’t get a shirt that
says Grooby Girl on it. Penny Robo, control transsexual – is this transgender-approved?
HEATHER: You have to say it’s transgender-approved.
[silence]
ZINNIA: Alright, so yeah, chill out, SJWs. Alright, let’s go use some bathrooms.
ZINNIA: So, using the women’s bathroom, like I’ve been doing for the past, what,
four-five years? What’s our hypothesis here?
HEATHER: I think they’re gonna freak out.
ZINNIA: You think they’re gonna freak out?
HEATHER: Oh yeah, totally. I mean, they didn’t freak out any of the other times.
ZINNIA: But this time, this is totally gonna… yeah. Yeah.
Nothing’s gonna happen.
[background noise]
ZINNIA: As you can see, my presence in the restroom did not elicit any objections or
other negative reactions. Other women continued to use the restroom, entering and exiting
uneventfully even as I took my time thoroughly drying my hands and fixing my hair. We then
performed another trial in a different setting: a women’s dressing room, consisting of a
shared space and several private compartments in a layout similar to a restroom.
HEATHER: I like that shirt. Yes.
WOMAN: Sorry!
ZINNIA: So, that was uneventful. Nothing happened, nobody freaked out? Nobody freaked out. Unplanned,
actually – the dressing room at Charlotte Russe, I didn’t know that the doors close
and lock behind you. I had to crawl under one of those doors in a really shady fashion
to get back in. Nobody cared. One of the attendants actually apologized to Heather for walking
in front of her camera while she was filming.
So, yeah. Nothing happened. Especially nothing happened. More nothing happened than I even
expected.
ZINNIA: Joey Salads’ video has been picked up by Mashable, the Daily Mail, and a number
of conservative blogs, all of which seem to believe these events took place as described.
In the midst of a political firestorm that’s painted a target on our backs over something
as simple as access to bathrooms, his video has been viewed over 2.2 million times. Mr.
Salads has tossed away any lick of integrity by spreading this wholly fabricated “experiment”,
fanning the flames of popular prejudice for cheap hits. As brazen and irresponsible as
this deception is, it’s certainly not unique. Transphobes are not above inventing controversies
out of whole cloth to advance their agenda. Conservative political groups have falsely
accused a 15-year-old trans girl of harassing girls in school restrooms and perpetuated
this lie throughout international media before they were caught. Other advocacy groups accused
a trans woman of exposing herself to young girls in a sauna before it was later revealed
that she was there with a cis woman friend and the sauna was for adults only. Snopes.com
now has an entire section devoted to debunking various misleading chain emails claiming that
trans people’s rights and protections have somehow allowed assaults and molestations
in public restrooms. Joey Salads’ video is just another episode in the long tradition of cis
people telling myths to cis people about trans people. Unfortunately, most people seem prepared
to believe nearly anything about us – even something as plainly fake as his video. And
we’re the ones who are forced to bear the very real consequences of the public’s fear.
Mr. Salads, you’re not just lying about your ridiculous “experiment”. You are
lying about me, my friends, my loved ones, my co-workers, and hundreds of thousands of
women who have done nothing wrong. Stop lying about us. We will find out.
I’m Zinnia Jones. Thanks for watching, and tune in next time for more Gender Analysis.