Conversations With Strangers: Analyzing Bathroom Stall Graffiti as a Form of Queer Mentorship, Space, and Ephemera

Public bathrooms have historically and consistently been sites of societal tension and discourse, used as symbols of isolation, discrimination, and shame for many people in marginalized communities. Whether through racial segregation in public facilities up through the Jim Crow Era (Wade, 2015, 1), or current anti-trans bathroom ban legislation that prohibits the use of gender-congruent bathrooms for trans or gender-nonconforming individuals (MAP, 2025, 1), the public bathroom remains at the center of many racist, transphobic, and colonial discourses. It has been socialized as a space that enforces colonial systems of oppression, such as gender and race binaries, allowing others the privacy needed to enact violence against these marginalized communities. With this context, it is imperative to recognize forms of resistance and resilience within these spaces, such as bathroom stall graffiti. In my research, I will analyze bathroom stall graffiti found in the first-floor women’s bathroom in Hart Hall, looking closely at how language, space, and social discourse interact to transform the experience of this public-private structure. I will analyze images and data collected from the bathroom stall over the past 13 months and frame them within current conversations surrounding gender reproduction in public bathrooms, graffiti’s contributions to maintaining queer spatiality, and how its erasure acts as a form of cultural reproduction and policing within the university institution.