This very public form of culture jamming explodes the idea of the binary oppositions that cohorse ourselves into everyday! Women and men....seperate washrooms, seperate behaviours, which are understood to each ideal. What about those who don't fit into one of those two options....there's an Ani Difranco quote, in which she talks about school and how "they tried to teach me different was bad." How does mandatory conforming neglect, exclude and at the same time support the hegemony that is present in society? Is it possible to not conform?
Miss Frizz
that image is from http://www.woostercollective.com/lontube2.jpg
ReplyDeleteMiss Frizz
i dont think its possible to 'not conform', because if you choose not to conform, than you are conforming to non conformity...are you not?
ReplyDeleteI think that there are times in life when being different is awesome! Like how boring would it be if everyone is the same!?
~Beautiful Bombshell~
Something that i found extremely interesting which came up in conversation on the matter of the conformity of which bathrooms we are "allowed" to use is that fact of our bathrooms at home vs bathrooms in public. I am a person who entertains fairly often and have a wide variety of people in my home and they all use the same bathroom no matter their gender, and isn't it like this is almost any home. Most people use the same bathrooms as their siblings and parents no matter their gender but once we enter the public this is no longer allowed. Am who is there to actually make sure we are using the "right" bathroom to match our gender, really it is only ourselves and the habit that society has helped us develop "SELF POLICING"
ReplyDelete-princess consuela banana hammock
Hey Y'all,
ReplyDeleteI have to say that i agree, non-conformism is kind of its own conformism. I think it's best to just do what works for the individual but doesn't harm others.
I love talking about bathrooms. One time when I was at Scuttlebutts, a girl was actually thrown out of the men's washroom by a bouncer. So self-policing does factor into it but "not conforming" also presents real risks
-macho muffin
I think it was in my first year women's studies course (or possibly the literary theory) that we read an article about how women who don't look like a "typical" woman would have a difficult time going to the washroom. If she went in the women's washroom she would get stared at and on one occasion even was kicked out. Does that mean she should then go to the men's washroom, even though she's a woman??? There is a distinct binary based purely on how one looks. We can either look like a male or a female, that is ALL we are allowed, otherwise we get stared at and kicked out of bathrooms! What a bad message.
ReplyDeleteKeekers
What is interesting about separating genders in bathrooms and change rooms are the norms that develop within those spaces. As we talked about in class today, men walk around naked in change rooms while women are very discrete. If bathrooms and therefore change rooms were gender neutral, what would happen to "male" and "female" behaviour? Would women start showing off their breasts or would men cover up?
ReplyDeleteTVfree.
I don't see seperated bathrooms based on gender as a negative conformity. I view it as a function of society and like 'Princess consuela banana hammock' stated, a way of "Self Policing". I believe that this particular form of self policing is absolutely necessary for our society to function. The difference between the bathroom in your home and the bathroom in say... a restaurant or the mall is that these bathrooms are PUBLIC and are there to cater to specific genders. For example, most women would not feel comfortable changing their pad or tampon in front of men. Also, most men are more than likely uncomfortable urinating in front of women that are strangers to them. Another reason that its necessary for public bathrooms to be seperated is that many of these businesses have massive amounts of costumers (I.e nightclubs) and if everyone was using the same bathroom the line-ups would be even more intolerable than they are as gender-seperated.
ReplyDeleteAnother point is, even though its terrible, when looking at this in a realistic way shared bathrooms could cause much conflict with rape (think of drunk individuals at bars) and could even become an place for child molesters to pray on young victims.
Until businesses can afford many seperate, single-stalled bathrooms with door-men watching to make sure only one occupant is using the washroom at a time I honestly do not think that shared washrooms can be possible.
Whether the individual is heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, or transgendered I'm confident that they relate to one gender more than the other so that is obviously the bathroom they feel more comfortable with using, and although I am all for women's rights and equality amongst race, class, and of course gender I truly believe that some things between men and women should be kept seperate and this is one of them.
*Silver
I think it's interesting the point Silver brought up around the importance of security. I just wonder what how much of a deterrent gendered bathrooms are at present. are they at all? Victims of rape and child molestation aren't always of the opposite sex.
ReplyDeleteGesundheit.
I was thinking of bathrooms and safe spaces too. While all victims of rape and child molestation aren't always of the opposite sex, rape usually is, and the stats on child molestation also indicate that in most instances the genders are different. Be careful not to conflate clear social trends into 'it's all equal' when it isn't.
ReplyDeleteThe Doctor