March 23, 2004

• it looks more like a drag queen's lips anyways. maybe that's why so many men have been complaining about it, heh.
• bad woman! no new shoes! bad woman! /runs
• oh petebest! i've been bad! hit me! beat me! yes yes!!! (sorry, just watched "secretary" for the third time. great flick!)
• NOW would have been wise to stick to championing birth-control-eschewing, toddler-punching, fetus-poisoning, baby-saving-c-section-avoiding paragons of womanhood.
• What if they made a dumper shaped like a man's mouth? Would that level the playing field?
• or a bidet shaped like a penis? i object already!
• I think the problem is people are seeing the toilet out of context, outside of the rest of the artist's collection. The artist is a woman, if it matters. Her response to the media attention is here. Within it, it's a whimsical piece of design. Outside of it, well, a lot of knee-jerkism.
• thanks for the response from the artist, daniel! that's interesting. she does fun stuff!
• Nice one Daniel.
• Waaaaait a minute. It's ok with you that someone wanted to install something that depicts a woman's mouth that men actually pee into? The context doesn't make me any happier about it. Intentions are all well and good, but the actual representation is a pee reciptical shaped like a woman's mouth. Feel free to think of it is whimsical and fun. I can see that side of it if I squint hard enough, but I find it somewhat disingenuous to dismiss a group of people who have issues with such a representation.
• i am not thinking about peeing in a woman's mouth. i am not thinking about peeing in a woman's mouth. i am not thinking about peeing in a woman's mouth.
• ... especially when it's called "The Sexy Urinal".
• kimberly, did you read daniel's link from the artist? that explains it well. and even she says, lighten up.
• I remember a few years ago, a pub in Glasgow - I think - installed tv screens in the urinals, so men could piss on Margaret Thatcher, or other unpopular people.
• i read her note and believe she didn't consider the implications, but the catch is that a company is installing them for public use without the context and - frankly it makes me think about peeing in a woman's mouth. Which is sexy. And therefore women should submit. QED! *kisses biceps*
• SideDish, I did read it and what Petebest said (well part of it :P ). She obviously didn't have those intentions--and obviously didn't think about the fact that she designed a urinal that (and clearly I can't stress this enough) will have men peeing into a representation of a woman's mouth. I understand how, put with a bunch of her other designs it may seem merely whimsical to some (not to me, but to others), but surely you can see how it could reasonably be offensive to others. And in this case it was offensive to enough people for the corporation who was going to install them to reconsider that decision.
• Even if it was shaped as a man's mouth, I'd find it degrading... specially if, as the original plan was, it was installed in someplace like the Virgin Airlines' VIP lounge. Juts another reminder of attendant's status? 'Open wide, bitch'? OK, put it in a pub, in a sexshop, in a lapdance bar. It would look naive there. And that hammock tub looks, more than funny, dangerous. Like those aquariums-over-a-bed things...
• It looks like Mick Jagger in lipstick. Ugh.
• i know, kimberly, i understand why they're upset, and they have a right to their opinion. but what's sad is, once again this feeds right into the stereotype dour, unsmiling feminists with absolutely no sense of humor, who react with outrage when they could have handled this with a bit of humor. they could have taken pyrr's tact: "What if they made a dumper shaped like a man's mouth? Would that level the playing field?" i mean, just once, can't feminists tackle something with an emotion other than bitter, insulted outrage?
• let's see what google says: >>Your search - "feminists with humor" - did not match any documents. i rest my case.
• Feminist Humour Page I think this kind of proves SideDish's point...
• I seem to remember Mick Jagger actually bought one of these. As to all this feminist nonsense (and it IS nonsense IMO) I agree with what SideDish said. What's funny is that I posted about that site a long time ago and not one person spoke up about any problem with the urinal.
• Lumping all feminists in with the women at NOW isn't exactly fair. I think this essay sums it up best for me. There are plenty of us with a sense of humor. There are plenty of us who can make fun of ourselves and still maintain that certain things should not happen. There are plenty of us who laughed when we saw this, but still recognized how wrong it was and why it's a bad idea. There are plenty of us (such as yourself I suspect) that don't find this offensive at all. Perhaps a better phrasing for your post would be "Damn NOW feminists". I, for one, have seen many feminist responses to things that were full of humor and compassion and joy. Those responses just don't get as much of the press coverage.
• Obviously, doing a search for "feminist humor" is going to get you exactly what you got. Typically feminism is labeled exactly how SideDish is labeling it: dour-faced enraged people with nasty reactions. My mother is a feminist, my friends are feminists and we are all reasonable people who don't own what radical branches of anything we associate with say on our behalf. And honestly, what gets the coverage? It's the outrage that gets the coverage. It's not the people who plod away every day with compassion and humor that get the coverage. It's the people who say and do outrageous things to be heard. They've learned it's the easiest way to have a voice.
• There are feminists, and there are feminists... and there are the people's perception of what's a feminist. For some, it means an unattractive lesbian, flinging flyers and shouting in the streets. To others, it's any independent woman with a mind of her own that's single around her 30's. 'just saying. And that bit about Jagger buying one of those... oh boy, too creepy to think of the implications... I mean, it's basically a caricature of him!
• I fail to see what any of this has to do with Mel Gypson's "Flaying My Dad, Jesus", Rated R.
• I'd imagine that individual women at NOW would approach the item with humor, but an organized response would be harder to incorporate it. "We find this offensive . . but also kinda silly" doesn't have the same effect as "You idiots, what the hell blah blah blah".
• Results 1 - 10 of about 163,000 Girl, that stereotype doesn't exist because feminists don't have a sense of humor. It exists because its a good way to defang feminist complaints. It doesn't matter how many times feminists exhibit or don't exhibit a sense of humor-- that stereotype will never go away, because its a weapon. Myself, I don't think the urinal is a big cause for concern, although I personally would not want to piss in it (because I wouldn't be able to help wondering where the eyes were and whether or not they were staring at my pink parts). But I can see how it would offend some people, and publicity-wise I don't think installing it was a very smart move on Virgin's part. Surely they realized it would tee a lot of people off. BTW, why did God make men? Because vibrators can't mow the lawn. I rest my case.
• I believe this is as much a cultural issue as a sexism/feminism issue. I think Americans tend to get outraged by a lot of things, while Europeans do not. And it's NOT because women are more oppressed over there. My "interpretation" of the mouth wasn't so much as a watersports thing (uhm. as in, the sexual-fetish, and not say, waterskiing). My first thought of it was, "oh, that's a play on oral sex." I think it's incidental that you're urinating into it--the urinal is the only other interface your penis has that's non-sexual. I think the sexiness comes from the proximity of your penis to a set of lips. Unless you ARE into watersports, and then I guess that works too. Maybe I'm biased, because I know the design process, and how designers tend to think.
• To pee or not to pee, that is the question... gotta go, now.
• Feminist Humour Page The Dolly Parton line in there is pretty funny:

  I'm not offended by all the dumb blonde jokes because I know I'm not dumb... and I also know that I'm not blonde.

  but maybe that's b/c I'm blond, and married to a blonde. The rest of this is just achingly lame. I mean, Erica Jong's

  You see a lot of smart guys with dumb women, but you hardly ever see a smart woman with a dumb guy.

  is about as funny as a Sunday sermon from the guest preacher. (Maybe it was true back in Jong's time, but it ain't true now. I know quite a few Julie Brown types, my mother among them.) On preview: Krebs, that's funny.
• Let's imagine that instead of gender, those lips were marked by race. Then I suspect that people who found it offensive wouldn't be told to "lighten up" as much. And Daniel, that doesn't sound much better. :)
• Daniel: I think Americans tend to get shown on tv being outraged by a lot of things. Good point on the proximity-to-lips thing.
• And, Krebs, Virgin obviously didn't think it would piss people off. I don't think it's amazing that they decided to install them. I think the reaction from certain sectors of the public is what is amazing. You can't bemoan that coporate culture is humorless and bland, and then say to the one exhibiting a bit of fun (and really, despite what anyone says, there is no malevolence in this) that they should've realized what they were doing might have offended someone.
• Daniel--totally agreed about the lack of malevolence. It's just a really bad idea--it's on the scale of iLoo bad ideas.
• Uhm, but Kim (may I call you Kim?), I can't imagine those lips marked by race. How would you do that? The greater point is, I don't find this to be a gender issue. I mean, tell me how those lips should look if they were male lips? Not red? Not cartoonishly shaped?
• This is why we don't have nice things
• not *as* red, not *as* sensuously curved. That would make it masculine, or at least more masculine. Hm I wonder if they were shaped like that would men think about gay sex? Would the religious conservative groups fuss about it? Would it be as whimsical & fun?
• Daniel: Yes, it would be nearly impossible to make those lips identifiable as male (although I suppose you could add a mustache above them and that would do the trick), but those are easily associated as female lips. And as far as the race thing, it's all about skin tone. I guess my greater point was that if it were lips with a mustache or some other identifiable male maker associated with them, I'm not sure that the idea would have even been proposed. Would guys want to pee in a mouth with a mustache? Is that just as whimsical? (-- on preview, what Pete said.) And I'm not a big fan of Kim. I went to school with a Kim and she was a raging bitch to me, so since then I've vastly prefered Kimberly. :)~
• Daniel; I agree about the lack of malevolence, and also about the idea that it was meant to be an allusion to oral sex. But totally putting aside the feminist objection (which I think is valid), I just don't want to think about oral sex while I'm pissing. 30 seconds beforehand, sure; 30 seconds afterwards, you bet. But, man, when I piss, utilitarean is just fine. Does that make me weird?
• This thread reminds me of a story told by a guy friend of mine about going to a bar here in San Francisco (can't remember now whether it was The End Up or Stud) and going to the mens' room, discovering that the entire urinal blacksplash was *mirrored* and being unable to, er, take care of business under those circumstances. Not having been in the mens' room of either establishment, I can't confirm the accuracy of the story, but perhaps someone else can. I would think that this urinal might provoke a similar response for some.
• My first thought when I saw the urinal was that it reminded me of the Rolling Stones. Wasn't surprised when I heard Jagger bought one. I've really never thought "Hey, it's a woman, and I'm PEEING in her MOUTH!" Seems a little juvenile and skips the whole point of the purpose of it's design. And I think it discredits the designer to take something she created and find politically correct problems with it.
• Irrelevant if it has 'male' or 'feamle' lips. It's merely an object made of (presumably) porcelaine and resin -- (and as such should be functional enough for containing human waste). Whatever people project onto this assemblage of porcelaine and rezin should not fall within the scaope of a free society to restrict. Presuming to know what other people are projecting is a form of thought-police-ism I am not in sympathy with -- it's the same kind of restriction Ashcroft attempted when he had those nude statutes covered -- i.e., shoddy thinking.
• Ambrosia: That totally reminded me of this post by one of my favorite bloggers. And I was really surprised to learn that in some places, they actually have newspaper on the walls above the urinals. I discovered this when a friend brought a torn off piece back to our table. *shudder*
• Bees: Saying that things don't or can't symbolize other things or carry a message just doesn't hold up. As I've said before, I don't think they meant anything negative, but that doesn't mean that the urinal wasn't inherintly carrying a message outside of their intentions. I find the comparison to Ashcroft especially reactionary. It would be a very difficult world to live in if anything that made a judgement call about what was or was not approrpiate was automatically deemed Ashcroftian. No one here is saying that people can't think what they want.
• People can't think what they want. ;)
• kimberly, thanks for the feminist essay! i enjoyed that. i should add that i don't think it's just feminists who need to lighten up, it's everybody. i think people in general take life far too seriously. war, poverty, hunger, disease -- those are serious. a urinal shaped like a woman's mouth? there are far worse things to get upset about. go with the flow, pun intended. :-)
• SideDish, you're welcome! And welcome to the joy that is Sars. Also, point taken. For me, the ideal reaction to this would have been from the execs at Virgin saying, "HahahahahahaNo." However, it's a lot harder to do anything about war, povery, hunger, and disease than it is to try and get people to think about what they're doing on an individual basis. If we promote symbols that objectify a group of people, we move farther away from solving those global problems.
• Offensive or not, I have enough problems with performance anxiety without having to think about peeing into someone's mouth.
• (i also find it amusing that the guys in this thread seem more concerned with pee anxiety. heh.)
• I have enough problems with performance anxiety without having to think about peeing into someone's mouth. [hands dirigibleman a cup...in a moving car]
• here, shy guys: nice, plain, water-free urinals. pee into nothingness!
• Gotta stand with Kimberly on this one. As a conceptual art piece, the urinal is thought provoking and even humorous. As a commercial piece for installation a public place, I think it's a bit sick. Pyrrthon1, you're right on it: a dumper shaped like a man's mouth--in the ladies' loo--that would certainly evoke a bit of comment from the gents, I'd bet. As for the other subject in this thread, all I gotta say is that MY brand of feminism was originally about equal wages and fair play in the workplace, not about special privlege or man-hating. Somehow the equal wages thing got lost in all the rhetoric. Women are still getting the crapped end of the stick on that one.
• I find the comparison to Ashcroft especially reactionary. Well, to be sure, he is an ultraconservative, Kimberly.
• Kimberley and Blue Horse are right. No one cared about the lips as conceptual art - I saw this months ago and thought little about it. Frankly, the lips were one of the weaker pieces - I though the flower toilet was much prettier and whimsical. The rest of the collection is okay - not as interesting as it could have been. But in a commercial washroom? Tasteless. Real Hugh Hefner time, like there would be a small rack with centrefolds beside it to make your peeing experience all the better. I don't think I'm offended so much as turned off by the thought of it - and by the thought of a man wanting to pee into lips. It seems not so much naive and childlike, but like a bad teenage joke.
• Beeswacky: Are ya just screwin' with me or did you miss my point?
• It looks like a closeup of Mick Jagger's mouth.
• Kimberly, thanks for posting that 'yellow kid' link, that was hilarious!
• this is all so intriguing to me. i was right in there with the women libber's back in the late 60's and 70's....and there was no denying the need for freedom from the cutural/social/marital et. al. restraints that women had to battle for at that time. then it morphed into equal rights more than anything...another worthy cause. but even then, some were so ridiculously strident to almost spoil the whole thing. when the new feminism raised it's head i bowed out of it all in dismay and decided that 'each to their own' was more prudent. i expect to be treated as an equal....and as a lady.....although only when i am behaving as one. back then i would have found this urinal hilarious, and still consider it rather whimsical. i see the problem here as in the application. to put these in a commercial and public setting - named virgin, no less, is tantamount to the ultimate in bad taste..../no pun intened, but kinda applicable. if virgin did not intend shock value from this, i am sadly off track. contraposing their name with this imagery would not be coincidental. perhaps they hoped for this kind of publicity...who knows? if someone wants to have one in their private space then that is free choice. to provide them to a vip lounge, with public proclamation of their intent, leaves me suspicious of their motivation but most certainly condemning their perspective of vip sexual mores. /i thought the page of feminist humour was hilarious. some women need to be able to laugh at themselves. /now i'm even more confused....this seemed a bi-partisan discussion and i don't know which side i supported. /also like the idea of a bidet with dildo! /wouldn't those things be a pain to clean?
• I would never urinate in that urinal. Not because of any overt political reason; merely because it's terrifying.
• heh heh heh...I'm with Blaise on this one.
• Kimberly, not trying to be provoking, but I really and truly don't understand what you meant by I find the comparison to Ashcroft expecially reactionary with reference to what I wrote earlier. Reactionary as I understand it usually means ultraconservative or an ultraright person or movement -- couldn't make any other sense out of it when taken in context of what I wrote, frankly, though I daresay I may be ignorant of a new and different use of the word.
• Reactionary as I understand it means taking the opposite view to the prevailing opinion. But that might just be me.
• you're both winners: Main Entry: re·ac·tion·ary Pronunciation: rE-'ak-sh&-"ner-E Function: adjective : relating to, marked by, or favoring reaction; especially : ultraconservative in politics
• If it were shaped like a man's mouth, I would feel kinda gay when I peed into it. I think it's cute. Pottytime would become partytime. It wouldn't, however, turn me into a violent, misogynist, pro-life rapist or anything. My views on feminism were already shaped (mostly) by the liberal arts college I went to. A sexy urinal won't change my grasp of reality... Men are superior to urinals, but equal to women. Besides, everyone knows women belong in the kitchen, not the bathroom!
• Pish and tosh. Cooking is men's work. How would you feel exposing yourself before a nun, or a Madonna? [picture safe, but may have a NSFW banner]
• i dunno Wedge, I might give wimmen the edge in the whole equality question. Men have a tendency to be extremely violent and stinky. That would make them slightly less equal to women in my book.
• Nun urinals.
• Jinx! Double comment.
• crap! /buys_goetter_a_coke So, I can see the "whimsical" side of the kisses urinal - 'sup with the nuns?? No NEA funding for you!
• i simply had to add this 1964 article from the 'atlantic online.' we've come a long way...i think.
• fascinating, dxlifer.
• hmph. I think alot of that article still holds true today. Although I believe the male-to-female ratio in higher education has swung the other way in the last four decades. (Not the best citation, but I couldn't find the one I read about more than a year ago concerning US colleges as a whole) However, I can personally say that women do indeed still get a lot of pressure from their mothers to marry. I know I do, and so do most of my still-unmarried female friends. There's some strange idea that single women will get eccentric as they get older, due to hormones or something.
• i posted that with tongue in cheek. i was one of those rushed out the door into marriage at age 19 in the late 60's, with no notion that there was an alternative. i was in university at the time, but still thought marriage was my only option for leaving the parental home. then, to my shock, my mother left my father three months later and returned to england, leaving me rather puzzled, even though she left for another man. unhappy in marriage and bemused by this new option i skipped out on my own marriage three months later as well, and took off for the great freedom of 'hippie-dom'. there i finally discovered freedom from all sorts of things that had been culturally installed in me. it took me a few more years to finally settle down and find a comfortable middle ground between the two extremes. now i happily vacillitate between whichever serves my purpose. freedom of choice, i call it. i never figured out, though, why my daughter always bemoaned the fact that i wasn't a more traditional mother.
• It's the grass-is-greener syndrome, dxlifer. I've known friends who wished their parents were more traditional, and other friends who wished their parents weren't such stick-in-the-muds. I fully intend to freak the hell out of my children when they become teenagers ;) if I'm lucky enough to have any.
• i suppose there is some convoluted logic to that. my companion has very long hair that i am stuck with the care of...i.e. the combing out and braiding as it is too curly. when i grumble about how i wish he'd get it cut she then becomes aghast and it's 'oh no, mom...it's so neat' go figure.