Harvey Molotch - Toilet: Public Restrooms and the Politics of Sharing

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Toilet

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Toilet: Public Restrooms and the Politics of Sharing
Edited by Harvey Molotch and Laura Norn

Public Restrooms and
the Politics of Sharing

EDITED BY
Harvey Molotch and Laura Norn

IN MEMORIAM

Mary Douglas
&
Lenny Bruce

NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS
New York and London
www.nyupress.org

2010 by New York University
All rights reserved

References to Internet websites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing.
Neither the author nor New York University Press is responsible for URLs
that may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Toilet : public restrooms and the politics of sharing /
edited by Harvey Molotch and Laura Norn.
p. cm. (NYU series in social and cultural analysis)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 9780814795880 (cl : alk. paper) ISBN 9780814795897
(pb :alk. paper) ISBN 9780814761205 (e-book : alk. paper)
1. Toilets. 2. ToiletsSocial aspects.
I. Molotch, Harvey Luskin. II. Norn, Laura.
GT476.T65 2010
392.36dc22 2010018796

New York University Press books are printed on acid-free paper,
and their binding materials are chosen for strength and durability.
We strive to use environmentally responsible suppliers and materials
to the greatest extent possible in publishing our books.

Manufactured in the United States of America

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Harvey Molotch

Ruth Barcan

Zena Kamash

Irus Braverman

Laura Norn

Clara Greed

Terry S. Kogan

David Serlin

Olga Gershenson

Mary Anne Case

Barbara Penner

Harvey Molotch

FOR FINANCIAL SUPPORT leading to this book, we thank Catharine Stimpson, professor and dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Science, New York University. We also gratefully acknowledge funding and active participation of the New York University Office of Planning and Design and its leader, Lori Pavese Mazor, associate vice president. Further financial assistance came from the Department of Sociology, the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis and its programs in Metropolitan Studies and Gender and Sexuality, and the NYU Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality. The originating conference, Outing the Water Closet, held November 2007 at the Center for Architecture, received financial support as well from the AIA (New York Chapter) and its director, Rick Bell. Beth Stryker provided programming support. Harvey Molotch thanks the Russell Sage Foundation, where he was a visiting scholar during the completion of this book.

Both editors offer profuse appreciation to Ilene Kalish, editor extraordinaire. We also thank Simon S. Lawrence for photographic assistance. Judith Stacey, ardent supporter from the outset, read and critiqued the entire manuscript.

Learning from the Loo
Harvey Molotch

PUBLIC AND TOILET do not sit well together. The discord goes beyond words. Using the facilitylets call it that for nowinvolves intensely private acts. Focusing on the public restroom, as the contributors to this book make it their business to do, thus opens a tense domain. But it is a route worth taking, precisely because of the shadow under which it normally falls. By going there, we have the potential to make discoveries with implications for personal hygiene, psychological stress, and social betterment. We can also learn about power and the capacity to shape others life chances. Hence a group of scholars, drawn from the diverse disciplines of sociology, anthropology, law, architecture, archaeology, history, gender studies, and cultural studies, conjoin to face the facts, unpleasant or otherwise, of the loo.

Even the home bathroom can unleash embarrassment, shame, or criticism when family members detect by sight, sound, or scent what one another are up to. Places such as restaurants or shopping centers introduce anonymity (often welcome) but also concerns about having to share intimate space with people whose intrusions may make us anxious and from whom we want to keep our intimacies separate. The person in the next stall may be the boss or a rival co-worker. The open-to-all facility, as in a public park or train station, invites its own range of anxietiesa person of filth or stranger ready to attack.

So here we have the problem at hand: the toilet involves doing the private in public and under conditions only loosely under the control of the actors involved. By using this tension as springboard, we open up larger issues of what people think they need to protect, how they go about securing that protection, and who succeeds and who does not. We examine the forces that organize such accomplishment and failurehow neighborhoods, cities, cultures, and nations provide for some and not for others. Put bluntly, peeing is political, and so is taking a shit and washing up. We use the word toilet inclusively, calling on its French connotation, to cover peoples acts of intimate caring to keep themselves decently competent and without bodily offense.

The toilet is a foundational start point where each of us deals directly with our bodies and confronts whatever it provides, often on a schedule not of our own making. The animal in us comes to the fore, and we must accommodate to its tendencies and demands. It is bare life, as it surfaces in social existence. When we are away from home, we must use some variant of public provision to civilize and prepare for the social world to follow. When on the road, it becomes the ultimate backstage of life (in Erving Goffmans famous term)where we set up our presentation of self. And when we are readying that performance, it becomes truly important who knows what we are up to and just how they know it. It also matters what precisely we have to work with when we prepare. Without adequacy in these regards, we are almost literally nothing in this world.

There are the material practicalities. How far away is the facility? Is it clean and clean in the sense that matters to me? Do I have access by right? By money? By force? Will there be a proper Western toilet on which I can sit, or will I have to squat? If I am from a squatting part of the world, must I risk physical contact with a public appliance? Toilet paper must be present for an American or European. For an Indian in India, water through a wash pipe that can be directed toward anus or vulva is the utter necessity. Will there be paper covers I can put on the toilet seat, or must Ias women often do in the United Stateshover over the seat rather than make the physical contact? And if I lack the muscles to hover, will the waste deposited by prior hoverers with poor aim have been cleaned away by some others (and just whom?) or be a basis for subsequent filth and cringe-worthy horror?