On 1 Apr 2005 16:38:47 -0000, Wilma 
wrote:

Wilma, un kink your oxygen hose, the gray fuzzy shapes in front of
your eyes are not big-eyed grays on an intergalactic mission.


>Passing of the Antique: Futurist toilet paper holder by Umberto
Botulini, 1919. Although Futurist
>in spirit, this piece still shows discernable traces of the
Baroque.Bathroom fitments and particularly
>toilet paper holders are inscribed into Western culture as inherently
debased, minor, or "funny", 
>argues Marta Zajac, who has theorized the belittling and ridicule of
toilet paper holders as being a 
>masculine domination strategy. Zajac has used the masculinist
"toilet humour" to show that toilet 
>paper holders are gendered feminine in two different ways. Firstly, the
domestic space defined by 
>gender is epitomized in the toilet, the most feminine place in the
house, where men often feel 
>compelled to re-mark the territory as masculine and as
"theirs" by urinating outside the bowl, in 
>order to feel psychologically able to use the facilities at all.
Secondly, the toilet paper holder, being 
>"door furniture", is a thing that women view more often than
men, a site where women can subvert 
>the dominant paradigm by using their sexual difference, i.e. by sitting
facing the door as opposed to 
>standing facing the wall, thereby seeing the paper holder. To men, who
see only the wall behind the 
>pot, the paper holder is an "invisible" art object, a
suggestion which could be taken to account for 
>the ignorance and scepticism of the history of these artefacts which
prevail in patriarchal societies.
>
>These gender attitudes can be read behind the semiotics of the symbols
?(feminine symbol} and 
>?(masculine symbol), which, for Zajac, deconstruct the feminine and
masculine spaces involved in 
>this power-driven transaction. Or, put into layman's terms, you can see
the symbols as aerial views 
>of a woman (represented by an o) facing a door, and a man (also
represented by an o) sending a 
>proud stream far afield in a random direction.

"The best proof of intelligent life in space is that it hasn't come here."
- Sir Arthur C. Clarke 


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