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.


--- UseNet To RIME Gateway {at} 4/1/05 12:47:57 PM ---