OPINION : DEC. 7, 2023 · FlipCityMag.com
by Christie Collingsworth-Ortiz
It's become a bit of a joke to ask "what offends you today?" but my go-to answer is, "what doesn't?" And this morning, it's our toilet. And I'm not talking about the crusty bowl ring I can't seem to get rid of. It's also what's sitting on that toilet - my husband.
There he perches, self-satisfied, after pounding on the door and grumbling "necesito hacer caca!" at me when I'm trying to put on makeup and then forcing my rapid evacuation with a subsequent small-scale volcanic eruption. Thank God for Air-Wick.
All this got me thinking: having traveled extensively in my single twenties I can testify that most people around the world are more than content to drops logs in a hole in the floor. Yet somehow the privileged male is not content with this, compelled to mount himself up on top of a ceramic pedestal, in a desperate attempt to distance himself from the grounding of mother earth below, all for the grossest of human activities. What is it in the male brain that makes a man think that he's too good to crouch to drop a hot dookie in a hole in the middle of the floor?
The patriarch's dream: sitting all alone on his giant toilet.
Speaking as a woman who married outside her ethnicity, I can also tell you that
not all cultures harbor these prejudices against the traditional squatting method and the cold kiss of ceramic tile. So it's saddening to see these biases dictating my husband's defecative preferences.
Of course there is a long story behind the invention and spread of the modern commode going back hundreds of years, and it's about what you'd expect from history: European people pushing their religion, lifestyle and technology on indigenous cultures in an attempt to "better" their "inferiors".
But making progress and changing attitudes takes time. Maybe I need decolonize our bathroom for a while to teach my husband a lesson: stop leaving the seat up!•
This patriotic monument to massive movements sits or stands in Full Bowels,
Montana, dwarfing the Ceramic Colossus at Mount Butts, Wyoming.
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