To kick off the Toki blog, we decided to tackle a very serious topic. Peeing. Yes, you read that right: peeing!
But not just any peeing. Standing peeing. The kind that is supposedly reserved for people with penises.
Does that seem like a trivial subject? Think again! Because, believe it or not, this mundane little act says a lot about how our societies organize and regulate our bodies. And especially, who has the right to do what with theirs.
Peeing while standing up is supposed to be a guy thing. Because the rule has always been simple: men pee standing up. Women pee sitting down. And gender minorities struggle.
An ultra-binary rule. Both about peeing and about gender. And at Toki, we like neither. Binary? Not for us.
But where does this rule come from then? One thing is certain, it's not something we learn in textbooks when we're little. And yet, as children, we understand it very quickly. For what reasons? Movies, public restrooms, (sometimes questionable) jokes, habits... Everything dictates these behaviors when it comes to relieving our bladder. Because everything sends the same message:
Standing = masculine
Sitting = feminine and gender minorities
This frankly questions the place we occupy in society and the place we allow ourselves to take. And above all, it's as if all this were natural.
But is it really natural when we know that the author Simone de Beauvoir wrote in The Second Sex in 1949, "One is not born a woman: one becomes one"?
In other words, many things we believe to be natural are actually socially learned... Even the way we use our bodies.
However, if we think about it, no one has ever forbidden us to pee standing up. No one ever told me, "No, you're not allowed to do it that way". And that's what's interesting. This functioning of norms. Ultimately, there's no need to forbid, it's enough to make certain things UNTHINKABLE.
Norms are hidden in the most mundane gestures
In 1990, American philosopher Judith Butler explained in her book, Gender Trouble, that gender "is not only an identity," but also a daily performance.
A bit like a series of gestures that we repeat so often that they end up seeming natural. For example, the way we walk, sit, speak, the space we occupy... and so, you'll have understood, also the way we pee. And these ways differ according to our gender.
Thus, gender norms do not only live in, and because of, laws or politics. They live in the details of everyday life.
These rules we were never taught, and which change our lives
What's fascinating is that these norms were never clearly or directly articulated to us. No one ever forbade me to pee standing up. And in my (our?) life, it never even crossed my mind!
That's the full power of norms: they don't forbid, but they make certain things and uses unthinkable.
So, in our lives, that changes a lot: between endless queues (at parties, concerts, festivals, or even at highway rest stops) and unequal access to toilets in general or more specifically in certain "nomadic" situations like on a boat, while reporting, on a film set, a construction site, or for bus drivers.
Read more in the article "Why do women wait longer in toilets (and how to fix it)? (Part 2)"
Sources:
- Simone de Beauvoir - The Second Sex, 1949
- Judith Butler - Gender Trouble, 1990