From: Judy Seigel (jseigel@panix.com)
Date: 12/25/02-10:19:12 PM Z
On Wed, 25 Dec 2002, Shannon Stoney wrote:
> Judy, I lost your original message, but I believe its main point was that
> the picture of Edith Gowin urinating on the floor of an old house or
> building was somehow degrading to her and to women in general. But I think
> an argument can be made that this in fact a radically subversive feminist
> photograph. This whole subject originally came up because Jack was positing
Right -- like the sexual revolution "liberated" women. The ones I hear
from say it just means the guys don't have to commit.
And, like the so called "sexual revolution," I think this cuts both ways.
My own feeling at the moment was that there was this great big giggle
"watching" or "listening to" two girls talking dirty. Obviously, neither
of us would if it didn't have all sorts of other meanings, but my feeling
still is that some of what you say now gets too theoretical and indirect
to be real.
Because very directly and immediately we are not in ancient wherever, or
gods and godesses, and however we emulate them -- well, look what
happened to Icarus, Lot's Wife, and a slew of others who came to doleful
ends.
As for peeing under your skirt -- firstly, I live in the north, where a
cold wind blowing up your skirt totally freezes your ass. In the second
place, if you can pee without spreading your legs and lifting your skirt,
without wetting your shoes and socks (and even then odds are against you)
you are a higher order of being, and shouldn't bother with mere mortals.
As for taking possession by peeing on something, I perhaps am acquainted
with a deracinated effete bunch, but I really and truly do not know and
have not heard of anyone who operates that way. In fact if I find you
peeing against the western wall next door, or even in my areaway, as has
happened, I come out with the broom and REALLY REALLY wack you, though I
keep losing track of the crowbar, which is my instrument of choice.
Peeing in public on public or private property is a misdemeanour in my
town. There are lots of things -- maybe grabbing women by the hair Alley
Oop style -- in legend that may actually have some basis, but are not
practical or desirable or enlightened, let alone legal, in present
society.
> the idea that men and women look at the land differently: that men take
> possession of it by urinating on it, "marking" their territory like dogs do,
> but that women "embrace" the land, presumably nurturing it and caring for it
> as if it were their child.
Where I live you take possession by having a deed stamped at city hall
with your name on it. And you pay the %$#@T^&*()^%$#@ taxes which just
went up 18.49% a year. If I could "take possession" by peeing, would
certainly be an incentive, but that has not happened within recorded
history. We are not dogs, robins, mice, or whatever, and they only "take
possession" until the next dog, or glue trap or tabby cat comes along.
> ... Also urinating
> erect can be done discreetly almost anywhere.
Shannon, for more reasons than I can or wish to declare, I think this is
nonsense, or myth, or fantasy, although i suggest a few reasons above.
Certainly if you pee with or without lifting your skirt on my premises,
I'm going to declare you out of your mind and respond accordingly.
> ...I believe that this is why
> the traditional garb of women the world over is the skirt, an admirably
> practical garment, easy to sew, easy to convert to a carrying cloth by
> holding up the hem of it, easy to use as a dish towel, etc. And I also
Actually there are cultures where women wear loose fitting pants; others,
or the same, where men wear "skirts." Or grass skirts, tights with cod
pieces, or whatever whatever or nothing... In some of these bodily
functions occur in public -- for instance in Saigon, or maybe it was
Seoul, and China and so forth have large unisex "toilets' in the outdoors,
or so I've been told. they also do all sorts of things we don't do and if
we did them here we'd be hauled off to jail or the loony bin. Also, would
you care to partake of the stench? I understand it's FEROCIOUS. But these
are expedients where alternatives do not exist. We have alternatives, so
these acts take on other meanings in our culture.
As noted, I was pointing to the direct meanings in the here and now,
rather than parsing the anthopological, historical,mythical or global
variants.
> I read an account by a woman
> visitor to India who asked a bunch of women in saris, at a bus stop, where
> the women's room was, and they just laughed at her. They just pee wherever
> they are, whenever they need to (she figured out).
This is also the culture of suttee, dowry murder, and more oppressive or
to our mind inhumane behavior (not to mention the cow shit in the roads)
than we would wish to live with. You cannot cite one point (reported at
3rd hand, without the qualifications that apply in real life), and call
it meaningful. After all, Indian women are not by any measure we would
count "liberated" which is the point you seem to be claiming. And again,
the disease and stench are not reported.
> So this photograph of Edith Gowin could be seen as a statement of the way
> that women claim the land in an upright, territorial, fierce way, in the
> same way that men are alleged to do. (It's hard to be very dignified or
> fierce when you're squatting with your pants legs around your ankles.)
Oh, so you think she's dignified or fierce when she's peeing on the floor
at the behest of photographer husband? One point I'm trying to make is
that she does whatever at HIS behest, for HIS purposes, her only persona
is as HIS model, and that we know about her ONLY that she does his tricks.
Her "dignity" and "fierceness" if any are a pose on camera, if that,
mostly I'd say in the legends you cite or spin. Here and now the
ramifications of her pose are otherwise.
> Further, it has been noted that Edith is standing at the threshold of a
> building. She is claiming not only the land--the outside--but the INSIDE of
> the building, the zone that extreme forms of patriarchy restrict women to
> exclusively. By doing something taboo on the floor of this house, she is
> challenging the idea of the house-trained, domesticated woman. She is wild.
She is CLAIMING nothing, CHALLENGING nothing, she is totally
photographer-trained and obedient. And talk about *domesticated*, does she
exist off the premises? The claim if any is only in your elaborate
fantasy... or rationalization.
> You can be territorial and nurturing at the same time. Peeing on the ground
> doesn't only mark your territory; it also nourishes the ground. Urine has a
> lot of nitrogen in it. It's a good idea to pee on your compost pile from
> time to time. I know people who have converted huge piles of carbonaceous
> sawdust into nice rich black compost by peeing on it every day.
Oh good lord... and some guy lost in the desert in his car, saved his pee
and put it on his arms and legs when he neared death from dehydration.
(I read this in a Readers Digest first person account many years ago.)
Does this mean we should bathe in pee?
> Also this gesture of Edith's--lifting her skirt to urinate--is the
> archetypal gesture of Baubo, a Greek goddess known for her ability to make
> fun of pomposity and over-seriousness by lifting her skirts and making
> obscene noises and gestures.
Right, try that at the board meeting and get elected partner. I can just
picture it.
> ... She is the one who finally made Demeter laugh
> after Demeter had grieved the loss of Persephone for too long; and Demeter's
> laughter caused summer to return to the earth. Baubo is a trickster heroine
> like Jack in the Jack Tales, or like Coyote in Native American stories, or
> like Huck in Huckleberry Finn. Trickster heroines are not as common as
> trickster heroes, so that is perhaps why it is startling, and somewhat
> disturbing, to see Edith re-enacting that role. But it is by no means a
> degradation of her or of women generally: it is a deeply transgressive,
> feminist joke aimed at people who think women should be domesticated house
> pets who can't own or defend land.
Sorry Shannon... this is not the time of the gods, and Demeter is on
sabbatical or absent without leave, and if she were here would NOT be in
charge. But in any event, again and again and again, Edith was not doing
this as her own agent, but play acting as the agent of her photographer
husband. These acts on her own would count against her in the world where
"equality" is mediated today. And more immediately, without the
elaborations of myth and rationale, they are perceived as degraded and
degrading.
Judy
>
> --shannon
>
> PS I hope nobody on this list got a lump of coal in their stocking.
> Tangerines and chocolate money only.
>
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