From: Judy Seigel (jseigel@panix.com)
Date: 12/30/02-02:59:22 AM Z
On Sat, 28 Dec 2002, Shannon Stoney wrote:
>
> (Also, one little practical tip: when you go out in cold weather and wind,
> wear a heavy wool skirt with other skirts under it, not a caftan. The wool
> skirts stay down. Also I suppose you could put weights in the hem. This
> used to be a common sewing practice. There were little thin chains that you
> could sew into the hem. This might work for a dark cloth ! )
I feel at last the irresistible urge for some blunt talk about this
insistence that I/we/they pee standing up. It's stupid. It's not
"feminist," it's silliness, while the world wipes out women. I see zero
evidence for Edith as yuk yuk "trickster" heroine, rather a yarn spun out
of thin air -- an exceptionally silly one.
Edith is, at best, perpetuating the image of women as subordinates. Also
unclean -- a fact BTW that a couple of major world religions stress. I
would certainly say that a woman who has peed in her skirt without any
hygienic um, touches, is indeed unclean, and see no reason to valorize the
act or make a fetish of it. Any more than I would make a fetish of a man
peeing similarly. Whether or not urine provides nitrates, it kills
vegetation. So the "science" involved in this claim of "nourishing the
earth" is about on the level of the philosophy, or "feminist theory."
I've been trying to be a good sport and go along with this play, but it
was a mistake. I repeat that the mechanics for a woman of peeing standing
up are messy and unpleasant at best, or worse, and to create a saga out of
it is a credit to your imagination, but has no, so to speak, underpinnings
or basis in reality.
Meanwhile, for the record, every tree on my block has a cutesy sign made
by some kid named Sean at PS 3, begging folks not to let their dogs pee
here. So if you arrived with your wool skirts and chains and peed in the
tree pits, some block vigilante would at the very least bawl the hell out
of you.
A friend of mine says her husband sometimes pees outdoors when
he's working outdoors & it drives her crazy -- it stinks, especially in
summer, aside from what it does to the plants. She has demanded that he
either go indoors or in the distant woods.
Maybe Edith peed in the barn to save the trees, but whether or no, her act
confirms woman's status as other, uncivilized, primitive, creature of
whim, raging hormones and animal impulse, beyond rational, purposeful,
civilised disciplined thought or achievement... charming perhaps as
entertainment, but not helpful in modern life, if, that is, she desires to
achieve in the modern world in a role byond mistress, muse, wife, saint,
martyr, inspiration, myth, or victim, chained to a rock or the railroad
track or carried off by dragons so by golly the hero can ride to the
rescue.
While you water your garden in the name of feminism, I note Artforum's
special year end issue, Dec. 2002: "the high points of the year in art,"
and after that the NY Times magazine for yesterday, Sunday, "the Lives
They Lived."
Judy
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