Pooptacular
7/13/18 - Everybody poops and we're finally talking about it all: Period poops. The pleasure of getting regular. Checking your stool as an indicator of health. Eliminating poop shame and stigma. The pleasure of the bidet. And Dr. Susan Stryker on the unnatural social construct of sex-segregated public bathroom.
Transcript below.
Listen on Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Overcast | Pocket Casts | Spotify.
CREDITS
Producer: Gina Delvac
Hosts: Aminatou Sow & Ann Friedman
Theme song: Call Your Girlfriend by Robyn
Composer: Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs.
Associate Producer: Destry Maria Sibley
Visual Creative Director: Kenesha Sneed
Merch Director: Caroline Knowles
Editorial Assistant: Laura Bertocci
Ad sales: Midroll
LINKS
Everybody is constipated by Maggie Koerth-Baker at FiveThirtyEight
The Lily on documenting their poop for the duration of the month
“America has softened on stool.”
Oprah was on this tip back in 2005 / clip
Tushy, SquattyPotty, Poo Drops
Mona Chalabi on stress and rectal bleeding
Susan Stryker: Everybody poops. No one should be stigmatized for it.
TRANSCRIPT: Pooptacular
[Ads]
(0:28)
Aminatou: Welcome to Call Your Girlfriend.
Ann: A podcast for long-distance besties everywhere.
Aminatou: I'm Aminatou Sow.
Ann: And I'm Ann Friedman. On this week's agenda we talk about all matters fecal, a.k.a. the process of elimination. That means gendered stigma against pooping, psychologically-induced constipation, a shout-out to Oprah's splish-splish moment, why white men poop the most times per week, period shits, rectal health, and the power of the bidet. Plus we talk to Dr. Susan Stryker about the fight for truly inclusive and functional public toilets.
[Theme Song]
(1:30)
Aminatou: Hi boo-boo.
Ann: Hello! I feel like you should say hi poo-poo today.
Aminatou: [Laughs] Oh gosh. Well today's episode is going to be really fun. We're taking a break from the shitty news cycle to talk about literal shit.
Ann: So consider this your gross-out warning. If you are currently listening to this with a fork full of salad halfway to your mouth or about to bite into a sandwich or eat a spoonful of your breakfast maybe press pause and come back to us another time.
Aminatou: Right. But if you're like "Ugh, I don't want to talk about poop," I really challenge you to listen today.
Ann: Yeah. So this is an episode -- this one is from a business meeting of CYG where like do you remember how we got onto this topic?
Aminatou: I don't even remember how. You know, maybe it was because every time I go to my oncology check-up I have to have a rectal exam. [Laughs] The thing that I thought was hilarious was in all of our friendship it was the first time I remember us having a very serious poop conversation.
Ann: It's true, although I have other friends who I feel like I talk poop with, I talk shit with on a more regular basis so . . .
Aminatou: Yeah. You have way grosser friends than me. [Laughs]
Ann: Oh my god, first of all . . . okay, so this is exactly why we wanted to do this episode because the answer is it's a fine line between this is some gross maybe keep it to yourself subject matter and this is stigmatized in pretty gendered ways with pretty serious health ramifications. And I don't mean gendered in terms of just men and women but in terms of whether you are cis, trans, gender-nonconforming, in terms of your experience at the doctor and in public toilets. Not just in conversations with your friends but in how you feel about your own body and in your own body. So this episode is kind of like, you know, a shitty overview about all things fecal. All matters fecal.
Aminatou: Ann, I remember exactly how we started talking about it.
Ann: Tell me.
Aminatou: We were talking about -- one of us on the phone, it was you, me, and Gina, and I don't remember if it was you or Gina was talking about how you were not pooping regularly. And I was telling you how I am pooping regularly for the first time in my life since hysterectomy.
Ann: Oh my god, maybe it was me because there's nothing I love more than being regular. And this is some real work from home privilege which I'm going to own which is when nature calls I can almost always immediately respond in the most comfortable bathroom in the world which is my own, right? One of the greatest things about working at home for yourself that rarely gets called out among its pleasures. So yeah, maybe it was me. Maybe I was bragging like the horrible person I am.
(4:18)
Aminatou: It definitely 100% was because here's the thing: I'm not embarrassed about pooping but I'm definitely -- you know me, I have a lot of OCD issues, like actually diagnosed OCD issues.
Ann: Right.
Aminatou: And one of them is around definitely cleanliness. And so I know that for me that fine line between okay, I would like to discuss my body function but also I don't want to be grossed out in the same way that . . . you know, I don't think that poop is uniquely gross. Like I'm not grossed out by poop, I'm not grossed out by blood, but I just don't like it when things are not clean.
Ann: [Laughs]
Aminatou: So that's the fine line that I thread. But the thing that was really fascinating is that it wasn't until I had that conversation with you and Gina that I was like wait, you people have been pooping every day? I have never been every single day regular in my life. And I had talked to my doctors about it at one point because people like you brag about it all the time and I was like well is there something wrong with me that I'm not going all the time? And the doctor was like no, it just has to be normal for . . . as long as you're not constipated or bloated or in pain regular is a very subjective kind of thing.
Ann: Yeah. Well and it's kind of like most things. It's like what is normal for your body? I did a little bit of research into this because I knew we were going to talk about it and totally by chance right around the time I was looking into it I get the Washington Post newsletter The Lily. There was a whole issue of The Lily written by Carol Shih about the fact that her book club was reading this book Gut by a woman named Giulia Enders. And the book club for the duration of the month they were reading it essentially turned into a poop club where they had a group thread talking about how regular they were, etc. And she was describing the fact that she was pooping less than the other women -- I believe they were all women -- in her book club and cited the statistic that women's large intestines are generally "slightly more lethargic than men's, possibly because of hormones."
(6:24)
Aminatou: [Laughs] Man, what a thing.
Ann: So yeah, and also further digging as it were leads to the fact that . . .
Aminatou: Okay, look at these statistics: how often Americans poop. White women, 7.2 times a week. White men, 9. Nine times a week? What?
Ann: Yeah.
Aminatou: Hispanic women 7.5 times a week, Hispanic men 8.6 times, black women 5.6. I identify with this strongly. And black men 6.9. Do you know why this is? Why are there racial disparities in poop?
Ann: So the statistics you're citing I saw in this article by Maggie Koerth-Baker at FiveThirtyEight which is about how prevalent constipation is and how people are always going to the doctor saying they're constipated and the doctors are like "What do you mean? You seem to be pooping at an okay rate/is it all in your head?" But when I look at those numbers they are exactly correlated with things like other types of discrimination in society. I'm like wow, what if a life relatively free of discrimination and full of privilege equals you're just pooping like crazy? That's what I read into those numbers. I don't know about you. Your bowels are just free to let it rip.
Aminatou: [Laughs] Your bowels are just loose and free. This is so fascinating. I'm so glad you found these stats for me. I just had never thought of this. And so my thing is because of my hysterectomy I am very aware of everything that neighbors that part of my body. Because you know how surgery is, right? Whenever they operate on any part of your body you definitely have to sign paperwork that any adjoining organs, they're like fair game for destruction because they're like medicine is not an exact science. So when you have a hysterectomy that's your bladder, it's your rectum. You know, very important things. Not that other parts of your body are not important. But there is -- I would say that 60% of the talk in definitely my online support group is all around pooping and peeing.
Ann: Amazing.
(8:25)
Aminatou: Because one, that's how you know if they've broken anything. You know what I mean? It's like they won't let you go home from the hospital unless you've peed a significant amount -- shout-out catheters everywhere -- and also you've got to pass gas, you know? And they're like okay, this seems like we didn't break anything. But the thing is everybody experiences some amount of constipation after surgery because of the painkillers and I guess your colon is just very gun-shy at this point and various other reasons. But Ann, no joke, the online support group, this is all people talk about. It's like how many days did you go -- how many days did you poop after surgery? People started getting really scared after three or four days. All it is is people giving each other recipes because they send you home with so much Colace. And somehow that doesn't work so it's like you have to walk a lot. This is like passing a baby honestly, no joke.
Ann: Aww.
Aminatou: It's like you have to walk a lot. You have to take stuff. That part of it made me really happy because I'm like okay, I am not alone in this. There's thousands of women in this Facebook group and all we talk about is the first time we pooped after a hysterectomy.
Ann: Right, the first poop after childbirth, the first poop after a major surgery. Didn't I make you a Rambo first poop graphic? Like private meme?
Aminatou: You did. You did. [Laughs]
(9:55)
Ann: It is a real marker of okay, some things that feel very fragile are on their way to functioning right?
Aminatou: Right. It's like nothing's broken to talk about. But it's like the same reason that we love to talk about periods on this show is it gives you life-saving information if you know what I'm saying.
Ann: Completely. I also think it is totally in that same spirit that we wanted to do this episode. I mean speaking of we never -- I don't think we have ever mentioned in This Week in Menstruation period shits. How is that not a thing that we've ever talked about?
Aminatou: I think we talked about it very early on.
Ann: Did we? Okay.
Aminatou: Yeah, I remember looking up . . . because I'm always fascinated by period poop. I believe somebody had asked us "Why do you poop more when you have your period?" and it was something about the cramping and water. There's like a science behind it. But anyway, yes, you're not imagining that your poop is different/weird when you're on your period. This is not medical advice. [Laughs]
Ann: No, I know. I'm just like I'm going to find a resource and we'll put it in the show notes. The other thing too is thinking about the ways -- obviously everybody poops as the children book says.
Aminatou: That's what I've heard.
Ann: But as we started talking about doing this episode it was one of those things that I started to see and hear everywhere. I mean I found out that a woman I've been friends with a long time has had so much trouble pooping that she's seeing a therapist for help with the psychological end of it, like she really . . .
Aminatou: Wow.
Ann: Yeah. And apparently this is the therapist specializes in female anxiety and its related effects on your bodily systems. And so she had very high hopes that this therapist is going to help her. I had another friend mention that whenever she travels with her mother and sister they don't poop for the duration of the trip which is why she doesn't travel with them.
Aminatou: Oh, that's such a thing. That's such a thing.
(11:58)
Ann: I know. She doesn't travel with them for more than a week because after that they're unbearable.
Aminatou: Yeah, vacation constipation is 100% a thing.
Ann: But she was sort of . . . well, the way she talked about it is like yes, there's obviously vacation constipation. You're eating things and you're out of your routine or whatever. But she described it as like they're sharing a hotel room with people and it's just as much a stigmatized we don't want to be gross people who do that in close quarters as . . .
Aminatou: In your own family?
Ann: Yes. And this is what she was saying, like traveling with her own family. She very much had the impression it wasn't purely diet and schedule related, that it was also about kind of a gendered chain.
Aminatou: Okay. I believe that because here's the thing: what I was talking about, vacation constipation is like real because you're straying from your normal routine. You sat on a plane that dried out your colon. That's like a thing.
Ann: Totally. Totally.
Aminatou: And also you're not eating your high bran cereal from home or whatever. [Laughs] And also you can't relax in strange bathrooms. I have that.
Ann: Totally.
Aminatou: But you know your friend's story reminds me of I had a lot of friends in college who would always talk about how they couldn't poop at their boyfriend's apartments or new dudes they were sleeping with or whatever. And on one hand I get it. If you go to somebody's new house should you give them an inaugural poop? [Laughs] You know, sure, I can see how you think this is an etiquette issue. But at the same time I find it so insane how much we try to change our natural body functions or we try to withhold . . . you know, it's like you've got to evacuate your bowels. The fact that you're holding that in is very problematic for the sake of dating, you know? Like that's weird.
(13:45)
Ann: Totally.
Aminatou: Because do you think that dudes, when they stay at your house, they're like "Hmm, probably shouldn't poop here?"
Ann: I don't know. I mean I guess I would say . . .
Aminatou: I truly don't know. I've never asked a man. Maybe I should ask somebody.
Ann: I would say that all people are probably a little bit shy about first poop -- Rambo first poop at the home of someone they are newly dating.
Aminatou: [Laughs] Rambo first poop.
Ann: Truly just a guess. Just a guess. But I would guess much like the statistics we were talking about earlier in terms of who feels comfortable doing that in the home of someone they are getting sexy with, I would imagine that white men are the most comfortable with it. If I was a betting woman that's what I would bet. Although, you know, I mean who knows? That is not scientifically vetted.
Aminatou: I mean this is such a thing. If you just Google "Pooping boyfriend" not even "Pooping in front of your boyfriend," just "Pooping boyfriend" because I love economy of words, it's like here are the headlines: Is Pooping In Front of Your Boyfriend or Girlfriend Embarrassing? I couldn't poop for five days while on vacation with my new boyfriend. What's up? I cannot, cannot, cannot poop when my boyfriend is around. Guys, we need to talk about pooping and farting in romantic relationships. That's true!
Ann: It is true. It's healthy.
Aminatou: Here's the thing. The other thing that this -- so there's definitely the health aspect of if you don't exchange information about bodily functions it definitely can come back and bite you in the ass. But this thing about being afraid about, I don't know, like "gross stuff" in romantic relationships, it's kind of a little dangerous and limiting in the sense that romantic relationships are gross and sex can be gross and it's fine. You know what I mean? I don't mean gross like it's disgusting but there are bodies involved. Things are weird and things move around and there's mucus and there's fluids and all sorts of stuff. So not being comfortable around that can really hinder intimacy.
(15:55)
Ann: Yes, 100%. So all of these good reasons to talk about poop with your friends, with your lovers, with everyone. There was a New York Times article not long ago that used the phrase "America has softened on stool."
Aminatou: [Laughs]
Ann: Which . . .
Aminatou: I'm a child. That made me laugh.
Ann: I mean I also laughed, which cites all of these toys that are kind of anthropomorphized manure and poop and ads that use it and the smiling poop emoji. These are all the kind of data points. They cite some guy from a marketing and branding firm so I'm a little side-eye at the expert levels here.
Aminatou: [Laughs]
Ann: Who also says "Society is coming to grips with the way women have been treated differently and maybe this is another part of the revolution. Women are going to open up about not just their bodies but their bodily functions. If men don't need to be ashamed women can shed the shame too."
Aminatou: I know. Especially because this one is a shared bodily function, you know what I mean? I get it that menstruation is supposed to be some secret club lady thing even though I do not agree and think it's very reductive and stupid. But I kind of get that. But poop I'm like oh my god, everyone poops.
Ann: I mean completely.
Aminatou: Everyone. Rich people, poor people. Famous people poop. Everybody poops. Presidents poop. It's nuts.
Ann: Yeah, and it is obviously taboo for a reason but the idea that with people who you are legitimately friends with it is not a common topic of conversation or it's something you need to harbor a ton of shame about is kind of hard for me to understand in some ways. Like it doesn't logically -- I mean granted what does? But it doesn't logically hold up.
Aminatou: No it doesn't. And it's very, very, very, very limiting and it's just like . . . it just creates shame in a situation that doesn't need shame which is generally how shame works. [Laughs]
(17:55)
Ann: Right. Right, yeah, we're getting . . . we're really getting to some basic dictionary definition stuff here too.
[Music and Ads]
(21:12)
Ann: We also have to give credit where credit is due to Oprah.
Aminatou: Oh my god, Oprah really put poop conversation front and center like early 2000s in a way that the world was not ready.
Ann: This is what made Dr. Oz, correct? The whole poop thing.
Aminatou: Yes. This is why Oprah keeps him around basically.
Ann: Yeah. Oh my god.
Aminatou: Because he loves to talk about stool and stool as a good digestion health indicator. You know, Oprah's entire thing is around eating right and secretly losing weight so let's talk about poop.
(21:50)
Ann: Also the etymology of stool is something that will never not be funny to me, like in this context. Like the idea that it is a seat for one person. That is what a stool is.
Aminatou: [Laughs] You know what? A stool is a seat without back or arms but it is also a piece of feces.
Ann: Yes, exactly. Yeah.
Aminatou: Are you one of those people that you know what the shape is supposed to be and what it means? Do you know all that stuff?
Ann: I've got to say that at various points in my life I have done a Google for like hmm, it's been several days of this situation. Is it okay? But until I was prepping to do this episode I couldn't have told you that that is called the Bristol stool scale.
Aminatou: [Laughs] Yeah. I used to be one of those people that never checked. I'm like I just flush. That's what you're supposed to be. And now I'm like I need to see what's going on here.
Ann: Even though Oprah confessed in that episode that she looks in the toilet bowl after she poops? You were like . . .
Aminatou: I -- no. Listen, we've already talked about my OCD. Listen, the number one thing that triggers me is seeing a toilet bowl. Like whether it's open or closed it's not for me.
Ann: It is true that the toilet seat is always down at your house, the lid and everything.
Aminatou: Yeah, and the door is always closed because I don't like to see that shit. [Laughs]
Ann: That shit literally. Literally.
Aminatou: Yeah. And it has nothing to do with the shit; I just don't like seeing the bowl. If I could have an outhouse I would be so down for it.
Ann: [Laughs] Oh my god, can you imagine the trend pieces? Like Woman Builds Brooklyn Outhouse. You would be all over the New York Times style section for your upscale outhouse.
Aminatou: Yeah. I'll be like I'm sorry, I'm not trying to have feces in my house. I'm already -- like I already do not keep my toothbrush out. I don't keep my towels in the bathroom that I poop in. It's like all sorts of things. It's disgusting. Feces are disgusting. Also they're a part of life.
Ann: Also you just said the phrase "the bathroom that I poop in" which confirms this is like you are worthy . . .
Aminatou: I have two bathrooms. [Laughs]
Ann: I know. You are worthy of a style section article about this I swear to god.
(23:55)
Aminatou: 100%. Are you kidding me? What else? What else is weird that I do?
Ann: How do you feel about the bidet?
Aminatou: Oh you know I'm a European. I'm down for a bidet.
Ann: I know.
Aminatou: You can buy external attachments that you can add.
Ann: Right. So one of the things that has gotten a lot of press in this department in the last year is the fact that Miki Agrawal who was known -- you might know from an earlier episode we did about the sexual harassment complaints against her at Thinx which is a company she founded has gone on to producing attachable home bidets and her company is called Tushy.
Aminatou: Tushy?
Ann: Tushy.
Aminatou: I love it when I go to somebody's house and they have a Tushy but I love it even more when I go to their house and they have a Toto Japanese toilet.
Ann: Oh my god, the one with the full arm of buttons?
Aminatou: Yeah.
Ann: You've been to a private home that has one of those? That's amazing.
Aminatou: Yes! First of all in Hawaii everybody has them because Hawaii's so close to Japan. Also in Japan everybody has them. But I went to a home the other day and I was like you know what? I would consider dating this person. This is a good investment. He was clearly a dude. And I was like hmm, thank you sir. Yeah, I grew up in a house where we had a separate bidet. There was a toilet then there was a bidet also so that's not weird to me. Also grew up in a Muslim home where you don't use toilet paper; you use water. So it's the whole thing.
Ann: Which, you know, makes complete and total sense. I mean I feel like the first time I traveled to Japan and tried all the buttons which was my first real immersive bidet experience I was seriously like this is another way I feel completely shortchanged by the cultural limitations of my American upbringing because dang if it is not the best thing ever to choose a bunch of functions and just get on in there with some water.
(25:50)
Aminatou: I know. I mean, listen, wiping with water is the best way to wipe. Everybody knows this. It's literally why people around the world do it. But here is a thing I will say about the Toto toilet is the best function on it is the dryer.
Ann: Oh my god, completely. I would say the only thing about it that runs counter-intuitive to the message we're trying to get at with this episode is the . . . well actually maybe not. How do you feel about the fake flush privacy noise generator?
Aminatou: Oh, you know, that's funny. I had never seen that until I was in Hawaii earlier this year and I was like what's going on here? But here's the thing: people do the fake flush all the time in the toilet. Like I do the fake flush. It's fine. [Laughter]
Ann: I like how you're like "I feel great about my fake flushing."
Aminatou: I feel fine about the flush because here's the thing that I was trying to remember is I don't actually know why I'm doing the fake flush. If you're in the bathroom for 20 minutes, even if you're fake flushing, chances are that you're shitting. It's fine.
Ann: Unless it's a bathroom with a lot of turnover, a.k.a. one of the safest multi-stall places to shit I feel, because there's anonymity due to the traffic.
Aminatou: Oh, Ann, that's so nuts because that's my most high-anxiety poop situation.
Ann: Oh god, I'm like there's no one to pin it on here. Like you can pin it on anyone. Like that's how it's so good . . . [Laughs]
Aminatou: No way. No way. No way, because I'm like somebody's going to use this right after you. Do you subscribe to the many mask your poop in your house smells?
Ann: No, but I have given them as gifts to poop-shy friends.
Aminatou: I am a really, really, really big fan of the Aesop one, the poop drops.
Ann: Oh yeah? What are they called?
Aminatou: They're called poop drops.
Ann: No way. No way.
Aminatou: Yeah, the poop drops, but the best thing . . .
Ann: Oh, poo drops. Sorry.
Aminatou: Sorry, poo drops. And poop drops, LOL. But the best thing about them is all the Aesop products have writing in French and in French it just says like shit drops. It's not poo. It's definitely not the polite way to say it and I'm like yes. I don't know, I like that. There's this other product I guess that they use at the Wing (?). I don't know, maybe it's like . . . the brand might be called Pootpourri or something and every time I smell it all over the bathroom I'm like thank you ladies, it just smells like expensive ass flower in here.
Ann: The tell-tale.
Aminatou: And everybody is happy.
Ann: Right.
[Ads]
Aminatou: Controversial opinion: how do you feel about taking all your clothes off when you poop?
Ann: You mean wearing a jumpsuit?
Aminatou: Yes. [Laughs] Or just a regular Monday at my house.
Ann: I would say I do it pretty rarely. I do not feel any kind of way about it.
Aminatou: Do you love it though? Do you love it though?
Ann: No, I really don't. I don't feel any kind of way about it and to be honest until you asked me just now it's something I hadn't really thought about. I suppose it's been something that I've done right before I take a shower or something but I have not gone out of my way to do it or stop it from happening. Is this a thing? Do people love to poop naked?
(30:10)
Aminatou: Oh, listen. It's a whole thing. I was talking to friends about it this weekend and it was so . . . the room was like very divided but the people who do it love it. And again this is where my OCD comes out to shine where I was like, you know, my real problem is that every time after I poop I take a shower when I'm at home which is a terrible idea.
Ann: Wow, you can never live in Southern California. [Laughs]
Aminatou: I don't care about the water. I'm the most important person in the equation. And one other thing I talk to a lot with my ladies about is if you take antidepressants mental health medication definitely has poop ramifications. Especially if you're taking anything in the amphetamine family. And I was like oh, this is truly what has made me regular. It's like you take the Vyvanse then you're like sold, I'm definitely going to poop in the next 45 minutes. I know how to plan my whole day now.
Ann: Wow. So it's just a bonus of taking care of your mental health with some drugs that are helping you.
Aminatou: Right. But I feel like -- but this is what happens to people who drink coffee, yes? I don't drink coffee but I imagine it's the same thing.
Ann: Yeah. I would say that it's hard for me. I mean I love so much about the experience of my morning cup of coffee that it's hard for me to separate it from also pooping regularly. But I would say they are not unrelated phenomena. [Laughs]
Aminatou: Okay. So all of this to say you should definitely monitor your poop. You should not be shy to talk to your doctor about it if anything has changed. I was deathly afraid of rectal exams my whole life. Ann, you know how I feel about butt stuff. And I'm going to tell you this, the first time I had to have one -- because my doctor knows all of my handcuffs -- she was like "This is going to be fine." Also she always says it with a grin where she goes "I'm so sorry I have to check your butt," and she looks very inconvenienced and pained, but she's doing it for my benefit.
(32:00)
Ann: Does she say check your butt? Like that's a professional medical term? [Laughs]
Aminatou: Yeah, but she's cool. My doctor is cool. And the first time she did it I was so tense I didn't want to have it. And I was like "Oh, this wasn't so bad." And the nurse looked at me and said "Everybody says that." [Laughs]
Ann: Oh my god.
Aminatou: And I died, and now it's like they have to do it fairly regularly and I'm like oh, this is maybe the most enjoyable part of this fucking experience all the time. So it's fine. But all of this to say if I can handle medical butt stuff you can handle medical butt stuff. And you know what? Dr. Oz for being a charlatan or whatever is right that checking your poop is a good health indicator.
Ann: Oh my god, completely. And also noticing that it is uncomfortable or it is like something is out of sync with your normal routine when you poop, yeah, maybe you should flag it and check up on it and maybe you should also think about it in connection to what's happening with you mentally and psychologically at that moment. We'll link to this essay that Mona Chalabi wrote earlier this year about the fact that she had rectal bleeding for like ten years and totally ignored it. It was one of those things where . . .
Aminatou: Okay, you should definitely go to the doctor if you have rectal bleeding.
Ann: Right. And, you know, we'll link to it so you can read the whole thing. But at the end of the day she's like yeah, it is connected to stress and things that are happening psychologically. And she noticed in a review of 13 studies patients who tried a psychological approach to these digestive issues saw greater improvements than those who did not. So it's like your body systems are all connected.
Aminatou: And don't have shame about your body.
(33:45)
Ann: Right. And also this stuff is all social. So we also this week have an interview that is related to the fact that some people are not prohibited from pooping by personal inhibitions; they are facing hostility on this issue when it comes to using a public bathroom because of social stigma and in some cases shitty laws. So I interviewed Professor Susan Stryker. Do you know who she is?
Aminatou: Yes, she's amazing.
Ann: She's a filmmaker, she is a historian and a professor of feminism and gender studies. She really hit home for me with this article she wrote. It's a couple of years ago now but I remembered it and wanted to call her for this episode because it was really re-framing the conversation about public bathrooms not just as a trans rights issue which it absolutely is but looking at the public bathroom as a way that the rights of a lot of different people have been limited over time and how that cuts not just along gender lines but along race lines and how this is all connected. So here is the brilliant Dr. Susan Stryker.
[Interview Starts]
Ann: Professor Stryker, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast.
Susan: Oh you're very welcome. Happy to be here.
Ann: We're talking about all things bathroom on this episode and I remember reading an op-ed from you a few years ago when I think that bathroom bills were just starting to come into maybe popular awareness, or maybe that tide was just starting t rise, where you pointed out that the very idea of gender-segregated public toilets are social constructs and unnatural ones at that. I'm hoping you can talk a little bit about that perspective on the public bathroom.
Susan: Sure. That op-ed piece you're talking about came out in the context of the HB-2 controversy in North Carolina which was, you know, I think the first time that the trans bathroom wars really hit the mainstream. Although of course those issues had been going on for years and there'd actually been an important earlier case sort of politicizing and weaponizing the transgender bathroom debate to overturn very broad-based anti-discrimination ordinances in Houston. That took place in the fall of 2015 and I think was kind of an early indicator of ways that these issues were going to get weaponized and politicized in the context of the 2016 electoral season.
(36:20)
But yeah, to your point about sex-segregated bathrooms being social constructions that's really true. I'm a historian by training and if you look back in history the idea of a public sex-segregated toilet is really a pretty recent invention. Just speaking about the United States you didn't have indoor plumbing, water closets and toilets inside buildings, until I think the first building was like in the 1840s that had indoor plumbing. And those toilets were not sex-segregated. They were rows of individual stalls, water closets, with a common washing up area. It really wasn't until the later 19th century as you had more women entering into the paid workforce that workplaces started requiring separate washing up and urinating and defecating facilities for their female employees. So by the 20th century it comes to be seen as something that's natural and inevitable and given and that to suggest that we could do our bathrooms differently than we do seems to fly in the face of nature itself. So really it's a problem of architecture.
(37:50)
Ann: Right. Well then and also speaking of inherited ideas from that era so many of these bathroom bills are advanced in the name of the safety of cis gender women. And it's like I imagine you can draw a line from the fact that we need separate bathrooms for women as they enter the public sphere to using that as a justification for discrimination in the modern era.
Susan: Exactly, you know? And the other thing I'd like to point out is one of the places where you see segregation around bathrooms starting to happen in the 19th century is not so much around sex gender but it's around race. You know, remember that it's in the 1870s after the end of the period of reconstruction after the Civil War that the Jim Crow laws start going into place and the US constructs a racial apartheid system in the south. And you have white and colored bathrooms, so-called. And what I find really fascinating is yeah, you can see pictures of public toilets and it will say "Men, women, colored." You know, and so the implication of that is sex-segregated spaces are white privileges and people of color are consigned to an ungendered space. So what we could say is even the development of sex-segregated public toilets, it's inflected by race, and that it's been the norm for people of color to have non-sex segregated toilets and for sex segregation to be a racial privilege.
So it gets very complicated very quickly I think to talk about the history of segregating certain kinds of public spaces or certain kinds of bodies and yes, the creation of the women's room becomes an important way of advancing a kind of white female privilege if you want to look at it that way. You know, like the early suffragists, you know, they were advocating not necessarily for the votes of all women but for white women. You know, and some of the arguments could be a black man can vote but a white woman can't so that was seen as a contradiction in the racial system that white women couldn't vote and black men could. You know, all of these different ways that public space can create hierarchies of different kinds of bodies. So look along the axis of race; look along the axis of ability/disability and, you know, kind of start to unpack the way that public spaces privilege certain kinds of bodies over other kinds of bodies. So it's not just a trans/cis thing or a man/woman thing.
(40:50)
Ann: Yeah. And one of the other things I love about your work is that it is really looking towards best practices for the future. So instead of merely just -- I mean not mere, but instead of pointing out all of these historical factors that contribute to why public toilets are how they are today you're also kind of . . . I would say you're a bit of a futurist as well. So maybe you can talk a bit about architectural best practices or if you could wave a wand and change all public facilities in the world what would they look like?
Susan: Well I would say two things. I really don't think there's a one size fits all, universal design that accommodates all people at all times. I do think we can do better than we currently do. And just one example of ways that we could change bathroom architecture in ways that both accommodate transgender needs as well as promoting safety for everyone and being more inclusive of many different kinds of bodily diversity, I would like to point your listeners to a website stalled.online. Stalled.online. And this is what I like to think of as a sort of open source software for more inclusive public toilet design. But the brains behind all of this is my friend and colleagues Joel Sanders who's an architect at the Yale School of Architecture who also runs a private architectural practice in New York City. And he's somebody who's been interested for a very long time in the relationship between sexuality and gender and the built environment and the ways that built environment can reproduce heteronormativity or reproduce gender conventions. How you can use design to enact your vision of sort of a more justly organized society.
(42:55)
The Solved project provides a couple of templates for how you can retrofit existing public toilets in a way that preserves the number of fixtures, provides more privacy, actually increases safety by having more eyes on other users that's not treating the bathroom like an isolated kind of cul-de-sac that people go into where sometimes it might be easier for violence to happen in those sorts of enclosed and secluded spaces. So there's a different relationship between the washing up and grooming areas and public circulation spaces while at the same time creating more privacy in the individual stalls. So it's a mixed-gender multi-stall public toilet that changes the way that the public/private divide is built.
It's a little hard to describe that in words for people who are listening but I really encourage your viewers to go look at that website stalled.online. There's also besides sort of a demonstration of an existing project that's actually been built there's also a template for thinking about ways that you could build new construction bathrooms in places like airports or shopping malls so that you could actually increase access to a more inclusive kind of public toilet and really highly-trafficked public spaces. And it's really exciting for me as someone who spends a lot of time either in archives or in classrooms or at my laptop typing words away to be involved in projects that actually change the way the world is organized. It's like there's something very satisfying about not just having a good idea but seeing a good idea become a brick and mortar actually existing thing.
Ann: Right. And one thing I keep thinking about listening to you talk is that this is an issue in physical space in terms of the built environment but, you know, also changing the built environment physically has very positive physical health ramifications for the people who use those facilities. Frankly everybody poops health-wise, you know? It is an important thing to have access to that for your own personal physicality, not just for the broader social good or personal safety.
(45:44)
Susan: Exactly. You know, there's evidence that holding urine for a long time in your bladder can lead to bladder infections which then can have other problems besides the physical discomfort of really feeling like you need to pee and not being able to do that. Yeah, there's a definite increase in both comfort and health I think for increasing the number of spaces in public that people can use to relieve themselves. And as a historian the thing I keep coming back to is saying how things are is not how things always were which you can kind of flip around and say well, and likewise how things are now is not necessarily how things will always be.
It used to be there wasn't indoor plumbing. People would have chamber pots in their bedrooms, you know? If they had a house with a bedroom in it. Or if they lived in cities they might defecate and urine off bridges or empty their chamber pots into the Thames in London and there are reasons those were sometimes not hygienic ways to deal with human waste. But the historical solutions to those problems were not necessarily to build up sex-segregated public toilets. It's like there have been, you know, plenty of places even now where people use mixed-gendered toilets. Most people, you know, if you share a home with somebody with another gender than you you use the same toilets. If you're going to go to a street festival or a rock concert or something, any public event, you're going to get in that line of port-a-potties and they're not sex-segregated. We already know how to do this at some level.
Ann: It's not rocket science. [Laughs]
Susan: It's not rocket science and yet there are some design solutions that I think are really elegant that, you know, increase safety, health, accessibility, don't create barriers to access for disabled people and members of religious minorities who might need to -- you know, time for prayer. There are some really practical solutions to making space more accessible and welcoming. But the biggest thing I really think is changing people's minds. People freak out around toilets. I think because it involves things that are really stigmatized -- eliminating waste from your body -- and privacy, and some people have some sense of shame around acts of bodily elimination or they feel unsafe about the gendered parts of their bodies in public. You know, it's the psychological barriers that I think are actually the most significant.
(48:45)
Now you could built a perfectly accessible multi-gender toilet and if nobody uses it then it kind of defeats the purpose. In some ways I like the idea of not presenting these kinds of multi-users mixed-gender toilets as anything radical because then I think you get caught up with some people thinking oh, these crazy trans people are just pushing their personal agenda and trying to make all of us normal people deal with their weird little gender situation. Rather to just say "Look, this is really simple. We use spaces like this all the time. It's no big deal, nothing to freak out about." And if you just build something that people sort of intuitively feel is like oh, there's the toilet over there and I'll go behind that door and do my business and come out and wash my hands right there then go on about my business, I think people won't even think about it at some level. You know, it just becomes intuitively obvious.
(49:55)
So there's a way I think we can sort of de-escalate or de-weaponize the way public toilets are being used in the sort of really current contested, polarized political movement we live in. It just doesn't have to be the issue that people are making it into.
Ann: Right, the rock concert port-a-potty agenda.
Susan: Right.
Ann: [Laughs] Or right, like the home bathroom agenda. Totally, totally average stuff here.
Susan: Yeah.
Ann: This has been fantastic. Your perspective is so necessary and we're all going to go check out stalled.online right now.
Susan: Thank you so much and I look forward to seeing the podcast coming up.
[Interview Ends]
Ann: Just to reiterate the project she was talking about in terms of thinking about the future of public bathrooms is called Stalled and we will link to it in the show notes.
Aminatou: I love it. I learned so much today.
Ann: Ugh, do you feel like . . . do you feel like we're going to talk about poop all the time now? Privately obviously, not on the show.
Aminatou: Listen, I am totally fine talking about my poop. I feel lighter already. [Laughter] You know, it's all good. Maybe next week we can talk about farting because as much as I'm very cool with pooping I have issues -- some issues with farting.
Ann: Oh my god, don't you feel like it's kind of implied by our conversation here? Like it's all related?
Aminatou: Listen, it's 100% all related. And to be clear I think farting is a normal function of life; I just don't like it when people do it for fun.
Ann: How do you feel about a fart joke? Like if I wanted to support my disdain for Trump's Supreme Court pick by just sitting here like [farting noises].
Aminatou: Listen, I . . . [Laughs] I'm done with you. See you on the Internet never.
Ann: [Fart noises]
Aminatou: You're still going. I take it back, I'm 100% down with farts now.
Ann: I'll see you in the bathroom.
Aminatou: See you in the public bathroom, boo-boo. Bye. You can find us many places on the Internet, on our website callyourgirlfriend.com, you can download it anywhere you listen to your favorite podcasts, or on Apple Podcasts where we would love it if you left us a review. You can email us at callyrgf@gmail.com. We're on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook at @callyrgf. You can subscribe to our monthly newsletter The Bleed on the Call Your Girlfriend website. You can even leave us a short and sweet voicemail at 714-681-2943. That's 714-681-CYGF. Our theme song is by Robyn, all original music is composed by Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs, our logos are by Kenesha Sneed, and this podcast is produced by Gina Delvac.