{"id":54384,"date":"2013-03-24T12:00:02","date_gmt":"2013-03-24T17:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=54384"},"modified":"2013-03-17T20:27:32","modified_gmt":"2013-03-18T01:27:32","slug":"gender-and-bathroom-graffiti","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2013\/03\/24\/gender-and-bathroom-graffiti\/","title":{"rendered":"Gender and Bathroom Graffiti"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Cross-posted at <a href=\"http:\/\/montclairsoci.blogspot.com\/2013\/03\/stalls-walls-scrawls.html\" target=\"_blank\">Montclair SocioBlog<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>In the third stall at a women\u2019s room at the University of Western Ontario, someone had written, \u201cWhat was the worst day of your life?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A few responses were humorous, but most were serious.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Every day, struggling with an eating disorder.<\/li>\n<li>The day I found out my father was an alcoholic.<\/li>\n<li>The day I was raped.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>One student who saw these took a piece of notebook paper, wrote a sympathetic response to each, and taped it on the wall of the stall (transcript follows):<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2013\/03\/113.jpg\" data-rel=\"lightbox-image-0\" data-rl_title=\"\" data-rl_caption=\"\" title=\"\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter  wp-image-54385\" alt=\"1\" src=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2013\/03\/113.jpg\" width=\"351\" height=\"470\" srcset=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2013\/03\/113.jpg 717w, https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2013\/03\/113-500x669.jpg 500w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 351px) 100vw, 351px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Transcript (borrowed from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/2013\/01\/15\/girls-bathroom-stall-note-university_n_2482082.html\" target=\"_blank\">The Huffington Post<\/a>):<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>To the girl who was raped:<\/strong>\u00a0You are so strong. I cannot fathom the pain you must have gone through. The fact that you have the bravery to write it (even on a bathroom wall) gives me hope.<\/p>\n<p><strong>To the girl with eating disorders:<\/strong>\u00a0I promise you, although I don&#8217;t know you, you are beautiful, you deserve your health. You deserve freedom from that hell.<\/p>\n<p><strong>To the girl with the alcoholic father:<\/strong>\u00a0I am so sorry for the agony it must cause. Again, such courage is remarkable you must be such a strong person to see such pain.<\/p>\n<p><strong>To the girl whose father died:<\/strong>\u00a0Missing them never goes away. The ache of their absence never goes away. But the love they had, the memories you share surely must last. I am sure, out of the bottom of my heart, the people who have left you in this world are exceptionally proud of the person you are.<\/p>\n<p>Everytime(sic) I see these walls, these confessions, I feel so blessed to know I have the priviledge(sic) of seeing them. Your moments, these secrets, are all precious even though they are sad. To all of you (including those I did not mention, and those who have not yet written)<\/p>\n<p>-You are worthy.<br \/>\n-You are strong.<br \/>\n-You are brave.<br \/>\n-You are loved.<br \/>\n-Somebody cares.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>It\u00a0 went viral.\u00a0 Reddit picked it up, and the story has been in Canadian newspapers.\u00a0 But this example is not so unusual.\u00a0 A <a href=\"http:\/\/jls.sagepub.com.ezproxy.montclair.edu:2048\/content\/22\/3\/282.full.pdf+html\">study<\/a>\u00a0of bathroom\u00a0graffiti\u00a0at a New Zealand university\u00a0(unfortunately behind a paywall) found similar themes:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8230;inscriptions in the women\u2019s toilets were talking about love and romance, soliciting personal advice on health issues and relationships, and discussing what exact act constitutes rape. Women also tried to placate more heated discussions (e.g., \u201cStop this. There is no reason to say these things. Why so much in-fighting?\u201d).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The men wrote about politics and money (especially taxes and tuition).\u00a0 Men also posted insults that were far more numerous and aggressive than those in the women\u2019s room.\u00a0 Only the men wrote racist graffiti.<\/p>\n<p>Drier&#8217;s note, then, is a nice example of a documented trend: anonymous women being nice to each other in their bathrooms.<\/p>\n<span class=\"ft_signature\"> Jay Livingston is the chair of the Sociology Department at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/profilepages\/view_profile.php?username=livingstonj\">Montclair State University<\/a>.  You can follow him at <a href=\"http:\/\/montclairsoci.blogspot.com\/\">Montclair SocioBlog<\/a> or on <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/#!\/JayLivingston\">Twitter<\/a>.<\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Cross-posted at Montclair SocioBlog. In the third stall at a women\u2019s room at the University of Western Ontario, someone had written, \u201cWhat was the worst day of your life?\u201d A few responses were humorous, but most were serious. Every day, struggling with an eating disorder. The day I found out my father was an alcoholic. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":258,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[23384,329,55],"class_list":["post-54384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-social-construction-discourselanguage","tag-emotion","tag-gender"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/258"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54384"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54384\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54389,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54384\/revisions\/54389"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}