Hello readers! That's you in Australia and Finland; I think most people had quite enough of me when I went back to the Kingdom and have now decided they have better things to do, like worship cricket as a pathetic substitute for failing to lead meaningful lives. Anyway I fought I'd right you a post for being so good. Now if only I could see the screen properly from the mountain of pickles and squeezeecheez on my naked belly.
The summer temperatures have finally peaked and have started their slow ebb. Cicadas are still doing good business of the exceedingly irritating chirrupy kind, but now they have competition. The return of the undergarments to the university weighs heavy on my soul yet again, reminding me as it does every year of just how many eons ago I started hiya education. Waddling about the streets in their flipflops and asking bus drivers stupid questions (does this bus go to where it says it does on the front of the bus), they are most tiresome in constantly getting underfoot. Apparently some of them have failed to learn even the simplest rules.
Today, on entering the bathroom/restroom/lavatory/toilet/craperie I was alarmed to see what was clearly a girl's bag poking out from under the door of one of the cubicles. Instantly I raised the threat level to defcon one, followed the first step of emergency protocol, "assume it's me that's bolloxed up", and darted outside to look at the sign on the door. Yes, it was indeed the universally recognised yet revoltingly gender biased image of a stick-'man' without a kilt, an archaism of malecentric society. I paused to reanalyse the situation. Perhaps it wasn't a girl's bag at all, perhaps I had drawn an erroneous conclusion based on my institutionalised sexism. Or mayhap it was a lady's bag but belonging to a male. Perchance it was not my sexism, but my homophobia that was at fault. No wait, having a girl's bag doesn't necessarily make you gay. So we can definitely put a tick next to homophobia. Conceivably it was just a man who liked large handbags with hoop handles or through a set of amusing coincidences had found himself in possession of one. I walked back into the bathroom and took the only other cubicle (I had some reading to do).
Now toilet cubicles in Freedom have an alarmingly large gap at the bottom so that you can swing your M-16 around to defend your constitutional rights at ankle level. As a consequence you can usually see one of the feet of the person in the next 'stall'. I was driven to reevaluate my previous reevaluations as I looked down and saw a small foot in a strappy sandal with pink painted toenails. Yuck, some guy with miniature feet and ohmygod that shade of pink is soooooo 2008.
This set me to thinking, and the toilet is well known to be a productive environment for such endeavours: what if it is a womb-an? And if it is what does it matter? Maybe she is rich in testosterone, or carrying a bumper chromosome. She might simply choose to self define as a man, and who am I to interfere with that? I should merely be grateful she's not at the urinal, spraying all over the place. Unless she's pre-op or post-op, or has some kind of hose installed. With a tap I hope. What does it mean to be a woman anyway? Oh wait, that'll be in a dictionary or medical textbook somewhere. Yes, here we go, a woman is an adult female human. And a female is apparently the one that produces ova. Ova are defined as the larger gametes (in species where more than one type of gamete appears). So presumably the IAAF need to wait nine months for their tests to be absolutely certain. And then they can get with the programme and start chucking out all the athletes whose overzealous exercise regimes or genetic disorders have caused them to not produce gametes at all. We can kidnap them, stamp 'freak' on their foreheads and make them fight lions in an arena under the contemptuous gaze of Silvio Berlusconi as he reclines on a bed of nubile slaves, eating pork scratchings.
Refocusing on the issue of toilets, it seems that the problem is still waiting to be addressed. Should they all be unisex (or omnisex)? As with most 'problems' the answer is easy once you know what the right question really is. I think society for its own, as usual mysterious, reasons has chosen the separation of defaecation facilities on the basis of what sort of external genitalia you are packing, regardless of how you might view yourself. One type goes through one door and the other has to wait outside a different door because of the long queue. If you are lucky enough to have both, choose the door without the queue. The solution is now clear. To avoid images that enforce a sexfacist image of men in trousers and women in skirts, the doors should just show a picture of the required genitalia, or for situations where that might be inappropriate (Heaven knows why, I'm sure we've all seen it before) a picture of a hose on one and the predator's face on the other.
This post was brought to you by thesaurus.com and the entry for the word 'perhaps'.
Now, before I return to my moist cave hacked out of flesh, let me bring to your attention this exciting job opportunity.
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