Roger’s Rules

November 3rd, 2007 10:46 am

The Groves of Academe, or You Can’t Make It Up, Episode 8,968

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As of now, in the autumn of 2007, it costs $52,202.00 a year to be an undergraduate at New York University. That’s Fifty-Two Thousand Dollars, and then some. And what do you get for all that dough? Well, one thing you get are cultural events like today’s screening of a 53-minute film called Q2P, followed by a “discussion” with the filmmaker, Paromita Vohra. Larry Craig: listen up! Here’s something to get your feet tapping. Sponsored by NYU’s Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality, the Department of Media, Culture and Communication, the Center for Religion and Media, and the Council on Media and Culture, Q2P, set in Mumbai,

observes who has access to toilets and who doesn’t, and how gender, power, and the need to “go” make up public space and bodily well-being.

That’s right folks: four separate entities at one of our premier institutions of higher learning got together to bring us a “a day-long conference on Sex, Gender and the Public Toilet: Outing the Water Closet Bringing together pioneering scholars of sex and gender with leading design professionals and activists to consider, critique, and reconstruct the public rest room.”

Think about it: “pioneering scholars of sex and gender,” “leading design professionals and activists” all under one roof to talk about sex, politics, and public toilets. A load of merde, you say? Quite possibly. An outrageous travesty as well? No doubt. But think of what it means for the art of satire. Who could possibly make this up? Back in the 1950s, Kingsley Amis wrote the splendid academic satire Lucky Jim, wherein he ridiculed that pseudo-scholarship which gloried in a “funeral parade of yawn-enforcing facts, the pseudo-light it threw upon non problems.” But how do you satirize “Sex, Gender and the Public Toilet: Outing the Water Closet”? What obloquy is severe enough for these “pioneering scholars of sex and gender,” these “leading design professionals and activists”?

I sometimes despair, concluding that these malevolent clowns have forced us to that position Wittgenstein described at the end of the Tractaus: “Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen”: “What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.” But I cheer up when I remember that, although phenomena like “Sex, Gender and the Public Toilet” are beneath contempt, that doesn’t mean we should fail to let the world know about them. The sponsors of this ludicrous exercise in cultural pathology thoughtfully included contact information: the email address is center.religion.media@nyu.edu, the telephone number is 212.998.7608. I hope many right-thinking people will avail themselves of that information to upbraid the people responsible for such hogwash.

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23 Comments

David Thomson:

A soft science PhD is often a piece of garbage. One’s chances of “earning” this credential are greatly increased by their willingness to become an intellectual slut. This is especially true if they also want to obtain a tenured position. I always assume that anyone with an advanced liberal arts degree is an idiot until proven otherwise. It is a very safe and fair assumption to make. I am only being halfway facetious when saying that a sign of improving conditions is when those who graduated from Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Princeton, or Dartmouth go out of their way to hide their affiliation with these disgraced institutions of “higher learning.”

Please note I did not include the hard sciences. I am convinced, for instance, that some of the greatest medical doctors in the world graduated from Harvard or Yale. My caustic rhetoric is restricted solely to the soft science departments.

Nov 4, 2007 - 5:56 am Charles Maxwell:

Let’s see if I have this right, we’re currently fighting a war for the very survival of western culture. Our esteemed intelligencia tell us that the terrorists are fueled by our “foreign policy blunders.” The Iranian Hitler and his Morality Police say there are no gays in Iran. Seems to me the Islamo-fascists are strictly concerned about “western culture” dripping out of American liberal toilets and into the Middle East. I wonder how sex, politics, and public toilets would “go over” in Tehran. I don’t think as swimmingly as in New York! Don your wellies and enjoy your lunch boyZ!

Nov 4, 2007 - 7:45 am DoktorNo:

What is wrong with American academia??

I have here in centre of Europe some experience with German and Polish academic life. The German one is a bit close to the PC standards of US’s, but still there is no room for such absurds, and scientifical level is higher than Polish one. At least in Poland there is low level of PC-crazee.

Nov 4, 2007 - 8:17 am JustAskWHY:

I foresee reparations for graduates in the near future.

Nov 4, 2007 - 9:06 am newyorkdude:

The NYU conference is a double-header for me:

1) I am a graduate of both undergrad and grad NYU schools (quite a few years ago) and proudly affirm here and now that I have not given a penny out of my pocket to any of their alumni associations ever never at no time! I loved going to school in NY, but the school was and still is very suspect, in my opinion.

2) I just returned from spending a year in India. I can affirm here and now that, to a great extent, toilet functions in most of India — even in big cities — are not performed in toilets. Both men and women urinate in public when the urge is too great to wait for a toilet. Places where there are many Westerners have toilets. But the average Indian doesn’t wait if a wall or other mildly-hidden spot is available. Westerners might be appalled, but that’s the Indian way.

Nov 4, 2007 - 9:06 am Pat:

Q2P, set in Mumbai, observes who has access to toilets and who doesn’t, and how gender, power, and the need to “go” make up public space and bodily well-being.

Just add some catchy show tunes and this could be a successful Broadway musical.

You think I’m kidding, don’t you? It already is a successful Broadway musical. I’ve seen it. Look up Urinetown if you don’t believe me. It was nominated for ten Tony Awards in 2002, and won three of them.

Nov 4, 2007 - 9:25 am Laura:

What is wrong with American academia?? I have here in centre of Europe some experience with German and Polish academic life. The German one is a bit close to the PC standards of US’s, but still there is no room for such absurds…

I think a big contributing factor to the nonsense being peddled in the high-degree level of the liberal arts is the requirement that a PhD dissertation must be original research.

The US has a big population, and we have a larger percentage of people pursuing doctorates than ever before. Given that, it’s no easy task for a grad student come up with something genuinely new to say about the works of Shakespeare, or the role of women in medieval France, or the life of Abraham Lincoln, or the ideas of Decartes. It seems so many of the truly useful (or at least relevant or intersting) subjects have been written about and analyzed to death by students’ academic predecessors.

When you combine this difficulty in finding new subjects or viewpoints to explore with the whacko-left orthodoxy of nearly every professor and administrator in academia, ridiculous crap like “Sex, Gender and the Public Toilet” is the inevitable result. And sadly, there’s only plenty more where that came from.

And since the folks who spend years to write these absurd dissertations to get their PhDs are, upon graduating, qualified to do nothing but remain in academia and become professors themselves, this trend will simply become replicated ad nauseum in future generations.

Nov 4, 2007 - 9:31 am M. Simon:

DoktorNo,

In America we are so stupid rich that we encourage that sort of thing for entertainment purposes.

The Bathroom is a favorite of mine.

Nov 4, 2007 - 10:16 am MG:

DoktorNo,

There is nothing wrong with American academia.

What you are observing is the American predilection for entrepreneurship.

As in, “a fool and (Daddy’s) money is easily parted”.

From the land that brought you P.T. Barnum…

Nov 4, 2007 - 10:56 am DoktorNo:

I did’t expected so much responses. Frankly speaking, I agree with David Thomson, that this problem could be narrowed only for soft sciences. I personally admire US achievments in the fields of hard science.

Nov 4, 2007 - 3:19 pm shnargley:

A watershed conference…PHDs, power, and potties…brilliant minds coming together and digesting various options to come out with a concrete proposition for politically correct water closets….though it may turn out not worth the paper it is written on.

Nov 4, 2007 - 6:36 pm Neil the Ethical Werewolf:

I don’t see the problem here. It’s possible that these conversations will make the bathrooms of the future better than the bathrooms of the present in ways we haven’t anticipated.

Nov 4, 2007 - 9:00 pm Outraged NYU Alum:

Good grief! Where will the PC madness end? Roger is so right — there is no obloquy severe enough for these “pioneering scholars of sex and gender,” these “leading design professionals and activists.” I can’t believe people are talking about public restrooms at universities! Public restrooms are not important subjects, they have no bearing on social space or social policy or social anything, and what’s more, they are very yucky. I intend to chastise NYU at every available opportunity for perpetrating this travesty and charging students $52,000 for it!!!! And Charles Maxwell hits it out of the park: what about Islamofascism???

Thanks to Roger for this searing and very necessary piece of cultural criticism. It’s worthy of Michelle Malkin, and I know no higher form of praise.

Nov 5, 2007 - 7:20 am KarenT:

Hillary Clinton recently elicited sympathy for deserving youths whose parent(s) considered mortgaging the family home to send a bright youngster to college. Clinton wants taxpayers to pay more subsidies for college education. I think $52,000 is quite a bit to shell out in order for a kid to be lectured on things like toilets, sex and gender.

Why is there not more emphasis by politicians on decreasing costs of of college education? Seems to me that this would be a simpler matter than decreasing costs of medical care, given the availability of educational materials on the internet today, as well as other technological advances which increase access to information. This would be especially applicable in the liberal arts and social sciences, which generally do not require much specialized equipment other than, say, special toilets.

I would even be so egalitarian as to suggest that publicly-funded institutions provide such educational materials on-line where the information could be judged for useful content by the public at large. And I rather imagine that an on-line conference on toilets, sex and gender would be far cheaper than a big in-person conference.

It’s interesting to me that the conference organizers pointedly include both sex and gender in the title of the conference. I foresee special new restroom rights for people who feel like they don’t fit in when visiting regular restrooms. So this conference may cost taxpayers a lot even after it is over.

Nov 5, 2007 - 1:46 pm Banjo:

I know what I’d do with the paper this session produces.

Nov 7, 2007 - 4:30 pm Xanthippas:

I’m sorry but, this is a problem…how? How long have academics studied things that seemed of little consequence to others, and were sneered at as a result? Since oh, the days of Plato and Socrates perhaps? And why exactly would anybody whose not a student at the University have any reason to call them and moan and whine with utmost umbrage? I mean, other than as a result of being a stuffy old man that complains too much?

Honestly, if this is offensive to you, then you are strange. That’s all.

Nov 7, 2007 - 8:56 pm brooksfoe:

newyorkdude notes that most people in India defecate outside of toilets. This, clearly, is a public health problem. It might be worth studying why it is that Indians fail to either build or use toilets sufficiently. Since use of toilets is a behavior that is heavily influenced by gender concerns, with ideas about modesty and vulnerability to sexual predators often discouraging women from accessing public toilets, it might be worth looking at how gender norms influence public toilet usage, much as designers of public toilets at US institutions (sports stadiums, workplaces) do. These are complex issues; it might be worth compiling some data on them, rather than just speculating wildly, in order to discuss them with some level of expertise. Sociologists and other social scientists might be the people best suited to gathering such data and discussing its significance.

Perhaps people who have studied these issues might be brought together in some kind of seminar or workshop. If there are any good documentary films available on this subject, one might be shown at the workshop, to help focus attention and provide insight. A major university might prove to be a good locale for such a workshop to be held.

But, no, that would be ridiculous. We don’t send our children to college for this sort of thing! Did you realize that at Texas A&M, Federal dollars are actually devoted to research on cow poop? It’s obscene.

Nov 7, 2007 - 10:27 pm Down and Out of Sài Gòn:

And what’s so silly about the topic? Anyone who’s been to a nightclub has noticed a power disparity between genders - men in and out of the their cubicles in seconds, while women line up patiently yet urgently for their turn to go. It’s actually not a bad idea for a discussion or a dissertation.

The real outrage here is paying $52,000 for a year’s worth of study. I got 6 years of Engineering and Mathematics for $18,000 (Australian) in the early nineties - and at quite a good university too. Got two bachelors out of it as well.

Nov 8, 2007 - 1:58 am Karl Steel:

wherein he ridiculed that pseudo-scholarship which gloried in a “funeral parade of yawn-enforcing facts, the pseudo-light it threw upon non problems

You’re right, because nobody poops. This actually has nothing to do with Lucky Jim, which, surely you recall, directs its greatest acrimony at medievalists. Which just shows what a nitwit Amis was even in his best novel.

Now here’s a panel where I’m sure people got their money’s worth.

Is your point that if NYU students were paying less for tuition then they’d be justified in discussing public toilets? Otherwise I don’t see the connection between the first half of your piece and the second.

Nov 8, 2007 - 8:53 am Gus:

I think Laura got it right. I have a friend who got a PhD in German. He said he had to write his dissertation on an obscure writer that most German speakers have never heard of because there’s little new to be said about Goethe, Kafka, etc.

Nov 8, 2007 - 10:11 am Rickm:

I know I know I know. Ph.D.’s are only on obscure subjects. They never impact present day politics. Its not like a dissertation ever overturned the conventional wisdom of one of the most important events of the last century… oh wait:

http://www.amazon.com/Sole-Spokesman-Pakistan-Cambridge-Studies/dp/0521458501

Nov 8, 2007 - 11:03 am David K.:

Hmm, public toilets - no history, no design, no architecture, nobody decides where they’re built or how, nothing specific to different cultures about them, nobody ever behaves in any interesting or strange way in there, there’s never been any politics associated with them (not even cute little English campaigns for “more public loos”), they have no relation to gender whatsoever. Moreover, there’s never a veil drawn over them that might be worth gently lifting…

Sapere aude, Rog!

Nov 8, 2007 - 11:18 am MSS:

Hmmm — in a culture where Brittany Spears’ underwear gets 100 times the media coverage as our healthcare crisis or the war in Iraq… you are worried about the topics of one academic conference?

Have you been to a public toilet recently? Or looked for a public toilet when you really really had to go? Worried about who might come in to the public restroom while your child was in there?

If this conference resulted in some new approaches to public restrooms — including the value of the French self-cleaning toilets on the streets of San Francisco — I think that would be a good thing.

Would you rather they be debating Britteny Spears’ parenting style?

Nov 9, 2007 - 4:38 pm