Literary Pixie

By Sean Pessin

Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek says that the toilet reflects national ideology; he says it is typical for toilets to reveal how their users relate to what we make of as “us” and “not us.” He says that we show how we deal with shit by dealing with shit. He then conducts a lengthy comparison among nations. For Americans, he says, the bowl is full of water and the shit floats unexamined until it is disposed of, reflecting a pragmatic economic manner of thought inherited through Anglo-Saxon colonization. 

In partial disagreement, the Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan sculpted two satirical solid 18-karat gold toilets titled America and sold them to two institutions in the United States. The America works are billed as totally functional and are typically available for private use when exhibited. The first was billed as unique and sold to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; it belonged to the Guggenheim from 2016–2019 before being stolen and melted down while on loan to Blenheim Palace; the other was revealed to exist in 2025; it sold at auction to Ripley’s Believe It or Not!. Cattelan said of the work that “whatever you eat, a $200 lunch or a $2 hot dog, the results are the same, toilet-wise.” 

Cattelan referred to the project as providing 1% art to the 99%, echoing the protest cries from various economically-oriented Occupy! movements. On an airplane, when a gender-neutral restroom is in use, a sign pops up that declares that the restroom is “occupied.” Occupation is also a job, a hobby, and the term used for the violent enforcement of regime change among state actors. For both states and stalls, occupation is determined by “feet on the ground” and, the kind of shoe matters. 

Žižek says of Germanic toilets that they lay out the shit to be sniffed at for illness before being flushed out a hole in the front. Swiss critic Max Lüthi’s system for the hierarchy of materials argues that porcelain is worse than gold but better than shit, and shit is better than nothing sometimes. Žižek says of French toilets that the placement of the drain in the back helps to disappear shit as fast as possible. 

French-American artist Marcel Duchamp caused a riot when his Fountain disappeared from the bathroom and was placed on its side in the Society of Independent Artists 1917 exhibition. The work, originally a porcelain urinal upon which a signature is painted, was lost after initial exhibition but unofficially replicated many times. 

The skills of bathroom use are in a similar state of practice. In the bathroom, images are allowed to be brought in from the outside world. Décor tastefully hangs in many restrooms to signify. When my cousin was complaining about selling an artwork of a California landscape he made to a rich family that was delighted to tell him that they were going to exhibit his artwork in the bathroom of their vacation home, an ex of mine mused that he wished for my cousin that the rich family had many bathrooms. 

The chain restaurant Buca di Beppo observes a binaristic gender dichotomy that is rigidly enforced and reified; the men’s bathrooms have pictures of men peeing lining the walls; the women’s rooms have photos of Catholic nuns. Even if taking photos into bathrooms is allowed, it is forbidden to take photos in bathrooms, though the mirror-selfie in an empty bathroom is a self-affirmation ritual that is commonplace.

Other forms of self-affirmation come in the form of devices available for use. A rite of passage in men’s rooms is use of the urinal, and urinals are often positioned at various heights to accommodate gender indoctrination among the cisgendered. Some forms of urinal embrace privacy through low divider walls; some urinals are wall-less troughs and deny privacy. In all cases, use of the urinal is surveilled through furtive glances and policed aggressively. At the urinal users are supposed to look to confirm state-approved gender usage, but users are not supposed to look too long or else they risk being marked as deviant from the state’s codes for the gender regime. The ability to use the urinal and pass observation determines in part who is permitted to use the men’s room. 

The gender regime determines how people can move through the world, whether that is by driving a car or traveling internationally. The bathroom a user is permitted to use by the state is part of the information collected for school applications, bank loans, restaurant reservations, housing rentals. These written records document in part what happens in bathrooms, and they include photos sanctioned by the state for the state to use to verify gender identity. 

In the bathroom writing then is tacitly permitted, even if it is explicitly forbidden. On the stall walls the people who show up are represented. A secret is negotiated among users with key scratches, faded stickers, a rainbow of sharpie marks, and the acid burns of urine spray. What was an address is now a phone number and now a website. A lewd doodle points to a support group. 

The intertext is an idea Bulgarian-French philosopher Julia Kristeva gives name to but has always haunted texts with a plurality of voices, which is to say, all texts. The intertext is an invisible text that contributes to the interpretation of all other texts. A secret is written, sent, received, and read with the door closed. This text message is in part about every text message ever. The mirror says “I love you bitch” in red lipstick before it is shattered by a desperate fist and replaced; the mirror reflects “push,” “pull,” “exit” alongside brands of soaps and other products. With one’s back to the sinks, a secret is passed in low tones that aren’t a whisper exactly. 

French critic Roland Barthes doesn’t talk about the intertext, but he does describe writing as a “tissue of quotations,” a collage of endless gifting, borrowing, exchanging, and transforming that anticipates, exceeds, and succeeds all expressions. On the stall door, a note is taped: “Sensitive Plumbing. Do Not Flush Anything Except Toilet Paper.” Under the stall divider, a bloody emergency is salved. Under the stall divider, a secret is scarfed in white ink. United States Secretary of Health and Human Services and lawyer Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. brags about snorting cocaine off toilet seats in public restrooms while threatening militarized police action against transgender people who try to use restrooms of any kind for their urgent function. 

In American director Steven Spielberg’s film Jurassic Park, the gender of the Tyrannosaurus Rex is an important plot point. The T-Rex is assigned female before birth via genetic engineering, and yet the T-Rex is referred to by park operators as “he” throughout the film. While the T-Rex, nicknamed “Rexy” by the internet, never declares a gender identity, the audience assumes that Rexy is misgendered by park operators repeatedly. Rexy eats villainous corporate lawyer Donald Gennaro while he is hiding in the binaristic unisex amusement park restroom, signified by the sign on the outside of the occupied stall: a silhouette of a white woman and a white man on a blue circle.

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