Toilet Seats: Up or Down?

Have you seen this? I saw it on a friend's Facebook wall.

Now, if you read all of these, plenty of them are based on lame gender stereotypes. In the second column, for example, there is the comment about colors and how subtle shade differences are lost on men. Guess what? They are lost on me too, and I have a vagina. Also, I get my oil changed exactly when it needs to be changed. Every time. And for my boyfriend, a living, breathing male, Saturday=books or Saturday=sleep (actually these days Saturday=work but that's beside the point), but Saturday=NO Sports.

However, I do really enjoy and appreciate the first rule (henceforth known as The Toilet Seat Rule). I myself have done some complaining over the years, that might have sounded something like this: "Why can't you put the toilet seat back down after you use it?" "If you do that, I'm gonna fall in!" "It's not that hard to put it back down."

But I also remember one moment of gender-equality consideration on my part. I was hanging out at a guy friend's apartment, and I asked to use the bathroom before we left. Since he lived alone, and he was (and still is) a male, I chose to put the toilet seat back up when I was done. I'd never done that before (or since, I don't think...), but for whatever reason, in that moment I was very aware that I was in a guy's apartment, and that guys usually want the toilet seat up. So I put it back up. When I told my sister that I had done this, she laughed at me as if I were so silly. But if we expect them to put it back down in our bathrooms, why shouldn't we put it back up in theirs?

Let's be honest ladies. For most of us (at least those reading this), it's been a long time since we were small enough to truly fall into the toilet. I can only remember one occurrence of walking into the bathroom and sitting down without realizing the seat was up, and I caught myself before coming anywhere close to bare bottom meeting toilet water. Yes, I would say the toilet looks better with the seat down, and usually looks cleaner, and that is the image that I personally would prefer for visitors to my bathroom to see, but that is how I feel about my own home.

Now, I definitely am not endorsing the stereotypes in most of these rules. The "Crying is blackmail" and "Yes and no are perfectly acceptable answers to almost every question" are just reworded versions of "Men don't have emotions. We don't understand women and their crazy emotions. Stop crying--we're not allowed to, and seeing you do it freaks us out!" In fact, 2/3 of these rules are based solely on "Women talk too much, feel too much and buy too much" and "Men are superior and therefore above those silly words, feelings and consumer products."

But I do find the toilet seat rule to be funny and to ring true. I feel like I learned to complain about the toilet seat more from movies and TV than anywhere else. I've been wondering where this started. Maybe it started when work moved out of the home and women became primary homemakers; they had control over the home and how it looked, and therefore the home was subject to their demands and needs. But however it started, I think it's interesting how it has persisted, and even come to symbolize, in a way, the little, frivolous arguments of a married (heterosexual) couple.


And the rule gets one more thing right: I've never heard men complain about having to put it back down.

Oxford Educated or Oxford Ignorant?

Today, the school board of my former school district, Oxford, will be voting on which type of sex education policy to adopt. They can choose between "abstinence-only" or "abstinence-plus" (comprehensive) courses. What will Oxford, Miss., choose? I'm not sure.

Growing up in Mississippi, I have learned to handle contradictions (though not always happily or easily). The personhood amendment was brought to Mississippi by Personhood USA precisely because we are considered to be the most conservative state, and they felt sure it would pass. Yet, we voted it down last November by about 14 points. But, we still voted for Phil Bryant as governor, who was directly involved with the personhood movement. (I don't understand it either.) We have the highest teen pregnancy rate, highest infant mortality rate, and our educational attainment rates are some of the lowest in the country, yet our politicians are mostly anti-abortion and anti-sex education.

So what do these contradictions mean for sex-education policies in our schools? Well, it's a little unclear. The Lafayette County School District (the county of which Oxford is the seat) has already adopted an abstinence-only education policy. But according to this article, "Mississippi parents are overwhelmingly in favor of age-appropriate, comprehensive sex education." One Oxford parent points out that those opposed to comprehensive sex education are "a minority of parents" who are "very passionate about their beliefs and are active in influencing their local school boards." So it seems very plausible that this minority could force their beliefs into policy, whether or not most of Oxford's parents actually agree with them.

So, it seems to me that all Oxford parents need to get their voices heard. I just e-mailed members of the school board about the vote. I don't know how much weight my opinion will hold, since I am not a parent of any Oxford students, but I did it anyway. If you want to write to school board members, go to the School Board website with names and e-mail addresses provided. If we want Mississippi's teen pregnancy rate to fall, we have to start educating Mississippians. It starts here.

*This post is cross-posted at Represent!

Finally! Obama's Support of Gay Marriage

Today the Internet is buzzing about Obama coming out (no pun intended) in support of gay marriage. In an interview with ABC (the full interview has not actually aired but this clip has been released), Obama talks about the "evolution" of his views on gay marriage.

Now, we all know why he is announcing this today. This week, Joe Biden said publicly that he was "absolutely comfortable" with gay marriage, an announcement that Obama staffers began trying to correct, putting it more in line with Obama's support-of-equality-falling-just-short-of-marriage-to-toe-the-political-line platform. The Chicago Tribune writes,

While the White House claimed the remarks were essentially a restatement of the president’s position, it was obvious they were everything the president's stance was not: open and clear.

After Joe Biden's statements were praised, and the Obama campaign's obvious efforts to dial them back seemed to prove that the President was still unwilling to take the next step in declaring support for America's LGBT activists and communities, there was really only one thing he could do: go ahead and support marriage equality already. So he did.

And I'm glad he did. I know it came from political pressure, but so what? How many people do you think there are that really backed his support-of-equality-falling-just-short-of-marriage-to-toe-the-political-line platform who are suddenly freaking out and running to Mitt Romney's open arms? I'm guessing not very many. And I'm disappointed that it took him this long to make this declaration, since his toeing of the line was such a lame, copout way of handling a divisive issue in our country.

So the question is, does this change anything? Not really; not yet. As I said, I'm pretty sure that no one thought Obama would ever back up and go the other way on gay marriage. He repealed Don't Ask, Don't Tell; he's often discussed the importance of civil unions and equal rights in all aspects of life for homosexual, bisexual and transgender individuals and couples. No one is surprised by his full-support statement (just surprised it took us this long to get here). But will he take this support he's declaring and use it to push legislation in favor of marriage equality? I don't know. But I hope so. Because if he doesn't, he's just making a meaningless declaration...much like Michael Scott on The Office:

So, President Obama, please don't just declare your support of marriage equality.

Do all you can to make it happen.

Videos to Keep You Going

I know I haven't been writing much lately, and as much as I want it to get better, I'm about to move out of my apartment and into a house, so the rest of this month will probably be just as spotty as the last one was. I promise to get back on track after the move, and to post as much as I can during this time, but here are a few videos on recent events to keep you going.

I'll start with the funny, before we get to the sad and too-very-real. The latest from Funny or Die, called Republicans, Get in My Vagina! Hilarious. 

 

This video is Rachel Maddow discussing how an extremely qualified doctor in, you guessed it, Mississippi was fired from the Board of Health because of a very remote connection to an abortion clinic. Ridiculous.

Here is more Rachel, this time discussing the problems with the wage gap in this country, after she argued with Republican Alex Castellanos who told her, quite simply, that women don't get paid less than men, or when they do, it's because they choose lower-paying jobs (totally ignoring facts like how we raise our daughters not to pursue fields like math and science, how societal pressure forces many women (instead of their husbands/boyfriends/partners) to drop out of the workforce to raise a child instead, or how overly expensive daycare often makes a parent dropping out of the workforce the cheaper option.) 

And last but not least, a little humor to brighten your day. This video was filmed in Oxford (I think, I'm not sure who made it), in response to Phil Bryant's recent claim that all liberals have one goal: to abort babies. Enjoy!