Tag: Europe

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Opinions Student Life

Toil-et and trouble

Graphic by James Fay

Why we shouldn’t be charged to use public bathrooms

 

I’m dancing at a club in Amsterdam. House music blares (I wish it was Taylor Swift instead), the floor is sticky, and the room is filled with people. It’s fantastic, especially after so much time spent in lockdown.

What’s not fantastic is my acute urge to pee. I tap my friends on the shoulder and let them know I’m going to find the washroom.

When I get there, I’m appalled. There’s a woman standing outside the door, collecting 50 euro cents before allowing people through.

Over the course of my first few weeks on exchange in Europe, this is not the first time I’ve been required to pay to use the facilities. Budgeting for entering public washrooms is one thing that I certainly had not planned for.

Still, I need to rant about why I think this phenomenon, though extremely common here, is absolutely insane and should definitely not exist.

My first point is the obvious one: needing to excrete is a natural and normal function of our bodies, so why should we have to spend money to do so? It’s the infrastructure surrounding our ability to relieve ourselves in a socially acceptable way that’s not natural.

And the fact that we’re forced to pay for a basic necessity of our own human creation makes it even worse.

Also, we can’t control when and where we’ll suddenly have the urge to go. If we could, I guarantee no one would ever use a public washroom to begin with. But since that’s not possible, shouldn’t our toilets be accessible to all?

Another point for my takedown of the pricey public washroom is the consequences you face when you don’t have your 50 cents, or refuse to pay all together.

The first option that comes to mind is good ol’ fashioned public urination, which is a literal fineable offense. The logic here is missing — if you don’t pay for the washroom and nature pee (or wild wee, as my British flatmate calls it) and get caught, you have to pay even more. It makes no sense.

This is even worse: to combat this “problem” of public urination, probably correlated to the blasphemous concept of paying to use the washroom, the Dutch installed public urinals (a glorified hole in the ground with a panel for privacy) at some places in the center of certain cities. But of course, this brings forth an annoying double standard. While penis-owners who are comfortable enough get to whizz to their heart’s content, free of charge, people with vaginas don’t have it as easy. Classic.

Furthermore, as I’m writing this, it’s becoming clear that paying for public bathrooms isn’t the sole facet of our society that works this frustrating way. Period products, though necessary because of the cultural norms surrounding menstruation, are also inaccessible without money.

My annoyance with having to pay for the public bathrooms in Europe reveals a harmful phenomenon. Humans create these unbreakable social norms relating to natural bodily functions and then profit off of them, leaving those who can’t pay in difficult situations.

I can’t say I expected my rant about public bathrooms to get so serious — but oftentimes, it’s the most silly topics that end up revealing the most. While I don’t have a solution to the challenges of commoditizing natural bodily functions, the best I can do is bring attention to them to try and advocate for a change.

 

Graphic by James Fay

Categories
News

Poli SAVVY: Brexit is a done deal. Or is it?

Hello February, goodbye to the EU.

After more than three years and many extensions, Britain’s breakup with the European Union is finally official. And the story of their divorce is a long and laborious one. A chapter might be over, but the saga continues.

Back in June 2016, 52 per cent of the United Kingdom’s population voted in favour of the Brexit referendum. Yet, the withdrawal of the UK from the EU was sold to voters without a clear idea of what it would mean. Now that it’s here, the question remains.

What exactly does Brexit look like? Alas, my friend, we still don’t quite know and Britain has more time to figure it out once again.

Ironically, even as British Prime Minister Boris Johnson officially signed the Brexit Agreement, which came into effect on Friday, Jan. 31, the UK still has another 11-month transition period. They need to negotiate new regulations over various issues such as trade and immigration, while the old rules still apply. They couldn’t figure it out in three years, but who knows what will come out of this transition period?

We are not just talking about a few new adjustments here and there. We are actually looking at more than 750 treaties and international agreements that will need to be looked over, according to Financial Times. It will take time, and it should. Changes of this nature can’t be made in a rush.

However, despite the separation anxiety the exit is causing, it actually could mean greater opportunities for Canada. While our country and the UK were trading under the EU Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) since 2016, another deal will have to be drafted and agreed upon by both countries. Seeing how the UK struggled in dealing with Brexit in the first place and how unsteady the road ahead is, Canada could end up with the upper hand.

But ONLY eventually, after the transition period (which could also be postponed for another year or two).

How Britain managed to conquer the world is a wonder.

 

Graphic by Victoria Blair

Categories
Arts

Miss Chief Eagle Testickle goes to Europe

The Human Zoo (2015). Still from video. Photos courtesy of Pierre-François Ouellet art contemporain.

Kent Monkman’s work is both beautiful and confrontational. Of mixed Canadian and Cree ancestry, the artist uses painting, video and performance art to help First Peoples ‘discover’ Europe as colonizers ‘discovered’ their land.

The Pierre-François Ouellet art contemporain (PFOAC) gallery exhibits four of Monkman’s video-paintings in The Human Zoo, where Monkman brings his drag queen alter-ego, Miss Chief Eagle Testickle, to Rome, Athens and Berlin.

The Human Zoo imposes Miss Chief Eagle Testickle onto pre-existing European landscapes, including View of the Colonnade by C.W. Eckersberg (1813-16) and The Erechtheion on the Acropolis by Lancelot-Theodore Turpin de Crisse (1805). Monkman uses Miss Chief to embody two-spirit identities among First Peoples, constructing her background as an artist and performer.

The Immoral Woman (2015). Still from video. Photos courtesy of Pierre-François Ouellet art contemporain.

In a description of the exhibition, the PFOAC explained “since the arrival of Europeans in the Americas, Indigenous peoples traveled to Europe as ambassadors for their own people, captives, performers and as specimens for human zoos.”

The Immoral Woman (2015), which is set in Rome, presents seduction within binary and non-binary gender identity. Miss Chief flirts with a young cardinal while studying the Christian passage from John 8:3-11: “He that is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone at her.”

In this passage, Jesus is reminded of the punishment for adultery under the law of Moses, which states that women caught committing adultery will be stoned to death. When a group of accusing scribes and Pharisees heard Jesus’ words, they left the scene one by one. None of the accusers were without sin. When it was finally only Jesus and the adulteress who remained, he said: “Woman, where are those accusers of yours? Has no one condemned you? Neither do I condemn you; go and sin no more.”

In a piece set in Athens, Miss Chief paints a young, toned man, while four others drink wine in front of the Acropolis in Athens. PFOAC described this video-painting, titled The Symposium, as “Miss Chief’s homage to the classical artistic, aesthetic and philosophical traditions of ancient Greece.”

In Berlin, Miss Chief performs for her rival, George Catlin, who intends to paint her. Catlin was a 19th century American painter whose focus was on portraits of First Peoples or “Indians” living in the United States. The Human Zoo depicts Miss Chief’s performance anxiety and fear of being exhibited in Catlin’s pop-up gallery in the streets of Berlin behind Freiheit castle.

In all of his work, Monkman put an emphasis on the scarcity of opportunities available for Indigenous peoples and the injustice and inequalities they face everyday.

The exhibition will be open Wednesday to Saturday from 11:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. at Pierre-François Ouellette art contemporain (963 Rachel St. E.) until Nov. 4.

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