We trust you've had your Thursday afternoon pub session and are ready to get it on with World Toilet Day without further preamble. Indeed, as Kick-Arse Suffragette Friend pointed out, today is not only World Toilet Day, but also International Men's Day! As we all know, it is important to give International Men's Day the attention it deserves. All that business of getting higher wages, getting promoted without any extra effort, and dominating leading positions in politics and finance worldwide must be EXHAUSTING. Give it up for the world's men, everyone!
I spent a year living with a cell phone but no toilet once. Coincidentally—as coincidentally as the coincidence of [World Toilet Day and International Men's Day]—that was also a year in which I became extremely afraid of men.
In other words, the causes of hygiene and gender equality are intertwined - both are vital to human health and happiness!
In the interest of highlighting World Toilet Day, two of our intrepid correspondents braved the inclement weather and went to the sewage treatment plant in Källby, outside Lund, today! They were treated to an excellent and highly informative tour by a rampantly intellectual guide called Hanna! Hurrah!
No trip to the sewage treatment plant is complete without getting lost in the wild and savage woods surrounding Lund. Here's how happy our brave contributors were to find a sign saying "Reningsverket"!
The first part of the sewage treatment is getting rid of large objects by letting the sewage pass through a three-millimetre grid. After that, the sewage runs into these tanks, where grit is allowed to sink to the bottom and eventually get carted away and used for construction.
Things you should never, ever flush down the toilet include pantyliners. Like the one seen in this positively poetic picture showing November sunlight reflecting off some sewage!
Other things you should definitely not be putting down the bog are condoms. Apparently the inhabitants of Lund are more than averagely festive, and discard a fair few this way! (Don't get us wrong - condoms are an important tool in the battle against venereal disease. Like for instance our favourite disease syphilis or, to pluck a disease at random, genital herpes. But don't flush them down the damn toilet!)
More poetic sunlight reflecting off the tanks. We might have remembered what happens in these ones three hours ago, pre-pub, but now we're pretty much fucked, memory-wise. (At some point iron (III) chloride is added to the proceedings, which makes for a festive atmosphere down at the sewage treatment plant. It is definitely not here, however.)
Woof! "What happens here?" you might be asking yourself. A more adequate question would be, "What DOESN'T HAPPEN?" As far as we remember, bacteria live in these aerated tanks, and do unspeakably exciting things to phosphorus! WOOF!!!
Something else happens here. Possibly a certain amount of litres of water pass through this bit of the plant per minute. There was a mighty roar!
SLUDGE!
This is the final product and, if we remember what our knowledgeable and rampantly intellectual guide Hanna told us, this sludge is Revaq certified and can be used as fertiliser. The tank itself looks like something out of Dante's Inferno. (DON'T DROP YOUR PHONE HERE.)
SLUDGE!
Somewhere in the vicinity of this giant white cylinder, biogas is extracted. For instance, many of Lund's festive green buses run on biogas.
A Privy Counsel representative with our knowledgeable and rampantly intellectual guide, Hanna!
We spent a long time trying to think of a suitable Festive Video, possibly one illustrating a concept such as sanitation, handwashing, or non-violence. Unfortunately, however, we preceded our visit to the pub with a visit to the blood donation centre at the hospital (this is a Very Bad Idea, by the way - one should never, ever consume alcoholic beverages after giving blood), and we've been a bit unfocused ever since. So we're going to go with this song, simply because we think it's awesome. We could all do with some Marvin Gaye getting it on - just DON'T FLUSH CONDOMS DOWN THE TOILET! And remember that no means no! (And an absence of a rampantly enthusiastic YES! also means no.)
It seems wrong to NOT put rum in this mug!
In semi-related news, here's how one Privy Counsel member saw fit to
celebrate World Toilet Day - with rum, and Caitlin Moran merchandise, in
a glorious combination! Right on, sistah!
(As many of you know, Caitlin Moran sells awesome stuff for the benefit of Refuge, one of the many women's shelter organisations. (If you're feeling intellectually motivated, ponder for a moment why it is that there are so, so many women's shelters in this world.))
It seems to us that we've spent a lot of time and energy bitching and moaning recently. We consider bitching and moaning an essential part of being human and will not apologise for it, though perhaps one day we will do some kind of linguistic analysis to determine if our propensity to bitch and moan increases during October and November (we suspect very much that it does).
However, good things do occasionally happen. (No, really. They do.) And when good things happen - listen carefully now, because we are about to impart an important piece of wisdom - it is important to celebrate! (As someone said, if you don't celebrate too soon, when will you ever get to celebrate? [This joke works better in Scandiwegian.])
For instance, we recently went to Copenhagen with two of our favourite Privy Counsel Friends* TO HEAR CAITLIN MORAN TALK ABOUT THE DANISH TRANSLATION OF HER BOOK HOW TO BUILD A GIRL. AND THEN WE DRANK SOME BEER, TO CELEBRATE.
Regular readers may think to themselves that we do little else at the Privy Counsel than go hear Caitlin Moran talk about Danish translations of books**. However, that would be an exaggeration. We have done many things recently, including, but not limited to:
- drinking too much beer
- setting out to have "just one drink" (hair of the dog), and actually having just one drink (hair of the dog)
- eating garlicky food
- teaching
- plotting the destruction of the patriarchy
- buying a new toner for the printer
But yes, we have also been to the Bella Center (to the amusingly named BogForum, in fact) in Copenhagen to hear Caitlin Moran, look at Caitlin Moran, and be made happy by being in the vicinity of Caitlin Moran!*** We have argued many times (for instance here, and here) that looking at pictures of Caitlin Moran can brighten a dark moment. The only thing better than looking at pictures of Caitlin Moran, obviously, is hearing Caitlin Moran speak.
Here's how happy some of the Privy Counsel Friends were to meet Caitlin Moran!
(There was a group hug. A GROUP HUG.)
This was the first toilet we acquainted ourselves with on our CatMo Oddyssey: in a portakabin outsdide the conference centre. This was a unisex toilet, and while we approve of the egalitarian efforts that have resulted in a spate of mixed-sex toilets in recent years, can we just say HOW MUCH WE HATE UNISEX TOILETS? Nobody wants to elbow their way through a sea of bearded hipsters to get to the sink. We cannot stress this enough.
The toilet inside the conference centre: clean and pleasant!
And entirely free of bearded hipsters!
The coat-hook was highly satisfactory.
The best feature of this toilet, however, was the bin!
Look! Cannily acknowledging that women do not have three hands, the designer of this bin has made it foot-operable! This simple move makes it approximately 180 % easier to not smear blood on everything in one's vicinity.
HOW AMAZING IS THIS?????
Can we have more women designers, please?
Having listened to Caitlin Moran talk about How to build a girl on two different stages (yes! We got to hear her twice! Hurrah for Denmark!), we moved on to get some food and Danish beer at Copenhagen Street Food. We have stated, in our manifesto against unisex toilets, our objection towards bearded hipsters. If you belong to the puzzlingly large portion of the population that LIKES bearded hipsters, then Copenhagen Street Food is the place for you! Indulge your sickest fantasies of being surrounded by bearded hipsters while eating hipster food and drinking hipster beer! Go for it! Do not, under any circumstances, restrain yourself! Hipster-fy yourself!
We can only conclude that hipsters like corrugated iron.
We'll leave it to the many cunning linguists among our readers to translate this.
*ok, that's actually a contradiction in terms - naturally ALL our Privy Counsel Friends are our favourite Friends. Though let us not forget that Bogsley Hansson Friend sent us Elvis stamps a little while ago, and is therefore slightly more of a favourite Friend than all our other favourite Friends, at the moment. (We accept presents of all shapes and sizes.)
We ought to have a festive video! Because we all need reminding that good things really do happen sometimes (Caitlin Moran might come to a conference centre near you!), and because Caitlin Moran notoriously likes Bruce Springsteen rather a lot, let's have some Bruce.
Festive video - Bruce Springsteen, Waitin' on a Sunny Day
Quite possibly nobody noticed - at least we haven't received any emails from desperate, traumatised people* - but actually something weird and ominous happened recently.
Regular readers will be aware that we have written a Halloween post every year since the very beginning of this blog. (If you're not quite as regular as other readers, by the way, you may have missed our recent post on the origins of the Privy Counsel - a tale of passion, violent struggle, and genital herpes!) But this year, there was no screaming bloody horror, no non-mixer taps, no weird fungal infections, no creepy dolls' eyes, no stuffed animals, no scary home-made alcohol, no blood-spattered home decorations, no meat-cleavers, no weird bits of garden hose, no electric water heaters, or any of the other traditional features of our Halloween posts.
We just thought the world was horror-filled enough as it is, and preferred to spend Halloween getting shitfaced and ranting about the patriarchy, rather than focusing on the un-dead, the un-plumbed, and the un-mixed.
Audiologist Friend has been on a bit of a roll recently - she strolled into the Privy Counsel HQ kitchen just now looking suspiciously happy. When asked what the hell was wrong with her - sudden bursts of glee being grounds for distrust at the Privy Counsel - Audiologist Friend explained that her supervisor had tried his damnedest to find a weak spot in her work, and failed.
This is what is so great about our friends - their rampant intelligence and arse-kicking make the world a decidedly better place, despite all the horror!
We offer Audiologist Friend our sincerest contrafibularities, and hope that she will radiate smugness in the kitchen on many, many occasions.
Audiologist Friend writes:
Airb'n'b i Toledo, Spanien: Fantastisk entré, badkar till höger som inte var något speciellt, en liten värmelampa ovanför toalettstolen - mycket uppskattat eftersom golvet var av sten och jättekallt.
(Airb'n'b in Toledo, Spain:
Fantastic entrance, bath-tub on the right that was nothing special, a small heat lamp above the toilet - very appreciated since the floor was stone and really cold.)
We enjoy this blue shutter and the sunlight streaming in,
choosing to see it as a reminder that there are rays of light in this world.
Our eyes spy a mixer tap! And a rampantly intelligent Audiologist Friend!
We cannot, unfortunately, see the heater, but we feel better knowing that it is there.
*or indeed any emails at all, ever, from anyone. Except, obviously, spam.
After this welcome breeze of sanity from Audiologist Friend, we feel ready for a festive video. What's that? You want a rampant feminist mantra? Let's do it.
Our sincerest contrafibularities! We have no memory of what we were doing on the day (ranting, no doubt, and perhaps drinking rum - possibly at the same time), but the Privy Counsel turned five on 18 October!
Five years! If we had had cake to celebrate with, it would most likely have looked like this.
Things have been grim of late. So grim, in fact, that we have repeatedly felt the need to google pictures of syphilis symptoms, just to remind ourselves that there are things we don't suffer from (although one Privy Counsel member does in fact harbour a case of bona fide genital herpes - however, we intend to stay true to our promise to keep the identity of this person a secret to our dying day (said promise does not, obviously, prevent us from dropping tantalising hints solely for our own amusement)). There are some good ones, for instance, here (do a page search for "syphilis", then click on the links).
The marvellous thing, though, about having access to a loose collective of intellectuals, connected by social media, is that something wonderful is bound to turn up sooner or later.
This cake would also not be incongruous at the Privy Counsel.
Also Australian Friend surpassed herself in rampant intellectualism and invented a new word! Quizzlement - you heard it here first! The definition of the adjective is as follows: "Quizzled. adj. The state of perplexed beguilement imposed by a person on her admirer, through an act of mischievous ambiguity."
Then we suddenly remembered that BLOODY HELL WE HAVE BEEN GOING FOR FIVE YEARS. Let us tell you the story of the origins of the Privy Counsel!
This totally appropriate cake just screams "THIS ONE! YES! LET'S HAVE IT!"
Once upon a time, there was a country full of crap plumbing. Let's call it "Britain". Said crap plumbing was the cause of a pretty much constant stream of grumbling, mumbling, and outright ranting. One night, in the pub, Enlightened Friend suggested that we stop ranting and start a blog, if only to spare our friends from having to constantly listen to us moaning and bitching. We thought the notion was an excellent one, and set to enthusiastically, publishing no less than three posts on the first day.
The first post was called, bravely, Mixer Taps - the Controversy, and was short but loquacious. It said, simply:
Most British people see no need for mixer taps, as when they do exist, they don't work anyway. The rest of the world disagrees. The controversy continues.
Huzzah - our very first image!
Blog post number two, sporting the witty title Toilet Paper - Puppy Love (setting the tone for our happy habit of punning in an unrestrained manner), discussed the insane British obsession with quilted toilet paper. This groundbreaking essay posed the question:
Where does the British obsession with soft toilet paper come from? Why does bog roll have to be quilted? (Of all things, why quilted?) Is it due to the humiliations suffered during the Second World War, when millions of Britons were forced to keep a stiff upper lip while wiping their bottoms with newspaper?
FUCK OFF, PUPPIES.
The third blog post on this auspicious date, The Victorians - An Edifying History Lesson, described the Victorians as "a barbaric people who delighted in such unhygienic and downright dangerous practices as sideburn cultivation, wall-to-wall carpet installation, and lace-curtain twitching". Needless to say, this is now the standard view of the Victorians in all respectable academic circles.
Victorian toilets - pretty, but violently unsound.
After these initial - one could even say probing - posts, we moved swiftly on to reviews of museum toilets, starting with the Yorkshire Museum. We remember lurking nervously with the huge, clunky and LOUD camera we used to carry around in those days, on a wet October day.
Mission accomplished without us being reported to the police or even, surprisingly, being openly accused of being perverts, we continued with the Castle Museum, where we spotted what is possibly the most amusing sign in the entire universe; a sign that perfectly summarises the unbridled lunacy of British plumbing:
This sign unfortunately doesn't exist anymore.
Believe us, we have been back to check.
Pretty soon we were reviewing places like the disabled toilet at the Centre for Medieval Studies in York, and it didn't take long before we achieved legendary status among the depraved, the socially awkward, and the intellectual (i.e. our friends, and maybe five other people who clearly need to get off the internet and get a life).
We noted happily that this was "a toilet fit for Medievalists".
And now we've been at it for five years!
When we started this blog, it was specifically to rant about crap plumbing, because Privy Counsel HQ was situated in the UK, where people seem have a hard time realising that the 19th century like, ENDED. Now that we are more Scandiwegian-oriented, we have very little to complain about, plumbing-wise, and have taken to rant more about other things, like feminism. It appears that human rights is another area where people have a hard time realising that the 19th century ended and that we are, in fact, living in the 21st century now. It would be nice, we think, if everyone could at least step into the 20th century, both in terms of plumbing, and human rights.
We would like to take this opportunity of getting embarrassingly sentimental, weepy, and vapid, and expressing our heartfelt thanks to all our friends and comrades! Some of you have been with us from the start, some have joined along the way. Without the Privy Counsel Friends (and assorted cronies, hangers-on, and passive bystanders) sending us toilet photos, ranting with us, and dispatching emergency pictures of Elvis when times get tough, this bog blog really would not be possible.
Now, let's have a festive video before we embarrass ourselves further. We've had this one in a previous post, but really, can you ever get enough rum? Well, quite.
We could tell you a tale of misogyny, misery, and melancholy, to simultaneously boil your blood and chill the spine. (After all, it is nearly Halloween!) All we'd have to do would be to tell you about our week. But frankly, isn't life appalling enough as it is, without us moaning about our personal traumas? Well, quite. So let us think about our own weary concerns another day and concentrate on somebody else's for a change.
Bogsley Hansson Friend, that connoisseur of all things cultural, sent us a message from Ai Weiwei's exhibition at the Royal Academy of Art. Weiwei's S.A.C.R.E.D. depicts his 2011 house arrest in China. Bogsley Hansson Friend writes:
Ai Weiwei bog art. Part of S.A.C.R.E.D. Six boxes / dioramas you can look into that are about his house arrest / incarceration.
At the risk of being flippant, we must say that this shower scene reminds us of Semi-Intellectual Friend's shower in Thailand. Although of course Semi-Intellectual Friend wasn't, as far as we know, guarded by Chinese army officials at the time.
When we think about it, the design also reminds us of Semi-Intellectual Friend's shower in Denmark. It appears that, although competent in many areas of life, Semi-Intellectual Friend has very bad luck with showers.
A festive video on the theme of freedom seems fitting, n'est-ce pas? (Although of course the American notion of freedom is inherently problematic (especially in this Southern context - apart from all the colonialism and white supremacy lurking about, there is the fact that the vehicle of freedom is always a petroleum-consuming car - what's wrong with an environmentally friendly and health-promoting bicycle, for instance?), and possibly we should spend time on research in order to find something more universal, but frankly, my dear, we have had a rough week and we wish to get on with our Sunday now. Also this is a song about a woman escaping an abusive husband, and that is a concept we support wholeheartedly, whatever the context.)
Festive video - Danielle Bradbery, The Heart of Dixie
As it happens, we are stuck at Privy Counsel HQ with a cold, experiencing dreary weather, and being ignored by the Danish police, who don't, apparently, give a flying fuck about whether passengers get sexually harassed by staff at Copenhagen Airport. However - before we get sucked into the gloom, let us insert a massive
HOWEVER.
A friend, who we may tentatively refer to as Dragon-Hunting Friend, has sent us pictures from Japan! This cheerful and intelligent friend writes:
I'm in the land of the weird and wonderful toilets!
Remember that time when we indulged in dreamy fantasies of breezy Alpine bogs? Dragon-Hunter Friend had sent us, on that occasion, a link to a site providing pictures of toilets in the Swiss Alps. It was fucking amazing.
DRAGON-HUNTER FRIEND HAS NOW BEEN TO JAPAN, FOLKS.
Did this ever cheer us up? Woof!
Yes. The buttons say "front" and "rear".
So many buttons! And sound effects too
It's anyone's guess what the last icon is supposed to represent.
The toilet in my hotel room has a heated seat Quite strange the first time you try it But rather nice Less strange than the bidet button (which nearly made me giggle out loud at the airport toilets; I just had to see what it did! ;) ) Love the retro yellow '^^
Remember that time when we went to watch the rugby in a pub and Wales won, or lost,
or disappeared in an earthquake, or similar, and there was a yellow sink?
Do you feel spiritually revived? We certainly do! We are grateful to Dragon-Hunter Friend for these stupendously festive pictures!
We ought to have a festive video as well, of course, although today's festive video is not actually festive.
There are, when you think about it, an extraordinary number of songs about domestic violence. (Here are just a few.) This would indicate that the issue is a common one. As a society, it behoves us to do more to prevent domestic violence than, for instance, quoting bullshit statistics from so-called men's rights activists. Get, for a start, some hard-hitting statistics from the UN here: Facts and Figures: Ending Violence Against Women.
In Britain, two women die from domestic violence every week. Imagine the outrage if it were two lawyers who were killed every week by violence directed specifically against them, or two postmen, or two office workers.
Here is the video - a classic from 1994, by Swedish folk-metal-fusion band Dia Psalma (with special greetings to Fictional Friend, Tudor Friend, and Australian Friend). The lyrics narrate the story of a man pleading with a woman called Emilie to leave her abusive partner, "before it is too late".
We also once famously argued that the Japanese bottom-cleaning toilet is a direct descendant of the Asian toilet shower. Remember that you read it here first: Toilet Showers - Reaching the Bottom
A member of the Privy Counsel recently found herself thinking, "Oh. I was just sexually harassed. Again.", when having her arse grabbed by a male member of the security staff at Copenhagen Airport. And no, she was not asked if she preferred being searched by a female member of staff. She wasn't even told she was going to be searched.
Copenhagen Airport is supposed to be one of the safest, most pleasant airports in the world (we certainly appreciate the stylish wooden floors and clean, noise-insulating toilets with quality mixer taps), but apparently it is rife with sexism and power abuse of the nastiest kind. After journalist and university lecturer Anne Lea Landsted wrote a leader article in Politiken in August about how fed up she was with being sexually assaulted at Copenhagen Airport, over 50 more women came forward to say that they, too, had been assaulted and harassed. (Read a summary of this sorry saga in English here.)
Apparently baulking at the sheer volume of complaints, Copenhagen Airport, acting on legal advice, asked the police to communicate with the women concerned. There are no news reports about the outcome of this process as yet, though we are not holding our hopes up at the Privy Counsel; an Australian woman who reported being subjected to sexual assault at the airport in May this year was apparently told that the CCTV footage of the incident had been deleted.
In an incredibly facetious move, Copenhagen Airport then argued that new scanners would solve the problem, as these would remove the need for body searches. Because technology, as we all know, can instantly remove all traces of institutional violence, as long as you close your eyes and cross your fingers hard enough.
What Copenhagen Airport management apparently did not do was conduct an investigation into which staff members were guilty of criminal acts, and fire them, preferring instead to turn a blind eye and let staff continue committing acts of sexual violence.
The Privy Counsel member who was sexually assaulted at Copenhagen Airport passed through the security control in September, when the problem was supposed to have been magicked away by the new scanners. Evidently, ignoring the problem did not make it go away.
Having your arse grabbed is not unusual. Women and girls experience sexual harassment and assault all the time. We repeat: All. The. Time. And, sometimes, men do, too.
The problem is, sexism is not a series of unrelated incidents. It is a system of abuse and discrimination that targets women and girls and is intended to intimidate and silence them. It is part of a culture where men feel they have the right to interrupt women, assume they know better than women, and take liberties with women's bodies. (And don't give us the "not all men" crap, because it is myopic and unproductive.)
This same culture tolerates violence against women on a scale that would be shocking if it concerned any other group of people. In Britain, two women die from domestic violence every week. Imagine the outrage if a corresponding number of lawyers were killed every week by violence directed specifically against them, or postmen, or office workers.
We are mistaken if we view history as a linear series of events, where "progress" leads to things getting "better". This is 2015. Prejudice, sexism, and gendered violence are rampant.
Does it surprise us that Copenhagen Airport displays such a cavalier attitude to its staff harassing and abusing women? No. Does it anger us? What do you think?
Do you think men would continue to harass, catcall and abuse women if their actions had resulted in negative consequences? Of course not. But because violence is normalised, harassment trivialised, and contemptuous attitudes to women are prevalent everywhere - in history books, in media, in movies, in our own damn families - nothing ever changes. Boys grow up believing they can treat girls any way they want - because they are never told they can't. Men believe they can harass women, and violate their bodies - because they are never told they can't. Even in countries where all forms of violence against women and girls are illegal, men aren't penalised, even when found guilty.
Well, we would find it refreshing if someone, somewhere, would tell men that they can't subject women to violence and get off scot-free.
All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing. Copenhagen Airport - do you have the balls to harden the fuck up and do something?
We thought the message was clear, but apparently some skulls are so thick it's not getting through. The message is very simple:
YOU CAN'T JUST GRAB ME. THAT'S A SEX CRIME.
Video - The Law Revue Girls, Blurred Lines [Feminist Parody] "Defined Lines"
Advice on how not to be a sexist swine from our friend Stig (who is Danish, male, and a staunch defender of women's rights - apparently this is not an impossible combination):
My advice for men in general
If you see a beautiful woman on the street and feel the urge to express it. Keep it to yourself!
If you see a beautiful woman in the street and you are with a friend and you feel an urge to express your feelings, well don't, keep it to yourself.
If you are working on a construction site and a beautiful woman walks by and you feel a strong urge to catcall her, see a doctor!
If you see an unknown woman with the most well-shaped behind and you feel a strong urge to touch it, then walk into a gay bar and let unknown men fondle your private parts.
If you watch women's sports on TV just to admire their beautiful athletic bodies, read a book instead.
