Patriarchy Lecture #27

LES GETS, HAUTE-SAVOIE

My kids are used to my lectures on The Patriarchy these days, but when I first kicked off the series, it was all a bit new.

It was winter 2015/16 on our second ever ski trip. We were in Les Gets, but any ski resort in the world would have done. Any public space in the world, actually.

Little did my son know what was coming when we hobbled in our ski boots down the steps to the loo after lunch.

The first problem was this sign. I took a photo and filed it into a folder called Rage.

Secondly, it was the same tired old histoire when we opened the door with the offensive sign. A clear passage for him and a massive queue for me.

He looked at me with his mischievous little face and smiled, as if this kind of thing was already normal to him.

‘The poor woman must queue, while I, the big man-in-the-making, get to stride right in there,’ his little face seemed to say. He was undeniably cute but this wasn’t on.

“Right!” I muttered. Lecture incoming.

When I got back upstairs, I showed my family the sign. What the what, I asked? This is not okay.

This guy seems to be pulling up the woman’s skirt to have a look. Both kids giggled. My husband shrugged. “So French!” he said, distancing himself cleverly from the crime.

And then I eyeballed my tiny son and asked why there is always a queue at women’s loos and not at men’s.

“Because you take longer than us?” he ventured. Ha! He’d fallen into my trap.

I spent the next 10 minutes delivering Patriarchy Lecture #27 – the one about how back in the day when loos in public spaces were designed, it was men doing the designing.

Because men were the architects and they didn’t bother to think/care about women.

“It’s the result of gender bias in architecture and design!” I said.

Arguably too complicated for an eight-year-old to grasp, but I ploughed on.

“Too few loos for women compared to men, and then we get lambasted for being slow. Grrrrrr!”

My 10-year-old daughter was beginning to look interested.

“Yeah, we take longer because we have to sit down to wee! “ she said. “We can’t help it! All you [pointing at my son menacingly] have to do is whip your willy out most of the time!”

Family relations were strained, people on neighbouring tables were looking, but I wasn’t stopping.

The lecture went through urinal sizes compared to cubicles, how women are often taking kids to the loo with them which again increases the time spent there, and reached its zenith with a rant about how men probably love watching us little women having to queue, how it gives them a thrill and makes them feels powerful.

I noticed my husband – an excellent feminist – was looking a bit narked with that generalisation, so I backed off with a promise of more in the Patriarchy Lecture series soon.

I think my son was pleased to put his helmet back on and get back to ski school.