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Oregon Daily Emerald
Monday, October 31, 2005
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Aaron Duchateau| illustrator
...on second
thought, I
there are times
■ In my opinion
Halloween thwarts hierarchies
Saturday I saw a young woman in a
Chiquita banana lady costume, fruited
headpiece and all, hanging out the win
dow of a moving SUV at 2 a.m., pirates
and fairies carousing the streets, confu
sion as to who was a real cop and who
was just in a cop costume and a mime
embracing a sexually suggestive waffle.
Halloween weekend was a sharp
contrast to that which is cold, dry and
serious — traits that seem more and
more to define the world humanity
now inhabits. People work so they can
make money, so they can... keep a roof
over their heads? Or they simply want
to buy a new model of cell phone. Do
people work for the sake of money, for
the sake of things, for the sake of some
thing to leave behind after they die? My
question is: Where’s the party at?
Where in society is this “life” that we
all supposedly value?
An interesting fact about Medieval
culture is that communities often de
voted an average of three months out
of the year to celebratory carnivals.
„ Though the Middle Ages are common
ly defined as a dead-end deluge of dark
and dreary days, it turns out that folk
festivals were as important to their cul
ture as they were to the mid-20th centu
ry, Grateful Dead/Woodstock era.
People in the Middle Ages knew how
to throw a party that everyone was in
vited to. Scholars, clergymen, beggars
on the street, everyone was there, and
everyone was feeling festive. During a
carnival, the piety of life was kind of
put on hold.
Mikhail Bakhtin was a modem
philosopher who studied, among other
aspects of the social world, humor. Ac
cording to Bakhtin, the Medieval carni
val was an event defined by laughter,
playfulness and a departure from
norms and prohibition. The camiva
lesque is that which breaks from seri
ousness and finds joy rather than con
cern in images of the grotesque.
Defecation, sexuality, profanity — all of
I11 IMIllllllllll'HIHIIHimilH1 _
AILEE SLATER
FURTHER FROM PERFECTION
these elements are integrated into the
camivalesque environment to be ap
preciated and laughed with.
Bakhtin would probably comment
that the camivalesque is the defini
tion of laughing with rather than
laughing at. Humor in the modern
age is usually satirical, cynical
laughter, whereas the folk humor of
the camivalesque means that the
people laughing do not place them
selves above the item that is funny.
The camivalesque is not about mak
ing dry, intelligent, witty political criti
cism. The camivalesque is about dress
ing up as the politician you despise,
spilling wine all over yourself whilst
dancing around a fire and rejoicing in
the base degradation that now defines
you both.
Folk humor and the carnival encom
pass an all-inclusive laughter; people
can’t laugh without becoming the ob
ject of humor themselves. Equality is
key to the camivalesque; hierarchies
are meaningless.
Saturday night, we were all Me
dieval clowns laughing in cama
raderie and jubilation with passing
strangers at the grotesqueness of our
dress, our bodies, our outrageous
voices and action. Our hair was man
gled, our legs stumbling out from un
der us, yet the laughter roared on;
degradation and debasement were
means enough for celebration.
In the camivalesque nature of
the Halloween festivities, there
were no such things as insecurity,
embarrassment, or awkwardness. In
stead, all of these uncomfortable traits
were reveled in. Sluttishness didn’t
exist because we were all jovial in our
sexuality. Homophobia didn’t exist.
Masculinity didn’t exist because even
the men were wearing short - shorts
and spandex. They were heartily
lauded for their costume choices.
Mikhail Bakhtin would say that the
joy of the Halloween celebration is in
letting go of repressive reality and dis
covering a camivalesque realism. The
campus carnival on Saturday was dis
ruptive, distasteful and deviant. Yet, the
real deviance from day-to-day reality
seemed to come in a societal state
wherein everyone, even the police, un
derstood that this was a time for fun.
Pedestrians let go of their need to look
both ways, but drivers let go of their
need to be polite. All were shouting,
but the anger and the joy seemed to
mix together into a state wherein neg
ative feelings could be experienced,
then freely shed.
Bakhtin writes that only by embrac
ing the profane will it ever become am
bivalent; i.e., not a threat. It’s like the
way that you can use abusive swear
words toward your best friend, and find
nothing but joy in their act of returning
the dirty insulting speech. According to
Bakhtin, laughter and the camiva
lesque provide an atmosphere wherein
fears, profanities and abuse lose then
status as objects of harm. Indeed, as
long as everyone in the carnival is truly
laughing from an inner state of jollifi
cation, individual and global prob
lems are literally nonexistent.
So, now that we have evaluated
the nature of the carnival, the
grotesque and the holiday, what can
we say that this nature teaches? It
teaches us to take the world serious
ly, if sheer seriousness is what
you’re seriously seeing.
aslater@dailyemerald.com
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■ Editorial
Don't let
restrooms
flush gender
protection
The city of Eugene’s attempt to add protec
tions for transgender people to its anti-dis
crimination ordinance is truly admirable, but
discussing the finer points of the change has
created unnecessary delays. We must stop
mincing words, deal with this problem ration
ally and instate the protections.
Surely, little harm can come simply from
adding the classification “gender identity” to
a list of identifying features that should not be
discriminated against.
Yet opponents to the code fear that if gen
der identity becomes protected from discrimi
nation, transgender people will be able to use
the bathroom of the gender that they identify
with rather than the bathroom of the sex that
they were born with. If biological men are al
lowed into women’s restrooms, some worry
that sexual assault will become a problem.
However, it is simply illogical to claim that
a non-discrimination policy against people
of a transgender identity will lead to an in
crease in sexual offenders sneaking into
women’s bathrooms. After all, discrimination
code or not, sexual predators are physically
able to enter any bathroom they choose as
well as many houses, offices and cars. Sexual
assault is an issue far removed from
non-discrimination codes.
Likewise, asking bathroom users to provide
legal documentation proving their status as
transgender is an impractical solution. To
whom would transgender bathroom users
show this identification? More importantly, if
there is an officer of the law posted at every
restroom entrance in order to verify documen
tation, doesn’t that eliminate the problem of
sexual assault in the first place? Demanding
only transgender individuals to prove
their identity before using the loo is itself
blatantly discriminatory.
Further, there is no reason that the restroom
debate should define whether Eugene’s anti
discrimination code needs to be tweaked. Re
fusing to put “gender identity” into city code
has no causal relation to sexual assault rates;
therefore, the code should be amended and
the sexual assault issue addressed as a topic
separate from that of anti-discrimination.
Most rational people can agree that discrim
ination on the basis of race, religion or other
factors is wrong. Despite various questions re
garding sexual predators and bathroom ac
cess, we should also agree not to discriminate
against people because of gender identity.
Supporters of the discrimination code revision
are realistic in their assertion that it is critical
to protect transgender people from employ
ment and housing discrimination. As of now,
the restroom debate should be put on hold
and resumed once “gender identity” is pro
tected from discrimination by city code, and
it is made explicitly clear that Eugene sup
ports the rights of residents of all identities.
■ Out loud
“To everyone’s mind that has been working
on this, the important parts of the code
revision are the addition of transpeople to the
list of those against whom discrimination in
employment and housing in Eugene shall
be illegal,”
— Risa Bear, member of the Gender Identity
Work Group, which is working to change Eu
gene’s anti-discrimination ordinance to include
transgender people.