Like the educational
children’s book states “everyone poops”. I poop. You poop. Everyone and their
mother poops. But humans are not the only creatures who do. All living things from
humans to cats to plants to single celled organisms perform, to some extent, a
type of excretory function. Excretion is
a natural function in which the organism eliminates or expels metabolic waste
matter. All life forms carry out this essential process, which, if disrupted,
leads to the poisoning of the organism’s or cell’s body by toxic waste products.
This poisoning of the body leads to the disruption of other bodily functions—in
the case of animals, other organ functions—which could prove harmful to the
body and potentially lead to the subject’s death. If “pooping”, as is the
colloquial term used to reference to excretion, is so natural and so essential
to life itself, why is it that we hold such a negative view of all things
poop-related and show such negative reactions to any mention of it? Why is it
that, despite having to perform this function to continue living a healthy
life, we have such a strong aversion to mentioning it and display signs of
disapproval when it is?
In many societies and
cultures, poop, because it is waste excreted from the body—an unwanted substance—
people perceive the process as something dirty and unrefined; one that is done
in privacy and never talked about so as to not taint conversation with so-called
“dirty talk”. In my own family, whenever the topic comes up, even jokingly, at
the dinner table, it is soon quelled. Among friends, it is a brave (although
sometimes vulgar) man that blatantly admits to having to poop, rather than
simply excusing himself to go the bathroom. In other cultures, the aversion to
poop stems even to poop-related objects; the left hand, in some cultures, is
solely designated to attend to bathroom activities and thus to use the left
hand rather than the “clean” right hand to greet another is a great sign of
disrespect and lack of refinement. In an article written by Horace Miner for
the American Anthropologist titled ”Body
Ritual Among the Nacirema”, Miner presents the ritual practices of a small North American tribe
known as the Nacirema. “The
fundamental belief,” Miner states:
Underlying the whole system appears to be that the human body
is ugly and that its natural tendency is to debility and disease. Incarcerated
in such a body, man's only hope is to avert these characteristics through the
use of ritual and ceremony. Every household has one or more shrines devoted to
this purpose… While each family has at least one such shrine, the rituals
associated with it are not family ceremonies but are private and secret. The
rites are normally only discussed with children, and then only during the
period when they are being initiated into these mysteries. (1)
While these ritual practices of this so-called
Nacirema tribe may seem to be mysterious, strange, and unfamiliar, in fact the
practices that Miner writes about are a reflection of modern-day American
bathroom practice; with “Nacirema” a backwards spelling of “American”, the
ritual shrine referring to the concept of a private bathroom, and the rites and
practices taught to children is their so-called “potty training”. In Miner’s description
of bathroom practices, he deems these behaviors as “private and secret”, and
indeed American and modern-day perceptions of such practices are centered around
being personal and behind closed doors; is that not the point of having single
person bathrooms within the home? For children who have not yet mastered control
over their excretory functions, parents are often made to feel shame for “failing”
to teach them and children are shamed in not being able to master it.
While this lack of
mastery does prove a problem in society today where there are designated areas
to perform such functions, namely the bathroom and not the bedroom, it is where
this societal standard comes from that sparks interest. Is it because of this
societal standard and negative perception of excretory function that things
such as private bathrooms and behaviors such as using the left hand to clean
oneself arose, or is it because of the development of such things that the
perception of such functions developed? For either, why is that so?
In any case, while I
agree that poop is an odd topic to talk about among friends, it is the waste
matter itself that is dirty, not the talking of it. I do not think that poop
and poop-related topics should be taboo as it is today, within reason. That is,
I do not want to be hearing about bowel movements while I’m eating dinner, but
admitting that one poops or that they have to should not be something they
should be shy or ashamed to say, if only among friends. We all know that it
happens, and it’s natural. Why must we treat it like it’s not?
Citations:
1. https://www.msu.edu/~jdowell/miner.html
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