last week my compilation of bathroom wisdom got listed on a "link of the day" site. the page got a lot of traffic and i received a large number of submissions from people wanting to contribute to the list. i added a few dozen entries in just a few days... which is exciting stuff if you're the kind of person who enjoys a little entertainment while you're peeing.
among those email submissions was a solitary complaint:
i loved your collection and have copied some to start my permanent collection - may even check to see if google has more to add. but i must make a request. please remove the mexican/indian/texas/bear. it is the only really racist one in the collection so i presume you consciously chose to avoid this regular part of bathroom humor otherwise. perhaps you stumbled into the all too easy habit that others in my part of the country have - thinking jokes using indians aren't really racist since they are nominally integrated into white society
thanks for your collecting efforts and hopefully for this small bit of editing as suggested by someone you don't even know.
i have never edited the contents of that page. i consider it a sort of documentary: i post exactly what i see (or i post what others see and report to me). should i deny the very existence of the offensive writings just because they aren't PC?
Posted by xta at January 27, 2006 12:56 AM | TrackBackHmmm... I think this might be the thin end of the wedge. Bathroom humor, by it's very nature, is potentially offensive, and if you had to remove un-PC scrawlings, it would be a very diminished list, in every sense. I say don't edit, but maybe add a disclaimer at the top of the page along the lines of your last two sentences.
Posted by: m at January 27, 2006 07:08 AMOoops! If you were wondering who the mysterious m is, it's non mysterious me.
Posted by: marianne at January 27, 2006 07:10 AMif you saw bathroom graffiti that was funny but included a really offensive term for women or blacks, would you include it? If the answer is no, then you've already headed down that slippery slope.
Posted by: Sarah at January 27, 2006 10:59 AMit has never actually occurred to me to edit any of the offensive language out of the submissions on that page, nor have i considered rejecting a submission due to its content. my thought when i began the collection was to simply document what drunk, peeing people were writing on the bathroom walls.
there are plenty of words that i hate which appear on that page now (c*nt being one of them) but they're also written on a stall wall somewhere, and i can't do anything about that.
i find myself wondering, though, how different my page would be if the quotes were photographed and not typed. would that lend the project a more 'authentic' air? more documentarian? does the fact i typed it out indicate i gave it my personal stamp of approval?
hm.
Posted by: christa at January 27, 2006 10:49 PM