This post does not have a direct association with television… Just some of my extended thoughts after listening to Susan Fraiman’s talk in which Fraiman theorizes the gendered concept of realism by reflecting on bathroom’s representations. Bathroom, highly charged with domesticity and everydayness, is the place where the hidden or what’s often considered as trivial takes place. Situating it within the discourse of the “real,” Fraiman explores the intimacy and solidarity in the ladies room and thus the idea of feminine realism. Earlier today I was reading the 1969 sci-fi novel The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin in which she structures an androgynous, genderless world, which prompts me to reflect upon Fraiman's concept and to start thinking about the larger significance of gender-inclusive restrooms. Men’s rooms and women’s rooms are different social spaces and taken for conceptualizing different types of realism. How about gender-inclusive ones as we are moving toward a new society that is post-gender (hopefully)? How to renew or update the concept of bathroom realism? Or is there another type of realism?
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