Posted on 26th Jul 2011 @ 9:36 AM

Below is an essay by Rachel Gross entitled My Shewee and Me.

A version of this essay appeared in the February 2011 issue of Caliber Magazine (http://calibermag.org/), the culture and lifestyle magazine of the University of California at Berkeley.

My Shewee and Me

             I wanted to get a funnel that would allow me to pee standing up, I told Emily over the phone. I found myself shouting over the roar of traffic as it flowed down Berkeley’s Bancroft Avenue. After eliciting from her an incredulous “what?!” I repeated my wish clearly into the receiver, and was met by a staticky moan on the other end.

“Noooooo.” I could see Emily smashing her face exasperatedly into clean, neatly-manicured hands. “Rach, why do you have to be a man? Why can’t you just … squat … like a lady?”

            Instead of pointing out the absurdity of that statement, I merely laughed and told her I didn’t intend on being a man. I just wanted to be able to pee on trees. And on street-corners, and in bottles, and off balconies. I was sick of my male friends being able to veer off to the side of the street for a moment and return, gloriously emptied, zipping up their jeans with that look of supreme satisfaction on their faces — while I waddled on, pigeon-style, in search of the ever-elusive Berkeley public restroom. I admit: I wanted their satisfaction. I wanted that look. With this funnel, vindication would be mine.

            But how to convey this desire to Emily? Rather than try, I quickly changed the subject to upcoming internship deadlines (dear God, let them stop). But a twinge of unsettlement, the feeling that I had somehow violated her sense of what was appropriate, remained. Was it wrong to want to pee like a man?

             I decided to let the idea sit. Meanwhile, I squatted. The week petered out; it was now Saturday night. There I was, wine bottle in hand, on a deserted campus, perched indecorously behind some poor excuse for a bush, trying in vain not to trip over my tangle of jeans. I was not alone; a trio of waterfalls assaulted the stretch of shrubs. I concentrated on ignoring the footfalls of what were no doubt inquisitive and soon-to-be-revolted passersby on the adjacent sidewalk. What I wouldn’t do to put an end to this mortifying scene.

Suddenly, I saw it: the shimmering apparition of a golden funnel, hovering somewhere just above my forehead. The answer to my womanly woe. Desperate, I made a wild grab, and was rewarded by the warm touch of a trickle on my bare leg. Oh, gross. The funnel seemed to shake from side to side, like a wagging finger, then smiled with its wide mouth and vaulted out of reach. Damned tease. I knew then that I had to have it.

And have it I would. Once home, possessed by my golden vision, I typed “woman pee funnel” into the internet browser. Search hits abounded.

The funnel, it seemed, was being marketed in two ways. First, as a simple tool for women to pee in the woods: messless, practical, frills-free. It appealed to the active, outdoors-y woman, who dreamed of scaling rocks and camping in woodchip-lined areas lacking restrooms with ease. It was a problem-solver for women with impaired function — conferring agency to those confined to wheelchairs, recovering from surgery, or suffering from vulval cancer.

Practicality, though, wasn’t the only thing being marketed here. There was another, more subtle desire at hand: the funnel as an unlikely emblem of female empowerment. With this chic, sleek, symbol-studded siphon, at long last I could “stand up” against filthy toilet seats and cocky, penis-wielding men. For just $9.95, “You won’t be like a man. You’ll just pee like one,” one website promised.

Sold. I fumbled for my credit card. That night, my dreams danced with crisscrossing parabolas and glittering cascades.

……………..

 I was busying myself in the kitchen of my student co-operative, sprinkling brown sugar on a blueberry crumble, when my package arrived. “Sign here, ma’am,” the mailman told me. I wiped my hands on my floral apron and squealed with joy. Ripping open the pregnant envelope, I took the funnel from its fuchsia cylinder, and was enthralled by its coy curve, its bend, its silicone-sleek lilac tapering down to a fine tip. “Fuck this crumble!” I said. “I’m going to go pee off the roof.”

This turned out to be a somewhat ambitious claim — the roof would have to wait. Instead, I decided to try the SheWee out in the shower, for fear of unfortunate spillage. I stood in the stall, skirt around my ankles, barefoot on the gray tile, and held my little lavender funnel between my legs. My moment had manifested.

I took a breath and tried to relax. Yet as I succumbed to the universal urinary urge, I felt distinctly self-conscious. Instead of standing upright, I found I had to bend my knees, bow-legged. I tensed up and tiptoed in a circle to avoid backsplash. This was … awkward, to put it mildly. But as I persevered, I began to get the hang of things. I tried aiming for the drain; the stream followed my trigger. Hey! This was fun. Everyone should try this!

The next day, giddy, I ascended the roof.

As I watched my ambitions arc off the sloping shingles with satisfaction, my thoughts too began to flow. Looking down at my loafers, I thought back to the first thing Emily had moaned with such dismay: “Rach, why do you have to be a man?” Why do I have to be a woman, one might plausibly retort.

But there was another meaning to her words. Did donning a proto-penis necessarily mean I was adopting the traditional association of maleness with power, agency, strength, etc.? The idea made me squirm. (It also made me think of Mulan — “Be a man, you must be swift as the coursing river” — though I don’t think that was what Disney had in mind.) I couldn’t help but fear I was merely re-fortifying a phallocentric paradigm: that in order to be empowered, one had to have a dick.

I pulled up my panties and smoothed my skirt. An afternoon sunbeam pierced the pines.

Let me be very clear: I never wanted to be a man. Men are expected to do things like chug beer, grunt at other men, and care about elaborate homoerotic rituals known as “sports.” Men cannot discern emotions more nuanced than lust and aggression. Men, as far as I know, cannot have multiple orgasms.

But neither did I want to resign myself to squatting like a lady. Not that there’s anything wrong with squatting (though one must admit it feels a bit undignified). It’s the idea itself that I find unswallowable — that men are in on some secret boys’ club, sharing an experience that I for some fluke of gender am barred from. It seems unjust.

Naturally, this eagerness to join in, this emphatic rapping on the clubhouse door, can make others feel threatened. I’ve been told that my desire to wield a mock appendage is “weird” and “unnatural” — I’ve been told women aren’t meant to pee like men. But I am afraid I must reject these claims. If we were to subscribe to the naturalness argument, we would still be running naked across the savannah, getting eaten by lions, waiting for some lucky stroke of lightning to set our fire pits ablaze. Nature, I am sorry to report, is obsolete. We have tools.

And the ability to use tools — tools like the SheWee — is a defining marker of what makes us human. We admire the intellect of dolphins, and monkeys, but we will never take them seriously. Can they hold a pen? Can they use an iPad? For what is a pen, but a tool to direct the flow of thought? What is any tool, but a way to transcend the arbitrary confines that restrict you?

……………..

The roof, it seemed, would not do: I had to aim higher. On Wednesday, I decided to try a little experiment. (I should mention here that subtlety is not my strong suit.) Marching with an unruffle-able girlfriend into the empty men’s restroom in the basement of Dwinelle Hall, I walked up to the line-up of urinals, expertly applied my funnel, and waited for nature to run its course.

`           Panties around my legs, I waited. I fidgeted. Stared at the murky water. My friend sighed, looking at her watch, and told me to get on with my “feminine outburst.” Just as I was beginning to wish I had brought a water bottle, the door swung open. Enter: unsuspecting male clad in red-striped hoodie. My prey. “Hi,” I said casually, focusing on eeking out a stream (finally!) and not bursting into girlish giggles. Hoodie walked up to the lineup, chose a target, turned away and —

Completely ignored me. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury: I was ignored.

Mr. Taciturn finished his business and zipped his jeans with a tone of finality. I opened my mouth as he shuffled hurriedly to the sink, rinsed, and went for the doorknob.

            “Hey, don’t you think gender is just a social constr —” Slam.

My stream subsided. Clubhouse door: shut.

Setbacks, setbacks. Clearly, being comfortable with yourself is no guarantee that the world will be comfortable with you. It seems some people were not quite ready to embrace my new gender transcendence (transgenderence?). But not even the echo of a slammed door can quell the pull of righteous curiosity — that nagging need — to discover for oneself whether the grass is truly greener. (It was, but not after I was through with it).

I ask only for a chance to stand, and make my case. Why shouldn’t I? In a co-ed bathroom, why should I not have the freedom to choose, between porcelain bowl and upright urinal? Why should I not experience the thrill of looping my name, cursive in a golden dissolve, into the whitest of snow? Tell me: why should I squat?

……………..

In 1932, American aviator Amelia Earhart became the first woman to travel unaccompanied across the Atlantic Ocean. Refusing to be encumbered by arbitrary anatomical quirks, Amelia vehemently rejected the idea that women couldn’t do what men could do, and for that, she is still celebrated today. To survive long-distance flights, she had her lover, Gore Vidal, buy her briefs, and peed into a pail using a metal funnel (shall we say, SheWee 1.0?)

Did Amelia yearn to be a man? I think not. The plucky pilotess penned poetry; had love affairs; wore neck scarves. She was a style icon. But she was also every feminist’s secret hard-on, because she had the balls (though not the dick) to make a flying leap of faith in a covered cockpit. She did it for the beauty, the fun, and for the adventure — for the irreducible feeling of flight. “I want to do it because I want to do it,” she said.

Amelia never wanted to be a man, and neither do I. I want merely to rise, weightless, out of my woman-shaped box. The world as my urinal. It is, after all, a parallel ocean that I hope to transverse.