Arc of Transcendence: Camille Paglia's Guide to Toilet Training Your Son

After bringing up two daughters, I was grossly unaware of the tactics employed by parents to impart to their young male offspring the necessity of tinkling into the potty. One friend suggested the Cheerio Method. This approach entails throwing Cheerios into the toilet, calling them nuclear subs and telling your little boy to sink them with his powerful stream. My four-year-old son's trips to the bathroom began to take on the festive nature of Mardi Gras. The Cheerio Method was fun, effective, and sadly abandoned when it became clear that Simon was spending more time alone in the bathroom than the average fourteen-year-old. Other plans went into effect. One day in desperation I placed a masking tape 'X' on the floor in front of the toilet and told Simon to "stand right there and go." This was only partially effective. I then took to standing in the doorway of the bathroom in order to give him the necessary coaching. "Stand there, don't wait too long before you go, look at what you're doing, concentrate, don't dribble, put the seat down, flush, wash (with soap), not that towel, remember the light..."
Somehow, nothing I said; nothing I did, prevented those pesky puddles on our bathroom floor. Something had to give; something had to change. Then, something did. I realized with sudden force I was going about things ALL WRONG. My son didn't need to change, however my perception of the situation did. Thinking about the problem, if indeed it was a problem, had to become more enlightened and thereby broadened by compassionate understanding. Enter Camille Paglia.
If you haven't heard of her, you will. She is an outspoken literary and cultural critic. Camille Paglia has a tremendously big mouth and the things that pop out of it make everyone on any side of an issue lividly angry. The people she makes angriest are the feminists, yet she is referred to as a member of that group. She sometimes appears on t.v. (CNN or Comedy Central) especially when something weirdly awful and newsworthy happens. For example, when asked about the goings on between America's cutest couple, the Bobbits, let's just say that Camille didn't have a whole lot of sympathy for poor little Lorena. Paglia's book, fetchingly called, Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson, contains a laugh on every page and it has CHANGED the way I go about BRINGING UP MY CHILD!!
In the beginning of the book, Paglia takes pages and pages to describe her praise of Male Achievement. She froths on about great swaths of earth being moved, roads being built, paintings being painted, math problems being solved, and civilization being brought under human sway by the male members of our society. Paglia believes this tremendous energy is the result of baby boys coming into this world equipped with a primal urge to separate themselves from anything smacking of the female, the earthy, and maternal. She thinks everything about the male becomes a projection outward, to the beyond and that it is they who are the creators and doers in our world. Paglia gives proper kudos to Freud and then makes a remark which will forever alter the course of toilet training the young boys of our nation. On page twenty-one she writes: "Male urination really is a kind of accomplishment, an arc of transcendence." I looked up 'transcend' in the dictionary and it means to rise above, go beyond the limits of, to outdo, surpass, excel... And just think, ALL OF THIS IS HAPPENING RIGHT IN OUR OWN BATHROOMS!!!
I am a changed woman. No longer do I sink to my knees with sponge and Lysol muttering to myself in seething resentment about the inability of my son (or husband for that matter) to go in the toilet bowl. Because of Camille Paglia, I realize now that when my little boy is going to the bathroom, he is actually entering a spiritually transcendent zone where great ideas are formed, new inventions are being created, and the 1997 car models are being conceived. Thanks to Camille Paglia, I am satisfied in my role as hand maiden to history and serenely mop up my son's moist 'messages' to the planet. She has even brought a sort of harmony to the life my husband and I share. No longer do I lash out in sudden fury when my middle-of-the-night trips to the bathroom include a jolting descent into the toilet bowl because he has neglected to put the seat down. I now chuckle benignantly to myself while musing, "The sweetheart, he must have had another great idea tonight!"
As a final note, Paglia writes (right there on page 38) something that should make her the poster girl for the men's movement: "If civilization had been left in female hands, we would still be living in grass huts." Now, now, Camille, at least they'd be clean, dry huts!
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