Twenty-fourth International Conference on Knowledge, Culture, and Change in Organizations

Abstract

This paper analyzes the gendered politics of emotions of young Israeli women and men regarding toilet use and excretion. Highlighting the impact of gender, we avoided addressing intersectional dimensions, interviewing twenty white middle-class heterosexual Jewish Israelis about their toilet habits. We noticed three recurring themes: 1) All informants addressed the need for a certain level of lavatories’ cleanliness, expressing feelings of disgust towards excretions and filthy toilets; 2) they claimed the importance of privacy and anonymity, describing the feeling of embarrassment whenever they feared being identified by others and 3) they infer indirectly to feelings of shame when diverting accepted social norms of toilet use. Although most informants shared these concerns, clear gender differences were also evident. Men and women differed in what they consider as socially and politically tolerable and legitimate levels of filth, social exposure, and defiance of social rules regarding urination, defecation, and toilet use. Moreover, despite general acceptance and compliance with the deep-rooted social norms and emotions, most of the informants, principally the women, conveyed a more intricate position. Identifying toilet habits as a mechanism of control intended primarily to subjugate women, they contested their own compliance by reflecting at times on their oppression. The paper proposes innovative directions toward greater equality between men and women behind and beyond the toilet’s door.