AN Inconvenient Booth: Mistaking Symbol for Both Map and Territory

In his famous phrase map is not the territory, Korzybski noted the disarming ease that human beings muddle abstractions of things for the things themselves. General semantics offers usefid tools to evaluate the contemporary contest over the territory of the prosaic public restroom--and its convenient or inconvenient booths--in the struggle fir equal rights for all people. In this paper, I demonstrate the intensional behavior exemplified by some statements by parliamentarians in debate and witnesses in testimony to committees of Canada's Parliament and Senate during the quest to amend legislation to add the phrase to Canada's federal Human Rights Act and the Criminal Code. Noting that public facilities are often labeled locally, nationally, and internationally with pictographic symbol rather than written words, I seek to reveal relations between the symbol and the words purported to establish their meaning. What happens when the symbol ,for human becomes con fused with the map of human? Does such map bear similar structure to the territory represented? What extensional behaviors might assist this discussion? In 1967, the world flocked to Montreal, Canada for '67, where more than two-and-a-half times Canada's population as whole at the time attended (BIE, 1967 Montreal). One important innovation at '67 was of humble sort: public conveniences marked out in graphical, non-lingual symbol devised by Toronto designer Paul Arthur. - Arthur designed a series of 24 as part of comprehensive Standard Sign Manual [emphasis original] for use in the '67 site (Wainwright, 1967). Arthur's outline of humanoid figure with floating head--the detached, floating head itself an excellent sign that this representation is symbolic, not literally representing human--would remain recognizable today as symbol to indicate men's washroom; likewise, whilst Arthur's pictogram for the women's washroom was perhaps more matronly than the A-line dress we see so commonly on current symbol-signage, the shape would be recognizable as falling within the same general outlines. Today in 2013, observations suggest that we interpret these symbols with clarity that was missing from visitors to '67. According to 1967 news article from major Canadian daily newspaper, Expo is having trouble with its sign language, noting that [t]rouble soon arose over the washroom symbols. officials kept encountering that worried women [sic] who trotted nervously up to rest room door, examined the pictograph with some puzzlement, reached for handle, then retreated in blushing confusion as men appeared from inside (Plumptre, 1967). These days, pictogram symbols for washrooms are widely used in many nations, the pictograms themselves demonstrating near-limitless variety. And that, ladies and gents, brings us to an inconvenient booth, wherein we find mistaking symbol for both map and territory. The territory is the human in its imperfect glory, while the map is the construction of expectations of gender performance (Marissa, 2010) and the battleground is, apparently, that of transsexual and access to public conveniences (Cavanagh, 2011). Bizarre contortions of language--itself symbol--are used to delegiti-mize trans identities to imply or even state outright that trans do not have right to relief Indeed, even the notion of trails as people is sometimes contested, [b]ecause most have great difficulty recognizing the humanity of another person if they cannot recognize that person's gender... (Stryker, 2008, p.6). Even in Canada, anti-relief rhetoric relies on claims of possible abuse of claimed gender identity as legitimate reason to pre-emptively ban any such individuals from such relief on the notion that someone, someday, might somehow do something bad and, just in case, no one should be able to use the John--or should that be Jane? …

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