history of the outhouse and how it shaped today's transgender bathroom issues and Tea Party politics
the star on the outhouse door means it's a mens room.....a crescent moon means it's a ladies room...up in the rugged north and in the deep south teabagger country that's what folks use..out in the country...up in the Santa Ynez Valley...over the hill and far away..where civilized toilets don't exist, you use an outhouse....
as time went by the crescent moon meant a unisex outhouse because men kept trashing their star outhouses..
from the web: The original purpose of the cutout was of course light and ventilation, and for reasons of privacy, it had to be placed above the line of sight. Why a crescent moon? Why not? Here is some authoritative-sounding but nonetheless utterly ungrounded speculation
Probably the most recognizable symbol associated symbol with the traditional outhouse building is the familiar crescent moon carved into the privy door. Actually, the symbol is an ancient one, and was a sign for womanhood in colonial days and on the frontier. Its male counterpart, Sol, was either a star or a sun burst design also on the door. Since most male outhouses fell into disrepair rather quickly they seldom survived; while the female ones were better maintained, and were eventually used by both sexes. Although you can find outhouses still standing with the crescent moon, the original meaning for gender identification was lost by the later nineteenth century in most areas of the country.
[...] The moon that is often found on the outhouse door stands for the ancient sign- luna- or womanhood. When the outhouse was first invented people needed these signs to discern which was the men's or women's bathroom-for most people couldn't read. Soon, however, the men's became rundown or was very unkempt and not maintained. So everybody just used the women's bathroom, and the men's sunburst or sol sign was forgotten. The moon sign was kept and is also used as a vent.
The assertion is improbable on its face: is it at all likely that the scarce resources of a harsh frontier would be devoted to gender-segregated privies? Thus far, no contemporary records of the practice have come to light. The fact is that, in those dim ancient days when such symbolism supposedly carried weight and meaning – and English had grammatical gender, as Russian, French and German still do – the sun was feminine and the moon was masculine.
The claim is repeated in hundreds of places across the net, often with identical phrasing, indicating many generations of copying and pasting. The unsourced assertion may have begun with The Vanishing American Outhouse by Ronald S. Barlow (1989), or even earlier, as suggested by Cecil Adams of The Straight Dope:
[In] The Little Red Schoolhouse: A Sketchbook of Early American Education […d]iscussing 18th- and 19th-century schoolhouses, Eric [Sloane] writes: "The woodshed was often a lean-to attached to the schoolhouse, but the most accepted arrangement was to place it between the schoolhouse and the privy, with a fence separating the boys' entrance from the girls'. The ancient designation of privy doors was to saw into them a sun (for boys' toilet) and a moon (for girls' toilet)." Eric has supplied a sketch of both versions, showing the familiar crescent moon for the girls and a radiant sun for the boys.]
now you recall the fuss conservatives are making over transgender issues with bathrooms..which one to use and when, that's the question
well today I feel like lady so I'll use the girl's room and tomorrow I may feel mui macho and use the guy's room...America is all about freedom of choice...or freedom of Joyce to choose where she wants to pee...
you see, Americans have had anal expulsive issues for generations...actually I don't really give a shit but since the outhouses are unisex and that's where it all started before indoor plumbing, the only solution to today's crisis is to put a crescent moon on all the public bathrooms...
and outhouses were the origins of the Tea Party and the conservative think tanks you see today...when a teabagger comes up with an idea, at least now you know where it came from!!
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