Rating: NNNNN
“wanna see a funny joke? look down!” says the writing on the door. Another scribble: “Gay people are abnormal sinners (unnatural) that are evil!”I’m not smiling.
After a criticism of that remark, another idiot writes: “That is why you have an asshole the size of an underground pipe.”
I’m not at some sort of homophobic hate-in, but in a first-floor washroom stall at Ryerson’s Kerr Hall, no less.
Homophobia, misogyny, racism and some just plain twisted shit live in the toilet graffiti of Toronto’s higher (or maybe lower) learning institutions. Some students obviously aren’t soaking up knowledge while exams are on, and schools definitely aren’t doing their best to sponge away offensive comments.
I’d like to meet the goofy guy who painstakingly drew a detailed, smaller-than-palm-sized cartoon on the beige concrete wall in the basement washroom at the main George Brown campus. Just to find out how screwed up he is.
This person, and I’m guessing here, took out his pen to draw one smiling male clamping another guy’s arms back, while another guy gives him a BJ. The caption reads: “Some mean boys held me down and sucked my penis and I come… does that mean I’m gay now???”
Another message beside the drawing reads, “Get a life ya freakin’ faggot live your fantasies soMewhere else.”
And below that, another goof, who must consider himself the voice of reason and all-around tough guy, prints: “ALL YOU Bitches are fucking stupid.”
Oh, OK, whatever you say, tough guy.
At prestigious U of T, washroom 1002 in Sidney Smith Hall, home of the offices of the dean and registrar, maintains a low, very low, standard.
On the left side of the grey stall, “FAG” is etched, with an arrow twisting to an almost scratched out “here’s a story.” The written story begins: “Treat women with respect, be sensitive, shy and caring give them space, and trust them, and then you will have a long relationship.”
“ARE YOU GAY” is printed below the story (without a question mark).
As I look around, there’s more: questions about how to give your boyfriend head, and infantile “I fuck my boyfriend’s ass” claims.
One student can’t resist inking, “Hey, all you fags” at the beginning of a sticker advertising online math tutorials.
It makes you wince and wonder if any of these macho men ever realized they’d shared the same black seat with a gay student.
“Racism’s Dead” claims the graffiti in washroom 149 in Scott Library at York. It’s dead wrong.
Beneath that, “Jews Rule The World!” is scribbled by a budding conspiracy theorist. Another asshole writes — over the faded “white trailer park HONKEY,” of course — “Jews are cheap, stingy greedy bastards and they have no respect. Money does not make you everything.”
Another anti-Semite adds, “Holocaust? What’s that?”
But almost nothing surprises when it comes to the lower learned — except this — some good graffiti, regardless of who scrawled it, crosses my tired eyes for a change: “It is amazing how many stupid people there are!”
