Pooping Shamefully

The following is a mashup of quotes (some slightly re-worded) from a chapter in Dave Praeger's Poop Culture.

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A definition:

For the shameful shitter, it's more important to poop in the right place than to poop at the right time. Thus shameful shitters lead their lives holding it in.

Historical background:

Until the private toilet spread across Western civilization, pooping was often a semi-public experience. People did it in neighborhood privies or on the side of the road, sitting or squatting, knowing that at any moment a neighbor or stranger might walk in and say "hi" and complain about how much taxpayer money was spent on that damned Louisiana Purchase. On cold nights, people would squat over the chamber pot, in full view of spouses and children, who wouldn't care, because pooping was unremarkable. The shared privy and the unhidden chamber pot were culturally approved.

Why shame?:

Just as every poop is a unique snowflake, so too vary the causes and manifestations of shameful shitting. But the shame has two main causes. The first is the Victorian ideological design of the bathroom and the toilet to deny that poop exists. The second is the widespread misinterpretation of instinctive fecal aversion. (Your own poop cannot hurt you.)

The path to shamelessness:

We all agree on pooping's place, but we're forced to determine for ourselves the acceptability of the sights, sounds, and smells that accompany it. When the conflict between the shameful and the shameless is finally resolved, pooping will be unworthy of angst, meriting as little ceremony as eating or drinking. That's what it means to be a shameless shitter. You aren't an exhibitionist or a pervert -- you simply feel the urge to poop, and you do it, and you feel better. If it sounds easy to you, then you're not a shameful shitter -- because for the shameful shitter, this simple act is fraught with psychological trauma.

Only when we understand the toilet as a sanitary, not ideological, apparatus, and poop as a physical, not moral, threat, will society be freed from the tyranny of the bowel.