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Sen. Larry Craig and the anxiety of a full bowel

2008-09-13
By

Sen. Larry Craig is appealing to take back his guilty plea to misdemeanor disorderly conduct. The appeal has been rejected by one court and has recently been put to an appeals panel. The arresting officer, Dave Karsnia, claimed that Craig repeatedly looked into Karsnia’s stall and that when Craig took a seat in the next stall, the Senator repeatedly tapped his foot, brought his foot into Karsnia’s stall and bumped Karsnia’s foot, and that Craig repeatedly swiped his hand on the bottom of the stall divider.

According to an article at http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080910/ap_on_re_us/craig_appeal, Craig’s attorney, Billy Martin, says that rather than being signals inviting a sexual encounter, this behavior could just as easily be interpreted as that of someone “anxious to go to the bathroom.”

This is an interpretation that should strike a chord with just about everyone. If there is one thing that unites human beings, male and female, regardless of ethnicity or class, it is the anxiety provoked by a full bladder and the even greater (if that is possible) anxiety that is provoked by a full bowel.

It seems reasonable that someone might look through the crack in a stall door to make sure that it actually is occupied rather than that the door happens to have swung closed. Once on a toilet seat, someone could tap a foot while waiting for one’s bowels to move or while they were doing so in time to music remembered or music playing on an iPod. I cannot think of an innocent reason why someone would swipe a hand under the stall divider or how this would result from either the need to move one’s bowels or tension while doing so.

Another issue brought up here is the phrase “go to the bathroom.” Excretory functions are commonly conflated and confused in this phrase with the area in which they are usually performed and performed with the best expectation of being able to maintain cleanliness and privacy.

Literally speaking, Craig was not “anxious to go to the bathroom” – he was there. He may have been anxious to get to a toilet. When questioned by Karsnia, Craig recalled that he sat down on the toilet “to go to the bathroom.” Again there is the confusion of traveling to the place where excretion is usually performed and the act of excreting itself.

Now Craig is anxious to erase a guilty plea from his record. Perhaps only if he gets his wish will questions around what he did in that airport facility be finally resolved.

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  • amfortas

    Is there a Statute of Limitations on little girls diddling in toilets? :)

  • http://mensnewsdaily.com/author/denise-noe/ Denise Noe

    steven deluca: It seems to me Denise that you once wrote about some private sex act in a public place… is that true? Or not? A place where there was some risk of being caught?

    (Denise) I was a kid of about 13. I was used to enjoying an orgasm a minimum of 6 and often 18 times per day. My family was traveling on vacation. I hadn’t had complete privacy and had been unable to masturbate for about 3 days. I was in a state of utter physical desperation and all I could think about was having an orgasm when I got to this gas station restroom. It was a one-toilet, one-person restroom. However, getting an orgasm was going to be a challenge. I could sit on the toilet and jack off as a boy might. The only way I had ever masturbated was lying down, usually on my stomach. There wasn’t room on that floor to stretch out.
    I discussed this previously but didn’t say exactly what solution I found to this dilemma. I won’t do so now. Again, I say: Guess!

  • amfortas

    (Denise) Men complained because other men were engaging in sex INSIDE that restroom.

    (Am) I am astonished that the police would take a blind bit of notice of a man’s complaint of that natute if indeed such a complaint had been made.

    I doubt it had though.

    In DV issues, far more important, a man dare not complain for fear of being arrested himslef.

    And if they complained that someone was picking their nose, would that warrant a police stake-out? Or whistling in morse code? Have several there with electronic equipment to decode it?

    (Denise)The signal Craig supposedly made of running his fingers along the bottom of the bathroom stall divider roughly translates: “Show me what you’ve got.”

    (Am) In what friggin’ language? Is this American Sign Language? Denise that is just sheer nonesense.

    What does blowing your nose mean? That you want to blow someone elses old fella? How about brushing specks of fluff off a lapel? Is it an offer to wipe someones bottom for them? Is there a secret code in whistling Ol’ Man River while you fill the bowl. Does entering the loo with your left foot rather than the right establish an overall price or just show you want a blow job?

    (Den)If the other man is receptive, he puts either his rear end or his penis under the stall divider and the pair have sex that way.

    (Am) This is a joke, shirley? You are not being serious. UNDER the stall divider !! Crickey. How far off the floor is it. Two friggin’ feet! Denise, a writer must have a good imagination but it needs some reins on it too. This is plainly ridiculous.

    (Den)Other times one will leave a stall and enter into the other man’s stall and they have sex inside the stall. The noises specific to sexual activity together with the extra time taken in a stall to engage in it can be found disturbing by men using the restroom for its intended purpose and apparently were since men complained to the police about the sexual activity in that restroom. Boy children who go into the restroom could easily be confused and disturbed by the noises of sex or could see something underneath the stalls to which children should not be exposed.

    (Am) I find all this frankly laughable. I don’t know if you get all this strange idea from what goes on in women’s ‘rest-rooms’ but in six decades I have never encountered such a thing in a men’s toilet. Like SD, I have been around a bit.

    I understand that women’s ‘rest-rooms’ are chatty places where conversations are commonly held, make – up applied, relationships analysed, reputations rubbished and sexual habits detailed on the walls in novella form.

    Men’s toilets, Denise, are cathedrals of silence, broken ony by natural sounds. They are rather smelly, barren places too. Not at all conducive to even furtive sex. One goes in, does one’s thing and leaves, usually fairly quickly. It is not a ‘lounge’ for hanging around in.

    Men do not talk to one another in the toilet. Nor signal. Nor do they stare at each other’s penises in awe and compare circumcision scars.

    I do NOT belive for ONE MOMENT that men had been to the police to complain about another’s toilet behaviour.

    I just cannot imagine a man doing such a fart-arsed thing.

    But you say they did. And I say “Convince me Denise”.

    I am much more inclined to think that the police LIED in suggesting that complaints had been made. They made it up to justify their dishonourable action. Just my guess.

    Were I the Judge in the case I would be astonished at their assertion and demand the complainants took the stand to verify it under cross examination. The police ‘saying so’ is not sufficient evidence to justify destroying a man’s life.

    The Police and the Judges that conspire to deal with these ridiculous charges are corrupt. A Judge with integrity and honour would charge the policemen.

    (Den) Really, amfortas, public restrooms are not the right place for people to engage in sex. I support the laws prohibiting it.

    (Am) Really Denise. Of course it isn’t the place for it but that is a matter of taste and perhaps hygene and NOT a police matter or a Law matter.

    That man’s life has been ruined. For what? To satisfy some fantasy of a Nanny State?

  • steven deluca

    When I see articles addressing female sexual abuse of boys and men … something that is overlooked, … if that’s addressed maybe at some point we can work our way down to waving under a door. I do think that the idea that male sexuality is beastly feeds something that isn’t being addressed.

    John Irving wrote about his sexual abuse as a boy by women. Antonine Fisher wrote about his sexual abuse as a boy and Denzel was good enough to help with the movie by the same name. “Guilty by Reason of Insanity” by a woman – an MD named Lewis, discusses a boy at age 6 forced to have sex with his mother and siblings.

    I have rarely ever seen a discussion of such things in the news but often some guy making a pass at some guy – maybe – is a lead story in the news, talk shows, comedy circuits, on and on. Most men, particularly when young, come close to getting into some sort of trouble over sex and mostly it’s about being taught that they are pervs for what, thinking of women “that way” … is where it starts. To me the shaming of men, by women, over sex, hardly ever stops – unless of course women are acting as males are stereotyped … like Sex and the City, or cougars… older women with younger guys, but for some reason their press is positive, they are brave, doing their own thing…

    So, Denise, my feeling when hearing a woman go after a man over sexual issues is along the line of “GET THAT BASTARD” But as Amfortas wrote, what did they really have on Craig, no on rumors of what had been happening – for what Craig and his wife, family went through… based on just about nothing… was a crime far worse than any sexual act he might have contemplated with a stranger. He was raped by a sick society, period. He was ripped for the amusement of the public. It seems to me Denise that you once wrote about some private sex act in a public place… is that true? Or not? A place where there was some risk of being caught?

  • steven deluca

    The response are starting to verge on toilet porno… Amfortas has been, as I have been, as most of the guys on this site have been, into tens of thousands of bathrooms for the public.

    Engaging in sex is bathrooms, or did someone simply approach a guy … we really don’t know the story and Amfortas and I responded to the story we read by Denise. Trust me, gay guys don’t want to make a scene in bathrooms by truck stops, highways, Denny’s, Union 76 because when the truckers stop in, or bikers, or marines on leave, to find two guys going at it would be so damn risky that only risk taking thrill seekers with a death wish would bother.

    That doesn’t mean that there are not extremely rare risk takers of such inclinations doing such things… but the idea that police are patrolling with their big sticks and cuffs might actually cause more of these instances than prevent them

    I believe that like women who “enjoy” dressing up like hookers in police work to get guys to offer money, to arrest them, that there is something really kinky about a society that spends as much time obsessing about prostitution, gay sex, and such.

    To go into the detail,… I am a street guy, lived in New York, New Orleans, hitch hiked cross country, was in police work… one time in a ten thousand over decades in public restrooms would some guy cruise me and the look he got told him he was wasting his time and that ended that.

    I believe that hookers and cops cruising for gay men set men up, entice them, and put some men at risk that would have just finished their trip to 7-11 or Burger King but there she or he was, … looking him over, looking available for sex… looking as if “offering” sex … and then when they take it up, busted. I think it’s sick and that a lot of men, and their families, are harmed… we all are tempted here and there to break rules but we learn not to… for some it’s harder when temptation is put right in their face and in a moment of weakness some decent men are harmed.

    I knew men in the army, scouts, working jobs from the East to West coast, social work, prison work, group homes… I don’t recall EVER having a guy tell me that he ran into guys doing the limbo under a panel, and that as we “all” know waving under the toilet is a what… international signal… maybe I am missing something but if I saw a man waving under the stall I would think he thought a friend was next door and he wanted TP or something because the ODDS of getting sex, instead of his ass kicked, just isn’t that good.

    Amfortas is right about this one.

    Later
    SD

  • http://mensnewsdaily.com/author/denise-noe/ Denise Noe

    #

    amfortas said,

    We. Disagree? Let us not go that far, my dear. So, other men had complained, had they? You did not include that above. Are there any other items relevant that you didn’t include?

    Had male children been ‘exposed’? Ot is that just a ‘what if’? Deliberately or accidently? In the absence of any real evidence that children had been deliberately approached and ‘exposed’ to, and that surely ought to have been mentioned, there is no crime to ’stake out’ in anticipation. If accidental it would be a happenstance and no more – certainly not a crime. And again no reason to waste police resources.

    If a man makes a pass at another man in a toilet, it is not a crime. It may be uncomfortable and unwanted, but not a matter for police. If it is a ‘crime’ in America, it is a particularly stupid one.

    One hears of this sort of thing from time to time and it is always blown completely out of proportion.

    Even this instance. A man is arrested and charged and disgraced for what? Tapping his friggin’ feet. Cops sitting on the lavatory waiting for a tapping foot ! It is ridiculous.

    Let’s take it one further ‘what if’ step. What if this chap WAS trying to ‘pick up’ the policeman?

    So what?

    It is ridiculous for policemen to be staking out toilets. Is it to be a crime to make one’s feelings know? Here are the entire female world and the feminist lobby and every friggin’ psychobabbler guru saying that men should ‘express their feelings’ and a chap gets arrested for it !!

    I am aware that such attitudes that lead to this fellow being so treated are aimed at the homosexual population, and while I am not one and do not particularly like that sort of behaviour, I do not see it as something to criminalise.

    It is a waste of police time and effort. It is corrupt and ‘bad character’ in and of itself.

    I am pretty sure we can agree on that, shirley?

    (Denise) Men complained because other men were engaging in sex INSIDE that restroom. The signal Craig supposedly made of running his fingers along the bottom of the bathroom stall divider roughly translates: “Show me what you’ve got.” If the other man is receptive, he puts either his rear end or his penis under the stall divider and the pair have sex that way. Other times one will leave a stall and enter into the other man’s stall and they have sex inside the stall. The noises specific to sexual activity together with the extra time taken in a stall to engage in it can be found disturbing by men using the restroom for its intended purpose and apparently were since men complained to the police about the sexual activity in that restroom. Boy children who go into the restroom could easily be confused and disturbed by the noises of sex or could see something underneath the stalls to which children should not be exposed.
    Really, amfortas, public restrooms are not the right place for people to engage in sex. I support the laws prohibiting it.

  • amfortas

    We. Disagree? Let us not go that far, my dear. So, other men had complained, had they? You did not include that above. Are there any other items relevant that you didn’t include?

    Had male children been ‘exposed’? Ot is that just a ‘what if’? Deliberately or accidently? In the absence of any real evidence that children had been deliberately approached and ‘exposed’ to, and that surely ought to have been mentioned, there is no crime to ‘stake out’ in anticipation. If accidental it would be a happenstance and no more – certainly not a crime. And again no reason to waste police resources.

    If a man makes a pass at another man in a toilet, it is not a crime. It may be uncomfortable and unwanted, but not a matter for police. If it is a ‘crime’ in America, it is a particularly stupid one.

    One hears of this sort of thing from time to time and it is always blown completely out of proportion.

    Even this instance. A man is arrested and charged and disgraced for what? Tapping his friggin’ feet. Cops sitting on the lavatory waiting for a tapping foot ! It is ridiculous.

    Let’s take it one further ‘what if’ step. What if this chap WAS trying to ‘pick up’ the policeman?

    So what?

    It is ridiculous for policemen to be staking out toilets. Is it to be a crime to make one’s feelings know? Here are the entire female world and the feminist lobby and every friggin’ psychobabbler guru saying that men should ‘express their feelings’ and a chap gets arrested for it !!

    I am aware that such attitudes that lead to this fellow being so treated are aimed at the homosexual population, and while I am not one and do not particularly like that sort of behaviour, I do not see it as something to criminalise.

    It is a waste of police time and effort. It is corrupt and ‘bad character’ in and of itself.

    I am pretty sure we can agree on that, shirley?

  • http://mensnewsdaily.com/author/denise-noe/ Denise Noe

    #

    anti armchair generals said,

    Denis Noe,
    Thanks for giving a possiblle rational explanation for Sen Larry Craig’s. Sometime ago I happen to see this type article by Dr. Steven Soifer.
    http://www.paruresis.org/

    (Denise) I’ve heard of paruuresis before but didn’t know the proper name for it. Men are expected to urinate at urinals but some men actually can’t and go into the stalls for that as well as to defecate.

    September 13, 2008 at 4:41 pm
    #

    amfortas said,

    If policemen haven’t got more and better things to do they should not be on the payroll. Hanging around toilets looking to be ‘hit on’ is not a man of integrity’s way of doing things.

    The accused man’s reasons sound quite plausible to me and being as the whole issue is so damned trivial, I see no reason why a case should have been persued at all.

    Is this what the American Character has come down to? God help us all if it is.

    (Denise) Hi, friendly amfortas. I’m afraid we must disagree on this one. Police should have been there, in my opinion, because other men had complained about sexual activity in that restroom. To use it as a trysting place is disrespectful of the rights of the men using it for its intended purpose. In addition, male children go into public restrooms. They ought not to be exposed to adult sexual activity when they do. Police officers have good reason to try to put a stop to this activity.

  • amfortas

    If policemen haven’t got more and better things to do they should not be on the payroll. Hanging around toilets looking to be ‘hit on’ is not a man of integrity’s way of doing things.

    The accused man’s reasons sound quite plausible to me and being as the whole issue is so damned trivial, I see no reason why a case should have been persued at all.

    Is this what the American Character has come down to? God help us all if it is.

  • anti armchair generals

    Denis Noe,
    Thanks for giving a possiblle rational explanation for Sen Larry Craig’s. Sometime ago I happen to see this type article by Dr. Steven Soifer.
    http://www.paruresis.org/
    Not to defend him. but police use innovative techniques to catch men even looking at decoy female cop. For those who are not femiliar with the signals gay,lesbian,straight. I once had a man slide his fingers under the stalls edge.
    I did not know what it meant, untill I read Sen Craig’s arrest story. Perhap someone could explain to readers of MND what they know so we would not be fooled and innocently trapped by police decoy.

  • steven deluca

    Cops trolling.

    I know some women who have a list of the many times that they have been sexually harassed while others have never been. I can understand how those those who are hypersensitive to male attention keeping score. (You know, the old fart GP said I looked nice in this blouse while starring at my tits – write him up – compared too – the new tennis playing surgeon with a cute butt asked me out while telling me he liked my blouse – let’s go on a date and maybe marry) OK I am being too harsh. There are cases of sexual harassment while most of what I hear about seems to be women bragging about some guys clumsy attempts to get a date or procreate.

    It’s the same with cops trolling for guys in public bathrooms. There are men looking for sex, I guess, but if a man is just going in, heading out, the odds are he will never notice or be “hit on” by a gay man in a public bath. If a gay man is looking for a gay man who is trolling in public baths, restrooms or hotel lobbies – a certain amount of and a certain type/kind of eye contact, smile, glance warns a straight guy early on and encourages a gay man.

    I have seen cops who go looking for gay men. Tight jeans and way too much eye contact while lingering. For gay men it’s a tough call just as it’s difficult for straight men to always get it right … does that low top, smile, push up bra, and makeup to make her breasts a bit highlighted or glow, shimmer, and perfume that “says yes while you can always say no” mean she is interested.

    I suspect that with a tank top, tight jeans, and lingering glances by most decent looking young men hanging around a public restroom would caue them to sometimes be “hit on” by gay guys. The gay man would think (I know, most gay guys are not looking for love near a toilet) is this guy hitting on me or is he a cop+ Just as most straight guys would think… is she hitting on me, not hitting on me, or setting my up ala Phil Collins “see that lady in a tight shirt’ [not exact quote here] all she wants to do is rub my face in the dirt.

    If someone complains to cops about someone hitting on them, a minor child for instance, send the police… otherwise let the rest of us deal with it as in – sorry dude, not interested.

    I was in a restroom not long ago on a cross country trip and a man at the sink pointed out a peephole in a door facing the sink… we got the impression someone might be “whacking off” in their watching guys. The guy by the sink took his coke cup and dumped it over the top… went out laughing. The guy dumped on didn’t react as anyone would who hadn’t been up to not good. I told my wife about it “gross” … she said. I didn’t think about calling the police. Why, because what if you got it wrong?

    Was Craig trolling? Do I care? Give me a setting where a man tries to get a boy to pull his pants down and we an all justy ruining the man’s reputation. This case may seem strong to those who are “INTO” humilation of others … but what if we did get it wrong, there is not note, he didn’t say “I want to do you” I wonder if we can’t just let Craig and his family deal with this without another article or comment because, what if we did get it wrong?







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