Guardian (UK): buildings and bridges as phallic symbols of male dominance (not parody or satire)

If De Blasio sees this it’s the end of NY skyscrapers and drawbridges. The Guardian (UK) is the leading leftist newspaper publication in the UK. What some people would call progressive thinking in all the trendy circles in New York. 

The title of this piece is “Upward-thrusting buildings ejaculating into the sky – Do cities have to be so sexist?”. You can’t make these things up … what passes for sophisticated intellectualism.

As the feminist geographer Jane Darke has said: “Our cities are patriarchy written in stone, brick, glass and concrete.” In other words, cities reflect the norms of the societies that build them. And sexism is a deep-rooted norm. … As far back as 1977, an American poet and professor of architecture named Dolores Hayden wrote an article with the explosive headline “Skyscraper seduction, skyscraper rape”. Hayden tore into the male power fantasies embodied in this celebrated urban form. The office tower, she wrote, is one more addition “to the procession of phallic monuments in history – including poles, obelisks, spires, columns and watchtowers”, where architects un-ironically use the language of “base, shaft and tip” while drawing upward-thrusting buildings ejaculating light into the night sky.

If the sexism of the city began and ended with architectural symbolism, I would’ve happily written a grad school essay about this then turned my attention to more pressing matters. But society’s historical and ongoing ideas about the proper gender roles for men and women (organised along a narrow binary) are built right into our cities – and they still matter.

More great “insights” if you hit the link.