“I’m in love with my friend and I’m not sorry.” “Join a union.” “Dogs should be able to vote.” “ABORTION RIGHTS.” “Don’t trust midwest emo men!” These are all scribbles in the ladies’ toilets of the Rutland Arms, a traditional yellow-bricked pub in Sheffield city centre. It’s a proper boozer, reliable and warm, where grey-haired locals mingle with blue-haired students, and the cheapest pint costs £3.30.
Like in so many pubs across the country, its toilet cubicles are completely covered – doors, walls, ceiling – in graffiti. Sprawling proclamations of women’s empowerment overlap with confessions about self-harm. It’s a web of cryptic interactions, as comforting and charming as it is sinister and ghostly. The male loos are equally covered: soul-searching utterances alongside indiscernible scrawls in every colour of the rainbow.
“Latrinalia” is the word used by scholars to describe markings made in public restrooms. It has been a subject of fascination for centuries. While the term was coined by American folklorist Alan Dundes in 1966 in his essay, Here I Sit, scatological graffiti was discovered in the latrines of Pompeii. The Roman poet Martial referenced toilet writing in the first century AD, recognising it as a literary form (albeit a lowly one), advising readers to look for “a boozy poet of the dark archway who write verses with rough charcoal … which folks read when they shit”.
There have been all sorts of theories about why we add these scrawls in the first place, from psychoanalytic interpretations of toilet graffiti as a form of “phallic expression”, to social-identity theorists suggesting that it functions to exaggerate stereotypical gender characteristics in segregated bathrooms. There have been studies of latrinalia in Zimbabwe, Jordan, Canada, Cuba and China, many of which analyse graffiti found in university toilets.
High theories aside, though, there is certainly something to be said about being in a confined space and expressing yourself as inappropriately or as vulnerably as you like (a few beers help with creativity, too). “In any period of history, there’s a need to leave a mark – an utterance – and to have a sense that people can hear you,” says Richard Clay, professor of digital cultures at Newcastle University who wrote and presented the documentary A Brief History of Graffiti. “A toilet cubicle is a space where you can get this slightly transgressive utterance, which is often dressed up in humour.”
If we ignore the bodily aspect to it all, pub loos are pretty unique spaces. They’re a rare instance of a space that is both public and private, so people can graffiti confidently knowing that there’s a low chance they’ll be caught but a high chance their work will be seen. If a venue decides to embrace its graffiti, dialogues emerge, often bound up in politics. Clay understands these discussions as expressions of the subculture built around the venue: “They have their own self-selecting group who more or less share similar values and likes and music tastes, so you get a snapshot into a moment in the life of a specific public interest.”
These snapshots can be shocking, they can be heartfelt, they can be hilarious. Head to north-east London and you’ll find loo graffiti about landlords, global heating and tattoo artists. In The Crooked Billet, a pub in the increasingly gentrified area of Clapton popular with creatives and young professionals, a message reads: “Please consider a vegan lifestyle for the animals and our planet … thank you.” A harsh black marker swoops in, crossing out “vegan” and replacing it with “bacon”. Then, in faint ballpoint pen: “Girl shut up, I bet you do coke.”
In another venue, a phone number is repetitively scrawled on the inside door of one cubicle. “Some people phone me up so I can listen to the music in the club,” says the writer when I text. (They are an architecture student who advertised their digits during a stint as a dealer.) “I’ve had a couple of people ask if I have ‘blow’. Others text me stupid, nonsensical things. Others simply say hi.”
Since mixed gender loos have only become more common in the last 10 years, the bulk of latrinalia studies have typically focused on comparing graffiti in male and female toilets: scribbles in women’s toilets express more vulnerability, talk about relationships and show more solidarity, while men are more likely to draw pictures and write insults. In his 2003 study of 723 inscriptions from the University of Otago’s central library in New Zealand, James A Green wrote: “Females discussed body image more than males did. There was also a difference in focus: females listed their height and weight, whereas males listed their penis size.” That same paper also claimed that the most dominant topics in male toilets were politics and tax, while inscriptions in female toilets tended to ask for personal advice and – bleakly – “discussed what exact act constitutes rape”. Fast forward 20 years and what’s changed? It’s hard to know for sure. Literature about graffiti in mixed-gender cubicles is scarce, but it’s clear that new conversations are being had. In the ladies’ toilets of the Dog House in Edinburgh, an all-caps message proclaims: “gender segregated toilets, why?”
Recently, I’ve found that trans rights are being debated on the cubicle walls of our venues. In The Ventoux, a buzzy pub in Edinburgh with fish tanks on the walls and bicycles on the ceiling, someone writes in the female loos: “Trans women are women.” A different pen scribbles out the last “wo”, turning the word to “men”, before someone definitively rewrites “wo” in thick red marker. Across town in Marchmont, in The Argyle and Cellar Bar, a door in the women’s says: “A transgender person peed in this bathroom and nothing bad happened … we are not your scapegoats and we are never going away.”
It is because of hate speech that most venues will keep an eye on their graffiti. “There’s a few things that have surprised us by being transphobic or something like that, in a pub that’s very supportive,” says Chris Bamford, co-owner and general manager of the Rutland Arms. “If anything is offensive, we’ll get rid.”
If toilet graffiti is revealing of some of the most divisive topics of our society, there’s a melancholy running through it, too. Depression, loneliness and surviving sexual assault is a recurrent topic in female toilets: in the Art Bar, near Dundee’s art college, there’s a warning that calls out alleged local predators. But there can also be something quite comforting about seeing strangers interacting with their community, like invisible agony aunts or friends you haven’t yet met.
Jodie, 25, from Edinburgh, came across a piece of graffiti in a grotty cubicle while on a night out at a dive bar in east London. The words “Are you having a good night?” were sprawled above a “Yes” column and a “No” column, the whole thing surrounded by encouraging comments. About 20 tally marks were made across both columns: scratched, written in all sorts of colours of pen or lipstick.
“Throughout the night, you saw different tally marks being added and it made you feel like you were part of the night in a broader way than just the friends you’d come with, in this community of contributors,” Jodie says. “What was important was that the comments were all quite varied, so there were lots of people who were ultimately on the same night out but with different experiences. It made you feel like whatever you were feeling that night was valid.” Jodie returned to that same cubicle later in the night, armed with an eyeliner. “I marked the ‘Yes’ column, but I remember thinking that I had been on nights out where I haven’t been having such a good time, and seeing that [the ‘No’ column] would have really made me feel happier or less alone.”
In the UK, it is becoming harder to spot latrinalia. As gentrification creeps into new corners of cities, venues are getting facelifts and paint is being swiftly swiped over any sign of vandalism. And the spaces themselves are disappearing. More than 150 pubs shut in England and Wales during the first three months of 2023 due to climbing energy bills, while recent research from the Night Time Industries Association revealed that the nightclub sector has seen a 12% decline in the last year.
The graffiti on our toilet walls is telling of just how sacred these night-time spaces are. Somehow, even though we can hide behind keyboards and find communities online, we are still drawn to connecting in these awkward, smelly cubicles. Perhaps it’s because latrinalia is so unmediated and anonymous that it feels properly authentic. Or maybe it’s because there’s comfort in the solidarity of conversations with strangers. Whatever it is, loo graffiti is like a love letter to the venues themselves – even if that love letter is a drawing of a penis.
