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In his famous phrase "the map is not the territory," Korzybski noted the disarming ease that human beings muddle abstractions of things for the things themselves. General semantics offers useful tools to evaluate the contemporary contest over the territory of the prosaic public restroom-and its convenient or inconvenient booths-in the struggle for equal rights for all people. In this paper, I demonstrate the intensional behavior exemplified by some statements by parliamentarians in debate and witnesses in testimony to committees of Canada's Parliament and Senate during the quest to amend legislation to add the phrase "gender identity" to Canada's federal Human Rights Act and the Criminal Code. Noting that public facilities are often labeled locally, nationally, and internationally with a pictographic symbol rather than written words, I seek to reveal relations between the symbol and the words purported to establish their "meaning." What happens when the symbol for a human becomes confused with the map of a human? Does such a map bear similar structure to the territory represented? What extensional behaviors might assist this discussion?
In 1967, the world flocked to Montreal, Canada for Expo '67, where more than two-and-a-half times Canada's population as a whole at the time attended (BIE, 1967 Montreal). One important innovation at Expo '67 was of a humble sort: public conveniences marked out in a graphical, non-lingual symbol devised by Toronto designer Paul Arthur.
Arthur designed "a series of 24 pictograms" as part of a "comprehensive Standard Sign Manual" [emphasis original] for use in the Expo '67 site (Wainwright, 1967). Arthur's outline of a humanoid figure with a floating head-the detached, floating head itself an excellent sign that this representation is symbolic, not literally representing a human-would remain recognizable today as a symbol to indicate a men's washroom; likewise, whilst Arthur's pictogram for the women's washroom was perhaps more matronly than the A-line dress we see so commonly on current symbol-signage, the shape would be recognizable as falling within the same general outlines.
Today in 2013, observations suggest that we interpret these symbols with a clarity that was missing from visitors to Expo '67. According to a 1967 news article from a major Canadian daily newspaper, "Expo is having trouble with its sign language," noting that "[tjrouble soon arose...