Toilet Designer Apologizes to Hindus

Author: Nirshan Perera In Seattle
Publication: Rediff on Net, US Edition
Date: November 22, 2000

For the past two days, I'd been knocking on Lamar Van Dyke's door.  The woman who summoned the wrath of Indians around the world by making whimsical toilet seats depicting Hindu gods was hiding behind drawn blinds, pulled curtains, for good reason: she was afraid, and just a bit disoriented.
 
On Wednesday, she returned from a two-week trip to the beaches of Mexico, only to find herself at the center of a steadily brewing storm. Although her small-time business had sold just 13 "Sacred" seats over the past four years, and her Web site had been up for nearly two, all of a sudden her computer was choked with thousands of angry e-mails, and her phone was ringing off the hook. Politicians a world away were demonizing her, and the lesbian tattoo artist was, believe it or not, being painted as the center of a vast Christian conspiracy against Hinduism.
 
My editors felt this story was important enough to send me to Seattle. Who was this woman? What was going through her mind? Tonight, hours before my flight back to San Jose, something happened. I decided to drop by Van Dyke's house one last time, just to see.
 
Call it a leap of faith. Not only did she open the door, courageously, she invited me in for a cup of tea. We talked for an hour at her dining room table-the factory floor, she joked, gesturing to a few loose lids and seats strewn about. But, in reality, she was nervous and still a little confused. The word "stunned" came up. Van Dyke didn't open the door earlier because she's been receiving death threats side by side with reasonable requests for dialogue. "My heart was pounding when you knocked in the afternoon," her partner, Taylor Coleman, told me. "We didn't know who you were. People have told us to burn in hell. Someone called from London and said he was coming over to kick our f-ing ass." This was serious stuff for the two women behind sittinprettydesigns.com, and they wanted it to stop.
 
Rediff: Well, I don't know where to start. I'm sure you know, a lot of people are eager to hear what you have to say. Since the story broke last Wednesday, what has the response been like?
 
LVD: Well, let's see. Essentially I came home from a two-week vacation and had about a thousand e-mail messages in my mailbox and had really no idea what was happening except that there was a large group people who were very pissed off. It took me awhile to figure out what was going on because I had no idea; I'd been on the beach.
 
It's most remarkable that in four years we've probably made a maximum of 13 Hindu seats (chuckling).
 
Rediff: Really! Yet you have politicians in India getting on their high horses and .
 
LVD: Apparently, yeah.
 
Rediff: So, why focus on Hinduism?
 
LVD: Actually we've been making mostly pin-up girl seats and done other religions too. We don't have everything that we make up on our Web site because we're not very technically advanced. So we had friends who were making a Web site and they made us this beautiful Web site and it's never been changed since it was made two years ago because we don't know how to do that and they are no longer doing that. We have other designs that we'd like to put up on the Web site but we need to get some money together to do that. So, in fact, a lot of people assumed that we do not have other [sacred] images. We do have other images.

Rediff: I think what really stuck out, what a lot of people noticed, was all of the products focused on Hinduism. I think it would have been a much different reaction if it were a mixture of different religions images and icons.
 
LVD: Yeah, I do too. I think that it came down to two points and one of them was that if we had managed to get the rest of what we do up on our Web site in a r.1 2nable amount of time, that would have dealt with that. The other thing was, apparently, we have a very different opinion about bathrooms than people who come from India, which we didn't have any idea about.
 
Rediff: When did you first conceive of this product-the Sacred Seat Collection?
 
LVD: About four years ago, we were showing pin-up girl toilet seats at a tattoo show in Buffalo [New York] and someone came, I think they were from Rochester or somewhere in the area, and they had a coffee shop called Shiva Coffee or Dancing Shiva or something like that. They wanted a toilet seat for their coffee shop and they asked us if we would make them a Shiva seat. So we did. We came home and we did. And there was so much of the imagery that was fabulous that we wanted them on our toilet seats.
 
Rediff: So, for you, it was more artwork than divine imagery?
 
LVD: Well, it was both. It was art and it was ... we started with Kali and Kali was a very strong female image, and that was what we were doing, putting female images on toilet seats-which we didn't really have any opinion, pro or con. It was just that was what we chose to decorate with.
 
We could have chosen a number of other things and apparently that would have worked out better for lots of people, but at that point in time we chose toilet seats and started putting images on toilet seats. We started with Shiva and moved to Kali, and it was like, these images are strong and good. Then I found out more about Kali and I called up people and asked what is this? And we became more educated and the more educated we became, the more we loved it.
 
The more we loved it, the more we wanted to put it out there in the world. It was like, 'Everyone should have Kali in their bathroom! Ganesh, oh, this is great! Everyone should have this!' We were just very enthusiastic about the whole idea of people having these images in their homes.
 
Rediff: I have to ask, why toilet seats? If you had been making napkin dispensers with Ganesha on it, I doubt it would have provoked this reaction. But this is a toilet seat company, thus the hullabaloo.
 
LVD: Yes, isn't that funny. Why a toilet seat? I don't know. We never made toilet seats, but toilet seats and bathrooms are something that is pretty boring in people's homes. People decorate other parts of their homes, but the bathroom is pretty boring for the most part, and the bathroom is someplace where you go to be alone. Well, if you decorate your bathroom in a way that encourages you to think along certain lines, then there you are: alone in this environment, thinking in directions that you have already decided to think in. Fabulous! Lets have people think about Kali, let's have people think about Ganesh. Let's have people think about powerful, powerful things when they're alone, in our culture, in their bathrooms. Well, apparently that's not the case everywhere.
 
Rediff: Are you Hindu or do you follow any particular religion?
 
LVD: No, I could say that I was Hindu. When I first began making these products, I studied it and appreciated it and understood it and liked it and I realized why I never wanted to eat meat since I was six years old. I related to it, but I would never really say I was a Hindu. But I did feel a certain affinity. Something happened there for me.
 
Rediff: Have you ever had any of the Hindu seats in your bathroom?
 
LVD: Actually, I changed the seats in my bathroom. Right now, I have a hula girl in my bathroom. But I have had a red Kali seat. It's a beautiful seat.
 
Rediff: Why haven't you said anything to anyone up until this point? Have you been overwhelmed?
 
LVD: Completely! I came home from vacation and I had over a thousand e-mails and I had no idea what was going on. I read the first ten and thought, 'Oh, these people are pissed off, but, like what happened?' (laughing) We've been doing this for four years and sold only 13 seats. The company may only be a year old on paper, but we've been doing this off and on for four years. We don't support ourselves with this, we just maybe two or three times a year save up and make some toilet seats (laughing). Also, I'm not much of a computer person. I'm an artist. I hate my computer. I really only pretty much check the e-mail twice a week. But apparently people move much faster, so it's taken us a while to get to it (laughing).
 
Rediff: Where do you make the seats?
 
LVD: You are sitting in the factory (gesturing around her dining room). You are here, all around you. This is it. You're in the factory. Your Parliament has been talking about my dining room.
 
Rediff: Have you been following the press coverage?
 
LVD: Not until today [November 21]. Actually, today we got a hold of a bunch of them and we're completely stunned. It is the power of the Internet (laughing).
 
Rediff: I noticed that the Web site is down, as has been since last Friday.
 
LVD: Well, duh! This is not what we were expecting (laughing). We pulled it offline.
 
Rediff: What do make of people's reactions? Do you think it's genuine hurt or is it overreaction? What is your response to these people who are expressing this outrage?
 
LVD: Well, you know part of me really ... I understand, you know, I am a part of a group that is a minority in this society. I am a lesbian, I am a part of the gay and lesbian community. I understand that when you feel attacked from the outside you circle wagons and this is how you behave. I've done it. I completely understand it. I have respect for it actually because it does work, you know, you've been very affected. On the other hand, I feel that it's an awful lot of energy directed towards two people in Seattle who have made 13 Hindu toilet seats.
 
Rediff: Who has bought the seats?
 
LVD: Well, interestingly enough, most of seats have been sold to yoga studios.
 
Rediff: Where?
 
LVD: Philadelphia, the Southwest . some of them have been sold to people who are yoga people, who have them in their homes and they actually have transformed their entire bathrooms into shrines. They are, you know, people who have an affinity and a respect for the images. They are putting it in their bathrooms, and they choose to pursue that thought to the Nth degree and it's been beautiful as art.
 
Rediff: I guess you don't associate any insult, then, with having a holy image on a toilet seat.
 
LVD: Not at all. You know, that's the part that's very stunning to me. You know, humanity doesn't have very many things in common, but the one thing we all have in common are our bodily functions. Well, how we choose to deal with that, or perceive that apparently, is very different from culture to culture. I personally put no negative or positive aspects on any of this. That's just how it is. So the bathroom is just another room in the house that's kind of boring (laughing), so let's kick it up. Let's decorate, let's go in there.
 
Rediff: So, what are going to do from this point on? Are you going to reply to any of the e-mails or the phone calls from the anti-defamation people, the temple groups, or any of the other people?
 
LVD: Well, we received over 200 phone calls. I don't know one person from another, in terms of the phone calls at all. There's no way that I think we can respond to that and the e-mails, we can't even (touch) that. What we have figured out we can do, it seemed to me in the beginning that quite a few of the e-mails came from Hindu.org. I wrote a letter to the Web master at Hindu.org. Well, okay, so I have a letter, but what do you do with this letter? (laughing) Where do you send this when you've infuriated a few countries worth of people? Well, where do you send the letter? Okay, Dear Santa, I don't know! (laughing). So we sent it to Hindu.org.
 
Rediff: You mean Hindunet.org, don't you? They are connected to American Hindus Against Defamation. I think the protest page hosted by them is responsible for most of your response.
 
LVD: Good god! So we sent it to the wrong people? As you can see, we're not very technologically literate (laughing). It was a mistake, then .we left out the 'net.' I did sent a letter to Hindu.org, though, which turned out to be a very nice group of Hindu people in Hawaii. And they e-mailed back a little confused, asking if I had sent this for their magazine. I said, 'Well I don't really know what I sent this for, but apparently something is going on' and I sent it.
 
Rediff: Was this today [November 21]?
 
LVD: This was Sunday. So they became somewhat helpful. In my letter, I said that I had received death threats and threats of physical violence. I had also received inquiring from reasonable people, as well as threats and physical violence-threats of all kind of things. And this was not okay with me. I mean, these are toilet seats. I'm not prepared to have my life threatened over toilet seats. I put that in my letter. And they said, well, we agree with you on that. That is not part of our religious beliefs, that's not part of our spiritual beliefs, and if this has happened to you, we encourage you to go to the police. Then I thought, here's someone who's willing to communicate. Everyone else is just screaming at us. So I got back to them said, well, we would like to able to apologize for all of the stuff that's happened but we have no idea. How do we do that? Who to apologize to? How does that go?
 
Rediff: Are you done making these products then-at least the divine products?
 
LVD: Well, we're certainly done with having the Hindu seats on our Web page. And seeing as how we've sold 13 seats in four years, it's not going to be a great financial loss to us (laughing). It's like, the Hindu seats are not [that] big of a deal to us. It was in terms of us wanting people to have those images with them, but if that's a problem then okay, okay.
 
Rediff: Where do you want to go from here?
 
LVD: With the toilet seats? Not too far (laughing). Listen, this is pretty much a Rubic's Cube for us. It's like where can we go from here? I don't know, we're talking with you. That's because for some reason you popped up from the mass of chaos that's going on around us. We can't address that. We're two people here. Should we hand it to our customer relations department? (laughing). They'll take care of it. Yes, we'll give it to customer relations (laughing).
 
Rediff: How much response have you gotten?
 
LVD: Look at this (pulling out a file two-inches thick.) This is the file of all our e-mails. Sunday, I said, 'God, we better talk to somebody.' I'd say we've received 12 or 13 hundred e-mails and about 300 phone calls. It was a bunch of angry Hindus, and I say that because they were introducing themselves as angry Hindus-as in, Hello, I'm an angry Hindu. I said, wow, that's an interesting way to introduce yourself. Of those, maybe 75 left messages, including death threats.
 
Rediff: Really! How many were threatening?
 
LVD: I would say, not that many, maybe four or five-but they were intense. Let's see, we've been told to burn in hell, we've been cursed that "In 180 days something will happen to you and if we're progressive people and don't believe that, then it's going to happen anyway"-I love that one! (laughing) Seriously, that was pretty much word for word . Somebody from London is going to come over here and kick our f---ing ass . It's been really, very interesting.
 
Rediff: Have you been frightened?
 
LVD: Well, we've been more stunned than frightened. When you were knocking on the door today that got my heart going. We've been getting all these calls, and there's a man at the door .
 
Rediff: I'm so sorry.
 
LVD: It's alright. We opened the door in the end, though, didn't we?
 
Rediff: Would you like me to put you in touch with the American Hindus Against Defamation so you can put this mess behind you?
 
LVD: Yeah, that would be good if we could get in touch with them. I'm certainly into talking, but I'm not into talking to everyone that's contacted us. If you could help us make arrangements to talk, that would be great.
 

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