The founding editors of Appendx "wish to create a journal utilizing formats of critique/book review, critical dialogue, and critical essay in order to subject current architectural discourse to the fundamental realities of race, gender, and class stratifications."²  This project calls for an investigation of previously "veiled discourses," the ignored or unexpected cultural and ideological residue, faultlines, schisms, and omissions in architectural discourse, where attitudes toward certain "fundamental realities" are often expressed elusively, subtextually, ambiguously, or paradoxically.  As participants in contemporary architectural discourse, their "statement of intent" and "journal description" necessarily invite such a critique.  I will therefore take this opportunity to demonstrate that while these declarations, like the men's room in the Science Center, reveal a curious and serious lack, this lack, unlike that of the Science Center men's room, is one that seems unintentional and is most readily experienced by the reader unfamiliar with its theoretical contextualization. 

In other words, my principal aim here is to emphasize the frequently overlooked and crucial need for academic discourse to contemplate and communicate with a broader audience.  Insofar as the academy is becoming more and more interdisciplinary, and pedagogical and critical practice are becoming more interdisciplinary, and more interdisciplinary journals like Appendx are being established, the academy's potential as an arena for enlightenment is becoming greater and greater.  This is clearly the recent direction of the academy.  Yet the overall effectiveness of this interdisciplinary movement as a source of educational inspiration and enlightenment dependson the mutual accessibility and circulation of ideas.  To promote this interdisciplinary movement, it is imperative that we give critical attention to the significance of what's lacking as well as to the significance of what's present in all academic discourse; as implied by Appendx's founding editors, it is often a lack of some kind that circumscribes thought and expression and makes inclusiveness impossible. 

Nowhere in either the founding editors' "statement of intent" or "journal description" is there any explicit mention of sexuality.  Considering the politically progressive agenda intimated by their desire to hold architectural discourse accountable for its cultural politics, the apparent omission of sexuality from their catalog of crucial realities is surprising.  After all, sexuality is a reality that informs all of the other realities catalogued (in the above quotation and elsewhere in their declarations), for the realities of race, gender, class, "ethnic," and "cultural" stratifications are all inextricably related to conceptions of sexuality.  lust as there is an influential relationship between all of the realities catalogued, there is also an influential relationship between these realities and the cultural politics of sexuality.  None of these crucial realities, including sexuality, should be discussed as if it exists in a vacuum.  This is not to say that these pervasive realities must always be granted the same attention in a discussion, but that the connections between them must not be ignored, especially within the context of a journal's statement of purpose.  But is the reality of sexuality really ignored by the founding editors, or simply represented in such a way that it is obscured or hard to acknowledge without a definite theoretical understanding! It is precisely the need to ask this question and the ambiguity that encouraged it that led me to compare the omission of any straightforward reference to the reality of sexuality in the declarations with the deliberate removal and actual lack of the stall doors in the Science Center men's room.