“But Mr. President!” you may cry in alarm, “Are you too not a bathroom and toilet related website?”

Yes, yes we are.

Were you even born in 1995?

My point is, things have changed since then, and it’s time that the ICBE embrace a few of those changes. So we’ve got a Facebook page, and a Twitter account. You can see links to them just over on the right. That’s it, right there under the search box.

Over there →

Come on, click one of them. You know you want to!

When did men become pussies? Is it a result of the women’s movement? Piss an arm’s length away at a trough? that’s insane. you can fit a whole extra guy in that space. Someone talks to you at a urinal? So talk back, why not? No stalls? So shit in the open, its all guys there. When there are 3 urinals, why not use the middle one? What is it there for decoration? And when all the toilets are full, to stand there and pretend you came in to wash your hands instead of just waiting a minute til a toilet opens up is insane behaviour. Everyone in a men’s room has a penis they pee out of and an asshole they shit out of. Why are men ashamed of either?

The first thing I want to do is address the issue of shame. It’s a common misconception that bathroom etiquette has its roots in shame, but this is simply not the case. A man does not need to be ashamed of his penis, or anything else to want a little breathing room when he goes to the bathroom. If you get on a bus, and there’s only one other passenger, are you going to sit right down beside them? I certainly hope not, and they hope not too. Not because they are ashamed of themselves, but because it’s ridiculous to cram yourself on top of somebody if you don’t have to.

Which brings us to the issue of etiquette vs. law. It’s proper etiquette not to use the middle of 3 urinals, because it’s nice to leave a space between people. That does not however mean that the middle urinal is never going to get used. It’s proper etiquette to not put your elbows on the table, yet it happens all the time. It would sure be nice if it didn’t though, wouldn’t it?

Yuck.

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Somebody please tell me this is a Photoshop job!

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Enter the GoGirl, which from what I can tell is a fancy pink funnel that costs $5.99. Tell me these things are reusable! (They are, and are reputed to have survived the dishwasher). Okay, I admit it - mostly I just really, really want this car:

GoGirl

StumbledUpon your site, it was good for blowing 15 minutes. Have you ever picked up the Alphabet of Manliness, by Maddox? It’s a rather cynical, offensive (yet hilarious) book by the author of www.maddox.xmission.com and it has a chapter on Urinal Etiquette that’s actually pretty funny. Thought you might be interested.

Also, your hate mail is absurb. I’m floored by the fact you garner so much hate.

In fact I have not read that book, but it sounds like I would appreciate at least 1/26th of the chapters…

I recently attended a festival with Port-a-John facilities. These seats are always pee-covered. In fact, pretty much the entire area inside the John is pee-covered, which causes a hazardous situation for women who must hover while standing on the slippery plastic floor or worse, the area that extends from the toilet opening.

Whenever I use one of these, I try to put the seat up. Why? Because a woman (or #2-ing man) would much rather go through the trouble of putting the seat down than hovering for the duration of the deed or creating a T.P. barricade on the soiled seat. Most often, in Port-a-Johns, T.P. is absent anyway. (suggestion: Bring your own T.P. to these events.)

This toilet seat etiquette should extend to unisex restrooms as well. Why? In a perfect world every guy would lift the seat, do the deed, and put it down. This is not the case. Guys, no matter how accurate the aim, leave pee-droplets. Pee droplets should be wiped and the seat raised so that gravity removes the remaining liquid.

These suggestions are not from a lazy guy, but a hygiene-concerned guy.

As a brief aside, I always call those damnable contraptions porta-potties. I wonder if there is some regional dialect associated with what we call them? But I digress.

First of all, my sympathies for having attended such an event. No fun, from a bathroom point of view. Men fare okay in such a situation, but women should never be forced to endure a poorly-maintained porta-potty (I have been in some sparklingly clean ones from time to time).

However, we need to take a moment to discuss etiquette vs. reality. Etiquette is what you should do, and therefor deals with precisely the kind of “perfect world” scenario that you describe. Proper etiquette dictates leaving the seat down in all situations where a woman might reasonably be expected to use the bathroom. It also dictates you should not pee all over the seat. Realistically leaving the seat up might help, but that doesn’t make it good etiquette.

That said, this is one of those situations where etiquette is pretty much thrown out the window. Anything that effectively helps keep the seat clean may well be appreciated by women, and is probably fine to do.

One more note on the seat up vs. seat down issue. This is a bigger deal in a home, where a woman is going to have a reasonable expectation that the seat is already down, especially in the middle of the night in the dark. I think that all women are going to check on the seat status in a public bathroom, and so effectively the seat condition will be less of an issue in these venues.

Oh, and great tip about bringing your own TP!

Possible explanation for why women taken so much longer than men in the bathroom sometimes? I especially love how the woman lines the seat with toilet paper, but then hovers over the seat without touching it anyways.

I don’t love how the man doesn’t wash his hands!

Thanks mhh5th.

Oh, those poor, poor Japanese husbands who are inflicted with this. House Doctor, the manufacturer of this bizarre contraption, have gone on a marketing campaign to convince Japanese housewives that their husbands should be peeing from their knees. Or as they put it:

Japanese men brought to their knees by angry housewives

Now the reasoning behind all this isn’t that crazy. When men pee, things splash. Little tiny droplets of urine and toilet water for example. But if it’s that big of a concern for certain incredibly annoying women, can’t the men just have a seat?

Look, we certainly don’t want women to be mopping up big puddles of urine. But this smacks of media scare tactics at their worst.

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