Why I will never put the toilet seat down again

Men in today’s society are expected to play every role that they did in previous generations ie. breadwinner/protector and also take on the role that was typically the woman’s role as well in previous generations, the sensitive nurturer adept at all domestic chores, raising children properly and keeping harmony in the household. As a man in my late thirties I am thankful for the training that my mother, sister. and other influential strong women, have given me to be able to round out my personality and be self-sufficient in my decisions on how to live comfortably on my own and make decisions regarding my kids that take into account both male and a learned female perspective. I feel that my generation is the first that have been educated this way from birth since the women’s movement in America in the 60’s. We men of this generation are Warrior/Poets, the strong ass-kickers that can cry with our kids when we watch Bambi. So having said that as part back-round story / part disclaimer, I will continue.
I was taught to be a gentleman and that chivalry was not dead but changed , that you must now just have respect for people and not offend them in your attempts to assist in any way or assume that anyone is inferior by attempting to help. In my mind it is still acceptable to hold a door open that might otherwise close on someone or offer my assistance to someone who has taken on an obviously heavy burden. I don’t make it a point to pull out chairs for every woman at the table or throw my coat in a puddle to keep someone’s ankle dry. By that definition, I am as “chivalrous” to both sexes as are a lot of people. Some of the old definitions of chivalry are merely part of polite human nature now in society. The over the top expressions of men being the macho dominant sex and women being just a fragile little flower, are over. Society now, wouldn’t and shouldn’t accept that. As a man who actually believes in equality, I applaud the fact that women have as equal an opportunity as men to chase their dreams in whatever area they choose. Women can achieve anything I can, and I look forward to my daughter growing up in a society that respects that.

SO why the fuck do I still have to put the toilet seat down!!

When I was a kid you put the toilet seat down as a matter of hygiene my mother told me. Having lived with several women and men and observed the lifestyles of countless other people, I realized that this just wasn’t the case, because I have observed that maybe 20% put down the toilet “lid” after using the facilities. Now take into account the “Green” movement that has been happening and in people’s effort to conserve water the phrase “if it’s yellow it’s mellow, if it’s brown then flush it down” keeps popping up in various needle-point forms in bathrooms everywhere in my life. So now we have a society that leaves urine in the toilet and, from my acute observation, doesn’t try to contain the sight or smell of it by even putting the lid down. That blows the “hygiene argument” Mom, as far as I’m concerned.
Yet still in today’s day and age, for reasons foreign to me until recently, men are still expected to put the toilet “seat” down. Why? I think i’ve finally figured it out…. it really boils down to the point that women want to perpetuate chivalry only in certain areas so as to ultimately make us men somehow responsible for them falling into the toilet in the middle of the night and getting their ass soaked because the were too lazy to check before they sat down to take that mid-night bleary-eyed piss.
There are times when I am too lazy to turn on the light to aim at a target in the middle of the night. When the time it would take for your eyes to adjust to the light exceeds the time it would take to relieve myself. So…. In my haste to return to sleep, I sit down. I’m not ashamed to admit it. I’ve had conversations with male friends and some of them have fallen into the toilet in the wee hours of the morning while sitting down to piss, but they just laughed it off because they knew they were to lazy ,drunk ,etc. to remember to put the toilet seat down. They weren’t blaming anybody else for it though, and the recounting of these stories was usually a source of laughter for everybody , including the storyteller.
Now let me paint another entirely different picture for the ladies. As any man will tell you , when we men wake up in the middle of the night “needing” to take a piss , the insanity-inducing, bladder-ripping feeling is usually accompanied by our good friend “the raging hard-on”. Our good friend, while usually welcome in our life to experience thrilling adventures together, is here this random night to perform both an act of mercy and ultimately…betrayal.
First and foremost, the merciful act it is performing, is to stand guard over our late-night-working bladder. Defending us from a potentially embarrassing ,definitely messy situation whilst the rest of us is in the throes of deep REM sleep (alcohol induced or not). But after standing at attention for so long our friend starts to get angry with us for making him stand guard alone against our bladder. Things get tense between those two and it turns into an ugly predicament, one that sneaks up and attacks you when you least expect it. I liken it to waking up the prisoner in an armed hostage situation, only you have taken yourself prisoner and you need to carefully negotiate your own release or get riddled with hot urine. I usually prefer to run outdoors into the cool night air with my friend in those situations to relieve ourselves in a giant, moon-lit, silvery, arc into the back yard, shaking my fist in the air and laughing at my victory over nature’s cruel curse that makes us get angry with each other for those few seconds…but sometimes weather doesn’t permit it. The indoor solution however, requires speed , delicacy and a bit of acrobatics to overcome. We are not talking about some lazy Sunday walk in the park to the bathroom, taking time to smell the flowers and feed the birds bread-crumbs. This procedure is more like a tactical military operation that requires precise timing, pinpoint accuracy, not to mention the ability to maneuver around whatever obstacles may be in your way during your sprint toward destiny….. with your friend looking threatingly at you. He is armed, pointing right at you, and is too painful to man handle into position to accommodate, whether or not you are standing up or sitting normally, for even if you could achieve the correct aim at that point the flow gets cut off similar to a kinked garden hose.
The indoor way that I’ve found that works best for me, requires a near one-handed handstand in front of the toilet whilst resting your ass-cheeks on the toilet , pointing your “self” into the toilet, pivoting your body so that most of your weight rest on your hands on the floor in front of you, lifting your legs off of the floor and then relieving yourself . This ensures proper flow by not bending anything too far, and at the same not pissing in my own face or all over the room. Having done this “maneuver” several times I have become quite adept at it. Even though there is usually only mili-seconds with which to perform this acrobatic feat in the dark, I always take the time to check to make sure fucking toilet seat is down! Otherwise my plan is ruined and it results in total failure, with complete loss of control trying not bash your head off of the floor. It can be catastrophic ladies. In addition to dunking parts into the toilet, we are now fighting for our lives, the cleanliness of the bathroom, and the ability to dodge our own golden shower all at once. You think that you women have it so tough. This ”man’s predicament” is something that most women have never even give consideration to unless they happen to at some point bear witness to this late-night anomaly…this natural joke on men. This is something that most men aren’t even going to discuss with you, ladies…probably because of how humiliating it must look to perform, but it happens all of the time, in every household that men dwell.

So having hopefully expressed my sentiment on exactly how much men’s situations can be equally, if not significantly more difficult during our late night episodes, why is it my responsibility to take the time to continue to enable this out-dated expectation from women. Equality….remember? I don’t ask that women lift the seat up for me so I can take a piss like a normal human male, standing there scratching my ass, as waves of spine- tingling relaxation consume me, the worries of the day ebbing away. I am however responsible for lifting the seat up so that I don’t perhaps drip on it and have to wipe it off myself afterwards. So why am I also responsible for making sure that women don’t dunk their taint in the bowl-water. How is it my obligation as a mostly upright urinator to predict the gender of the next toilet user and ensure ease for the next person, by leaving the seat up or down, much less defer to some outdated concept that says that I should automatically assume that the next user is female. To quote my Dad,“What am I a fucking mind reader?” So I leave the seat up because I figure that everybody is responsible and able enough to adjust the toilet parts on their own, to best suit their needs.
This whole circumstance of men being expected to put the toilet seat down reeks of chivalry and I think that it is demeaning to women to assume that they cannot achieve something so simple as checking to see if the toilet seat is down before they relieve themselves. I won’t take part in it anymore. I will not insult women’s intelligence or capabilities like that, and as a matter of fact I think its time that we men take back equal authority over our thrones, for the ability to piss mostly standing up, without having to wipe our legs off afterward… is ours …and ours alone. We deserve the right to practice it.
Sexist? Hardly. If I started demanding that everyone leave my toilet seat up, then that would be sexist. That is why, in the name of equality I refuse to put the toilet seat down ever again for anyone.