Just Taking The Piss

So what do you usually talk to your hairdresser about while he/she’s cutting your hair? Let’s think....holidays (pretty standard)....the weather (it usually comes up before holidays - the desire for some sun).....maybe house renovations, which invariably leads onto the topic of husbands.....and their DIY skills, or perhaps their lack thereof. But what about discussing our husbands’ toilet habits.... that’s a bit off-side, isn’t it.... or is it? It turns out my hairdresser’s husband is pretty much on target, or at least his aim is...because she insists he sits down to pee, and he obliges! B says “That’s one ‘whipped’ man!”......but I’ve done some ‘indepth investigations’ (I Googled “Men Sitting Down To Pee”) and I can reveal that it’s a fairly common ‘peenomenon’.

Forget the age-old ‘seat-up versus seat-down’ debate between the genders, apparently an increasing number of women are now asking their men to sit down when they ‘point Percy at the porcelain/siphon the python/get out the one-eyed trouser snake/strain their tatters/wring out the sponge/empty the hairy plums/water the horses/go where the big knobs hang out/shake hands with the wife's best friend/drain the dragon/ring the rattlesnake/unbutton the mutton/take a leak’. Even in these good new days of equality and chore-sharing, women are still more likely to be the ones that clean the bathroom...and we’re weary of wiping up wayward weewee (now say that last bit 20 times, fast).

Japanese men, in particular, are not afraid to admit they’re ‘dudes who pee like a lady’ (with apologies to Steve Tyler). A survey conducted in 2007 by Western-style toilet manufacturer Matsushita Electric Works found that around 40% of adult Japanese men sit down to empty their bladders...almost three times the number recorded in 1999.




Astonishingly, the statistics are even higher for the Germans, a population already renowned for having more than a healthy interest in the contents of their toilet bowls. There, men are being shamed into sitting to urinate by a little gadget called Spuk, or ‘Spook’. Attached to the underside of the toilet seat, Spuk quietly endures sitting visitors.....but anyone trying to lift the seat and attempt to stand and urinate (known as ‘Stehpinkeln’) should be prepared for the ghost’s unrelenting wrath.

“Hey, stand-peeing is not allowed here and will be punished with fines, so if you don’t want any trouble, you’d best sit down,” one of the devices orders in a voice impersonating the former German leader, Chancellor Gerhard Schroder. Other versions start roaring like a lion or try to persuade stubborn customers with the soothing voice of a female flight attendant. “We welcome you aboard Never Come Back Airlines,” the voice says. “We’d like to ask our male passengers in particular to sit down, buckle up and refrain from smoking.”


Patentwert, the manufacturers of Spuk, say they are ready to direct their gadgets at the British market. Their prototype English-speaking ‘WC ghost’, says in an American drawl:
“Don’t you go wetting this floor cowboy, you never know who’s behind you. So sit down, get your water pistol in the bowl where it belongs. Ha, ha, ha.”

Patentwert also plan to copy the voice of the Queen....perhaps to say something along the lines of: “Kindly be seated. One does not want one’s bottom wetted with one other’s weewee”. Indeed ma’am....that would be an ‘anus horriblis’.


Avoiding the ‘splash factor’, though, is not the only reason some Swedish women are pressurising their men to take a seat. A feminist group at Stockholm University is campaigning to ban all urinals from campus, “because a man standing up to urinate is deemed to be triumphing in his masculinity, and by extension, degrading women." Their argument is that “if women can't do it, then men shouldn't either”. Personally, I think they’ve missed a trick...thanks to the Shewee, we girls can now write our names in the snow as well as any lad. Invented by 28-year-old New Zealander, and James Dyson Award winner, Samantha Fountain, the portable urinating device is ergonomically-designed and (most importantly) dishwasher-safe. The 'suction' of the Shewee’s fit to ladies’ 'bits' has been likened to that of Dyson’s vacuum cleaners....let’s just hope that’s an exaggerated description of its leak-proof seal.


No more sitting on less than desirable public toilet seats, peeing onto our shoes as we attempt to hover over squat toilets, and baring our bums in the public eye or...and here I write from personal experience....straight back onto stinging nettles!

Ladies, it’s time to stand up and… pee!