I find the weirdest things to ask about. Anyway, I was looking over some German etiquette regulations at this website: http://www.thelocal.de/society/20120510-42465.html
…and it seems that sitting is the preferred mode of urination for men in Germany. I came across a couple of additional articles like this one that also discuss the phenomenon, although the one I linked to implies that it is a recent social change.
Has it historically been discouraged in Germany (or any other countries/cultures) for men to urinate in the standing position? It can’t be universally taboo in Germany, as men’s bathrooms in that country certainly have urinals–perhaps it’s simply the norm for private homes?
Holland - right next door to Germany, on the road to France, so to speak - Amsterdam has public urinals, some recently installed out in public to discourage guys from peeing in the nearest available doorway. They also have the famous urinals with the fly painted on them to encourage good aim.
So it doesn’t seem to be in any way discouraged in that general area of Europe.
It’s a considerate behavior encouraged where only toilets (no urinals) are provided. I think it’s a relatively new thing, to encourage cleanliness in a society with few circumcised men.
Because not all uncircumcised males pull back the foreskin while urinating (or don’t pull it back far enough), and if you don’t pull it back you’re more likely to spray.
I get the impression this has more to do with cleanliness of the bowl and rim (don’t want water splashing up) than with the actual act of urinating. I’ve seen guys standing and pissing right next to the main road in Stuttgart, or on the grounds of the Oktoberfest. By that standard, standing and peeing into a toilet seems positively regal.
My brother has been living in Germany for about 5 years now. He once visited a flat he was interested in living in, and asked to use the toilet. He urinated standing up (with the door closed, of course) and when he came out of the toilet his potential flatmates said something along the lines of “we heard you pissing standing. If you want to live with us, you’ll have to sit down instead”. I don’t think the same social rules apply to public urinals, though.
Here in Sweden, there have been attempts - particularly by feminist groups - to encourage men to sit to urinate. At my former workplace (a university), some of the toilets had a little sign next to the toilet bowl asking you to sit. But I haven’t been confronted by anyone for urinating standing
Last year I read something similar about men being encouraged to sit in Taiwan. The minister quoted seems to think Sweden and Japan are the leaders in this trend.
Personally, I don’t need advice on how to piss and I’d find it a little insulting to be offered it. On the other hand, apparently many other men do.
I once stayed in a hotel in Japan. The toilet had a little stick diagram next to it showing a man standing up and peeing with the seat raised and another showing a person sitting on the seat. I guess if the only toilet you’ve ever experienced is a squat toilet, you might not know what to do.
German (male) here. While it’s true that in certain circumstances, sitting while urinating is desired, it’s definitely not the common modus operandi for men in Germany, and doing it standing is certainly far from “taboo”. Some people try to enforce the practice in their private homes where only a toilet bowl and no urinal is present, for obvious sanitary reasons. In public restrooms, urinals or urinal walls and thus urinating standing is the norm. Btw., most of the linked article in the OP about German etiquette rules is bullshit.
As for Germany, it’s not a taboo but urinating sitting down is often (and increasingly, in the last few decades) asked for as considerate behaviour, particularly
[ul]
[li]in private homes (where the person who is stuck with cleaning the toilet is fed up with cleaning piss traces from floor and walls)[/li][li]for toilets shared by members of both sexes (where the women don’t like piss traces outside the toilet). Almost three decades ago I worked in a small university department with one toilet; one day the women had enough, ganged up on us and made us sit down.[/li][/ul]
The physical reason is: even when the seat is up and the urinating man has excellent aim and a perfect, er, nozzle, there is some fine droplets that leave the main stream, and some splashback. The fine urine mist part you can verify for yourself - just have a high-pressure piss outdoors on a sunny morning or afternoon with the sun in your face. You will see it then.
There are stickers available (e.g. this one http://shop.immi.de/files/2012/04/Im-Sitzen-Pinkeln.jpg ) for exasperated homemakers of colleagues to put on the cistern or on the inside of the lid. I encounter them in many private homes nowadays - as a matter of fact I always sit down on the toilet in private homes.
Of course there is some pushback, like always when people are asked to be considerate (noise abatement and speed limits seem to rouse much the same kind of emotions). Hence the derogatory term Sitzpinkler, used by self-designated manly men - they also use digs like Frauenversteher (man understanding women - i.e. not a real man) and Warmduscher (taker of warm showers - real men take cold showers). There are also caricatures of the “please piss sitting” stickers such as this one Eigenen Blog erstellen 2023: Kostenlose Anbieter im Vergleich.
I still don’t get this. I’ve peed standing up most of my life, and there has never been a puddle or anything else with splashback. And, even if there was, you should be cleaning your bathroom anyways, whether there’s pee on the floor or not. You’re not going to do it any less often, right?
It’s not a conscientious thing. It’s a just a weird cultural social thing. Like, I personally would be more offended that those flat guys above were listening to me pee and had the audacity to comment on it in such a rude way. I wouldn’t want to live with anyone like that over here.
I mean, it’s not something you can possibly notice without specifically listening for it. And if you cared that much, let me know ahead of time about your rules, instead of trying to catch me doing it so you can chastise me.
Seriously, no-one pisses without retracting their foreskin. The only people who imagine that happening are people who have had their foreskins removed as infants. Piss can spray, drip, go everywhere, for many reasons, particularly as a man ages, and certainly some men are very careless with their urine, but it’s got absolutely nothing to do with whether they’re [del]mutilated[/del] circumcised or not.
