My mom went ballistic with this issue. Absolutely nuts. Screaming and ranting because the toilet seat wasn’t down…it was just loony.
I never understood how a woman could back into something with her panties around her ankles without looking first.
-Tcat
I prefer the seat down because it’s impossible to put the lid down while having the seat up. I like the lid down for the same reason I like cupboard doors closed and drawers closed: tidiness.
I also get up during the night to pee, often more than once.
No light required.
I think woman demand it because they can. Mothers pass it on to their sons, which in turn gives legitimacy to their sons’ girlfriends and wives demanding the same thing.
I told my mother one time, “While I have no problem putting the seat down when in your home, not putting it down in my home is not rude just because you say so.”
I personally don’t get the desire to leave the seat up in the first place. It takes all of 1 second to lift and lower the seat/lid combo, and it is presented as some sort of hardship. It’s like people not using their turn signals because it’s a “hassle”.
Anastaseon has it 100% right. When you’re done using the toilet, put the lid back down. Do you often leave things with attached lids gaping wide open 24/7? The lid is there for tidiness, AND to prevent things like hair brushes and toothpaste caps from falling in if you accidentally drop them.
OTOH, complaining that you “fell in” because hubby didn’t put the seat down is just silly. If he had put down the seat and lid, would you complain because you just sat down on a lid instead of a seat?
Exactly! Seat down is the natural state of a toilet. I only need to lift it when cleaning (and then I put it back down.) So 100% of my time using it, it’s down. Sometimes, my husband and son need it down, and sometimes they like it up. Ergo, it is needed in its down position more than its up position.
Then it just becomes a matter of: put it back where you found it. Common courtesey.
And, yes, if I’m visiting an all-male household and enter to find the seat up, I replace it into the fully upright position when I’m done. Common courtesey. (I’d do the same in an all female or mixed household, but I’ve never seen it up in such a case.)
I think people like you (my son and husband) are why I’m always cleaning little yellow sticky stains from the back of the seat, the outside of the toilet and even the wall. I know they’re not coming from me! You may not be aiming as well as you think, kemosabe! 
I’m curious: How many women have peed on a toilet lid before?
If you can manage to tell when the lid is down so you don’t pee on it, I don’t see how it would be possible to not tell when the seat is up so you don’t fall in.
I’ve never peed on the lid.
As for the second part of your question, I already answered it, for myself, in post #13.
Since I’m the one who does my toilet cleaning, I’m fairly certain I’d notice if I was missing my target :).
Mind you, normally I turn the light on. I only use my Super Special Ninja Peeing skills when no light is available.
I also go to the bathroom in the middle of the night…there is no window in our bathroom, so it is pitch-dark.
Why can’t you just feel with your hands? Did you ever pee on the lid in the dark?
Speaking as a lady, when I have to pee late at night I often do not turn on lights. For several reasons - the first being that there is sufficient ambient light in my home not to trip over things (other than cats - cats really don’t count when it comes to tripping over things late at night) while walking, and yet the brilliance of a light being turned on when my eyes are accustomed to darkness is swords driving into my brain!! Also, my eyes do not focus well when I first wake up. The light doesn’t really assist my vision that much until I’ve woken up fully - which I would prefer not to do while getting up to use the restroom in the night, as it will then take me approximately 15 minutes to fall back asleep (I know this - I’ve timed it - more than once). Also, our toilet seat and bowl are the same color. When combined with blurry vision and light-dazzled eyes (which take a good 3 - 4 minutes to clear up for me), means that even when I look, sometimes I can’t for the life of me tell the difference. So my choices are to either stand naked and cold in my bathroom until my eyes adjust and my vision unfuzzes and in the process wake up completely or to hope that my sweetheart has been considerate enough to comply with my request to leave the seat down.
Also, the toilet in our household is booby-trapped. If the seat is up, at least 80% of the time, absent use of catlike relfexes and ninja skills (which are impossible for me when I’ve just woken up), the lid will follow the seat down at 1.3 seconds delay - just enough to give you a nice hard whack on the wrist bone just as you place the seat into position but before you get your hand out of the way. I have attempted to fix it, without success, and my dearly beloved (while a fine man in every way) is abyssmally mechanically disinclined unless he is repairing computer hardware.
Also to be considered is the notion that using the bathroom is a task customarily accomplished without actual thought. It’s something most people do without thinking about it - on autopilot, so to speak. This is even more the case during late-night usage. It only takes a minor deviation in routine to fully louse up an autopilot.
Additionally, we have cats. Cats who find joy in knocking toiletry articles off the counter and into the toilet. While I keep my toilet clean, my urge to brush my teeth with the toothbrush I just found floating in there is fairly limited.
I suspect the reason so many ladies are adamant on the topic is that it is really a quite minor request - and it is profoundly, drastically aggravating when we douse our delicate lady-parts in ice-cold water at three o’clock in the morning. My theory is that the insistence of the request springs directly from the entertainment of that sensation. A lady of my acquaintance assured that the gentlemen in her life would stop “forgetting” to honor her request by informing them (and following through every single time) that for every time she accidentally had a frigid dipping, she would reciprocate in kind.
Like when someone leaves the seat up?
There’s actually another option and I’m mystified as to why so many women never seem to have thought of it. You can feel with your hands. That’s what I do if I have to sit down in the dark. Do women really just guess without feeling around?
Yep. That is exactly what we do. That “OOOOPPPPS, I appear to be IN the toilet rather then ON the toilet” ain’t a good feeling.
That said. I share a loo with my son. He never ever puts the seat down and I never ever put it up. So far neither of us has died because of a tragic loo seat accident.
It is bloody annoying though.
Yes I have peed on the lid - yes I do go to the washroom so sleepy and bleary eyed that I do not look at the toilet - I just plunk myself down. And yes I’ve fallen in and a few occassions.
But this is not truly why I like the toilet seat down. I feel dirty and grimmy if I have to touch the seat. If my husband leaves it up I gingerly flick the seat with my finger and it ‘bangs’ down (he hates this). I do it because I hate the germs I mentally associate with the toilet seat. He has to contaminate his hands by touching the toilet seat with his hand to put it down in the first place so he might as well put it up since he’s already contaminated. No, I do not have a germ phobia thing in general - no other issue bothers me but this one. And go figure - my husband is a plumber.
He loves me though and has given up his bachleor habit of leaving the seat up. Funny thing is that he really only made a committed change when we married, not when we lived together. That was the last deeply seated 
habit he changed for me.
I grew up in a family of five girls - i.e. the seat was never ever ever left up.
Just curious…if the woman is not expected to have to check the position of the lid before commencing in the night, does that mean it’s also ok for the guy to just take it out and start pissing in the dark without bothering to check if the lid is up? If I piss on the lid is it my wife’s fault for not leaving it up?
I am pretty sure that the ladies are envious of our ability to pee while standing and when they encounter a raised seat, it is really just a mocking reminder of that fact. Otherwise I am forced to conclude that a lot of women plunk their naked butts down and are not sure what they are plunking them on, and that’s just crazy talk.
The natural postion of the toilet seat is “down.” Just like the natural position of the milk carton is for the opening to be folded in. The natural position of a sofabed is to be in the “couch” setup, not the “bed” setup. The natural position of the toothpaste cap is to be on the tube, not sitting on the edge of the sink. The natural position for a garbage can that has a lid is for the lid to be down.
That the natural position of toilet seats happens to be the position in which females generally use the toilet is coincidental. It’s not a male vs. female thing; it’s a “put the thing back to it’s normal state” thing. Since males are usually the ones removing the seat from its normal state, they are the ones who usually have to return it that way.
A toilet with the seat up looks weird anyway. It’s kind of trashy-looking. Truckstop-ish. This big gaping maw in the bathroom. Just put the seat down already. Put the whole lid down too, while you’re at it. Otherwise your toothbrush might accidentally on purpose fall in there.
Cite?
missbunny, your argument sounds pretty rational but I am not quite there with it. I have know more than one woman who was more than happy for many, many things to not be in their “natural” state (as you describe it) and yet had this strange thing with the seat lid. I think that we need to look at this in somewhat broader anthropological/sociological or even evolutionary terms. I think we need to ask ourselves how it was at one time an evolutionary advantage to put one’s naked and vulnerable ass down on things without first checking to see what was there.