Speaking for myself, I have never *whined or sulked * over it. I have asked politely, and my husband has found it a reasonable enough request. The whining and sulking I’m referring to usually has words like “Why should I?” in it. Phrases like “Could you please lower teh seat when you’re done? Thank you” don’t count as whining in my book, but maybe that’s just me.
Seriously, are some of you even reading the thread, or just picking little lines out and thinking “AHA! I will zing this person so bad, and that means I win!”
I’m not here to argue. This isn’t Great Debates. I gave my opinion. And right now, my opinion is that I am glad I married such a reasonable, non-petty person who doesn’t make excuses to get out of doing a simple, reasonable request. Reread my posts. I do the same thing for my husband when he asks. Or, is any request from a woman considered “demanding”?
Threads like this make me wonder if I had an unconventional upbringing, because I also have difficulty imagining how you sit on the cold bowl, even if the lights are off. Every toliet I’ve ever had has been much cooler than the wooden or plastic seat, so I think I’d notice the difference if while sitting the backs of my legs touched the cooler surface. The only way I can imagine not being able to stop one’s self in mid-sit if they touched porcelain would be to take a running leap onto the toliet. Or perhaps to hover above the toliet then drop onto the seat from above with great velocity…
Anastasaeon, I think that you may be reading a little more gender politics into the issue than is intended. For the record, I do leave the seat and the cover down because I have a cat and am not big on the drinking out of the commode issue and it is also more practical as I have noticed that any time that an object is dropped in the bathroom it heads for the commode with hellish accuracy.
However, for all of that I will say that in my time on this earth that I have encountered bitching about this and that it almost always centers on the “I put my bare ass on the porcelain” statement. Tell me that it looks better closed, and I will understand. Tell me that with it closed the odds of a dropped object falling into the john are smaller, and I will understand. Tell me that you don’t like the pets drinking from that water, and I will understand. But tell me that you sit your naked ass on surfaces that you are not 100% sure of, and I am afraid that you will have to put up with my sniggering.
I asked to see if it was a reasonable request, or just a sexist one trying to push all the inconvenience on the male. So far, my original opinion has only been strengthened, but I guess it is only an opinion in the end.
I would not have a problem with a moderator moving this to Great Debates. I didn’t figure the topic would be very arguable, but I guess it is and I would prefer people didn’t hold back just because of the forum it’s in.
You’re being disingenuous. Yes, you are whining about the toilet seat. You’re whining in the form of a “polite request,” but it’s still whining, and it sounds like you’re not really giving your husband the option of saying no, or even questiioning you at all about it or else he’s a whiner. You’re defining "whining’ as anyone who questions your own whining.
What if your husband politely asked you to put the seat back up when you were done? Would that be a reasonable request? Would you be whining if you asked him why?
Men use the toilet: #1 - 4 to 10 times per day #2 - 1 or 2 times per day
So with a liberal estimate - men need the toilet seat down between 12% & 20% of the time.
Women use the toilet with the seat down 100% of the time - so in a house with one man and one woman - the seat up vote is 56+ %.
Two men and one woman - the seat up vote is somewhere around 44% - not a majority but still quite high, and high enough considering that the man camp will need the seat down at some time as well to leave it down.
Plus splashing your butt in the toilet in the dark really sucks!
I don’t quite get the “bare ass on porcelain” argument, either. I admit that I have fallen in once or twice, but I’ll readily admit that it was 99.99999% my own damn fault, and hubby just forgot to put the seat back down as I politely requested, and he said he would do. I went in to the bathroom, half asleep, unable to see a foot in front of my face, saw a vague shape of a hole, assumed (ass out of u and me and all that) the seat was down… and fell in. Hardy hardy har! I can laugh at that. And my husband kept saying he was so sorry through his tears - of laughter.
The only man who pees 10 times a day is one with a prostate problem. Otherwise 2-4 is more realistic. Likewise for #2; the typical male diet results in 0-1 dumps per day.
I gave my husband a reason for my request: tidyness. He found this reasonable. He asks me to make his work lunches for him. I do this because I find this reasonable. I find neither request to be “whining”, but our definitions may differ on this. Sometimes he vacuums. Sometimes I take out the trash. So I will say now, perhaps I am whining. I may just not be aware of it, and am using the wrong paradigm for my argument.
I have stated in this thread that I am a fluid person, and my opinions can and do change. If my husband came to me and gave me a reason to put the seat up for him, I would do it. In fact, I will ask him tonight if he would prefer it that way.
And yes, if he said that he preferred me to leave the cover up all the time, and I nagged at him about it, or asked why I had to, that would most certainly be whining. And sulking.
Seriously, I didn’t realise I was coming off as such a demanding shrew. But, I may be. I’m willing to face that idea and overcome it if possible. Might make me a better person in the end.
Will we take the middle ground and accept 6-7 times per day with a cite? 2-4 and I’d strongly suspect dehydration, or someone who’s setting themselves up for health problems by “holding it.”
Less than one bowel movement a day (for an adult male) is considered “constipated” and increases ones chances of Parkinson’s - 4.5 times that of a man who has two and a half bowel movements per day. (cite ). I assume they’re talking averages here, and not a turtle every day…
I think everyone agrees that with an equal number of males and females, the toilet seat will need to be down for most bathroom operations. However, how does this indicate that males should lower it after using it? I don’t see the relation.
If I owned a house and was the only person living in it, I would not get onry when female guests left the seat down. If there were 10 males living in the house but no females (what an unpleasant thought), I still wouldn’t get upset and I doubt any inhabitant of the house would. Most males would consider it ridiculous, and I don’t see why the opposite isn’t.
Here’s what I’m not getting: why some men see, “You put it up, therefore you put it back down” to be such an unreasonable request. Why should the other person have to put it down? That makes about as much sense to me as saying, “I dirtied these dishes, therefore you should clean them if you want to use them again.”
Luckily, this isn’t even an issue on our house, since we keep both the seat and lid down when the pot isn’t in use, to keep the animals out. And that was my husband’s idea, not mine.
You expect us to lower it for you, but you won’t raise it for us. A closer metaphor would be saying, “You use the most dishes, so you get to clean them all.” Yeah, I’d say that’s unreasonable alright.
Okay, he came home, and I showed him this thread, and then I asked him: “Would you prefer if I left the seat up for you?”
His eyes got wide and he said, “Two words: FECAL BACTERIA! And you can quote me!”
So, I showed him this, and he stood by his original answer. “Less fecal bacteria anywhere is better. Toilet seat goes down.” Don’t look at me, I never told him a thing about bacteria. However, he is pretty anal (hee!) about cleanliness. Sure, it hasn’t killed anyone yet, but this is a man who gets freaked out by those Clorox adverts. So if that’s what makes him comfortable, that’s how things will be.
His final say: “It’s just a toilet seat. It’s not hard. It looks better down to me, anyway.”
Right or wrong, in this household, the toilet seat now stays down. But I have given him the option. I actually want to leave the seat up for him once or twice to see if he considers it a nice thing (toilet has already been flushed, by then), or if he shuts it on his own. I was worried earlier that my requests for him to put it down might have “trained” him into just putting it down, but I think his overriding hypochondria is going to keep the seat down whether I’m here or not. At this point, if I kept leaving the seat up for him, he might be the one to tell me to put the seat down. I’ll think I’ll still try it, though.
So, all I can offer here is: if I were married to a man who preferred the seat up, and asked me politely to do so, then I would. And I would (try to) do it without whining or considering it “sexist” (the OPs word, not mine).
Also, if I enter a home where the toilet seat is up when I go in, it is up when I leave.
I have also left my cats out of the equation to try to be fair. Maybe not to them, but for people who don’t own cats.
The point I was getting at was so many men find the seat in a down position and think that they should be able to leave it up and the onus is on the woman to put it back down. Why?
But there you’re presuming “down” as the correct postion, making your arguement circular. I mean, imagine “up” were considered the correct position. I could make your same post replacing men with women, and down with up, and it would do nothing to answer the question of why “up” was the correct position.
Also, I’m not sure if I made it clear: when I said earlier that we both have to lift to use, close to finish, my husband doesn’t have to bend over twice. He says he lifts both the lid and the seat at the same time, so it’s no big deal. I still lift the lid, then close it when I’m done. He lifts the lid and seat at the same time, then puts it down when he’s done. No extra work involved, for either of us. It is the same.
Anyway, not that it matters. The matter in this house seems to be resolved. By my husband.
I can laugh at that. And my husband kept saying he was so sorry through his tears - of laughter.