I am begging you. Via hll!H @ Flickr.
SIT ON THE TOILET. SIT. ON IT. PUT YOUR BUTT ON THE TOILET SEAT.
I work at a public college, and the bathroom nearest my office is cleaned four times a day. Four times. Sit on the toilet.
Even if your workplace doesn’t clean the restrooms four times a day, I bet you have custodial services in there either before or after work, once a day, minimum. Sit on the toilet.
Unless you have oozing, suppurating, open wounds on the backs of your thighs, it is safe to sit your bare-naked-self on a public toilet seat. Sit on the toilet.
You cannot get STDs from a toilet seat. Sit on the toilet.
Your skin is a flexible, water-proof, germ-resistant barrier. You probably bathe regularly, too, so that anything that shouldn’t be there will be washed off in short order. Sit on the toilet.
Urine is sterile. Sit on the toilet.
If you sit on the toilet, whatever comes out of you will land IN the toilet, not on the toilet. Sit on the toilet.
If you are so squeamish that the thought your bare bum might touch porcelain that has touched another bare bum makes you pee-shy, put down some TP, and then? Sit on the toilet.
You will find far more germs on your hands, your telephone, your computer keyboard than you will on a public toilet seat. Sit on the toilet.
Please, please, please, my sisters, do your part for womanity and Sit. On. The Toilet.
And for maude’s sake, wash your hands!
My four exceptions, all of which I have encountered:
1.) Toilets in the middle of nature reserves that are heavily encrusted in diarrhea.
2.) Toilets that have no seat, and are made of metal.
3.) Lady urinals that have no seat and which you straddle, such as at the National Zoo. (this was actually kind of awesome. On the wall in front of them is a poster describing how lobsters communicate via streams of urine.)
4.) Toilets which are pits in the floor, such as the ones I encountered on a mountaintop in Annecy, France.
Every legitimate law must be tempered by its exceptions.
L.G., you have obviously been in some of The World’s Nastiest Bathrooms. Becky Sharper agrees with your #2 exception (ha ha, “#2″!), which she referred to as “prison toilets.” And of course, you can’t sit on a pit. Nothing like travel to make you appreciate the comforts of home, eh?
A lot of the public bathrooms that I’ve been to are absolutely disgusting. I’m not going to sit on the damn toilet seat if it’s disgusting. And no, I don’t make a mess. It’s not hard to hover.
If it’s “not hard to hover” without making a mess, why do you suppose “a lot” of those public toilet seats are “absolutely disgusting”?
You can get crabs from a toilet seat. enough said.
NO.
NO YOU CAN’T.
This myth that you can get X gross crotch disease from public facilities has existed since the Victorian era (at least), perpetrated mostly by philandering men who brought STIs home to their wives, and who used the “public toilet” excuse to keep from being caught.
Jeezus, just sit the fuck down.
Well, you can get crabs from a toilet seat if “toilet seat” is yet another euphemism for “panty hamster.”
Wholeheartedly agree re” the silliness of hovering. People don’t transmit disease through the backs of their legs.
Somewhat on that note, I would like to add that, unless the previous user forgot to flush, there’s no need for the prissy pre-flush. If you’re in a regularly-cleaned facility in the developed world, the water in that toilet is cleaner than most people on earth have to drink, cook with, and bathe in every day. It’s silly and wasteful to require that the water in a toilet be fresh and pristine as Pellegrino Still for you to urinate and/or defecate into it.
Thank you.
As an environmentalist, what I’m reading here about these plastic seat covers at the casinos and at O’Hare disturbs me. Plastic never goes away.
I am a hoverer.
But I take it to the next level.
I am very aware of germs all over the place, but some I choose to ignore, others I obsess over. For example, I am happy to sit on the toilet at my boyfriends house even though I know he and his housemate have a typical bachelor pad.
If any of you have watched Trainspotting, that toilet is how I see ALL toilets. Even if they look deceptively pristine. It is only when I have got ‘used’ to it by using it several times will I sit on it. like at a friends house I will generally sit.
I do not want to touch the handle of the stall, the flush handle – ANYTHING because microscopic splashes of wee probably land there and plus dirty hands. I use tissue for everything.
First I flush the toilet if there is ‘debris’ from a previous user.
If I need a wee I will hover. I do wipe if I splashed.
If I need a pooh wipe the seat for any splashes of water/wee – whatever.
Then I line the seat with tissue if I need a poo.
I then wash my hands. use tissue to close the tap if possible. try my hands with tissue and not use the hot air dryer which harbours bacteria, then use tissue to open the door and get out of the bathroom.
I think I just prefer my own germs to those of strangers.
I kiss my boyfriend, but I know the average mouth is dirtier than the average toilet. I have piles of washing up in the sink breeding bacteria, but I don’t mind.
yeah, I know I dont eat off the back of my thighs, but I dont want my knickers & trousers/skirt to be carrying around bits of someone elses excretia (sp). its gross.
Not to mention, they ran test on mythbusters that proved those paper toilet seat covers are completely useless as germ barriers and that your palms and mouth had more germs at the end of the day than one of the public toilets seats that are regularly cleaned.
OMG I love love love love YOU! I often feel like I am the only woman on the face of the earth who doesnt wanna use one of those paper toilet thingies BECAUSE its wasteful and just plain silly!!!!! You dont even know how happy this article made me.
I simply cannot sit on an unfamiliar toilet, even at a friend’s house. Once I use the same toilet a few times, I can trust it enough to sit on it. No this does not make sense, but it’s what I do.
Hovering isn’t gross as long as you follow the rule: If you sprinkle when you tinkle, be a sweetie, wipe the seatie.
Why sit on the toilet when you can just as comfortably stand over it and pee? I don’t even sit down to pee in my own home.
Well, maggie, chacun a sa gout, but that is the weirdest thing I’ve ever heard on the subject.
Maggie,
Please tell me how do you pee standing up? I don’t care how weird it is, I want to try…
I usually sit on the toilet in public restrooms, unless some pig urinated all over the toilet seat before I got there, and didn’t clean it up. It’s happened several times, and one of the times there was shit on the seat. How does a woman get pee and/or poop all over the toilet seat? And I’m not talking about a small drop; I’ve seen pee sprayed all over the seat, and the floor too. It’s disgusting. And the worst part is there aren’t any other stalls open, so I have to wipe up somebody else’s bodily fluids because they were too lazy to clean it up themselves.
Just a bit of historical information for you… we were made to squat, actually. Have you ever seen a Japanese toilet? No not the fancy ones. The ones you squat on.
But I digress.
Thank you so much for this! Though normally a pretty calm person, I can’t help but seethe when I see that someone has pissed on a toilet seat. The way I see it, if you can’t use a toilet the way it was intended (or at least clean up after yourself), you have a few options:
1. Hold it til you get home
2. Find some bushes and “hover” there
3. Wear a diaper and go whenever and wherever you want to
The seat-spatterers are on par with the able-bodied folks who leave shopping carts out in the parking lot (and likely are the same people, I suspect).
Fluff and Nicki: I am only mildly assuaged by the fact that you realize that your toilet-related behavior is excessive and illogical. Only mildly.
meme, we were made to squat, I agree, but toilets are not designed for squatting, but for sitting. If there’s a hole in the floor, squatting is appropriate. If there’s a toilet…
Lunautilus: LOVE the options.
I lived in a dorm in Israel for 4.5 months this spring and OMG i wish i could have had this article to translate and post everywhere. although the worst actually wasn’t the pee spray, it was definitely the poop spray. almost every day we would go in and one of the toilets would have poop ALL OVER the inside of the toilet. like, above the water line, right up to the bottom of the seat. all we could think was HOW???? luckily it was almost never ON the seat, but just the sight of it made us want to puke. we *almost* felt sorry for the girl who must have had explosive diarrhea every day…almost. i can handle cleaning a dirty diaper cuz well, babies cant help it. but adult feces on display is just inexcusable.
i’m slightly germophobic myself (have difficulty eating without washing my hands first, etc), so i understand the need to hover. just, seriously, common courtesy–if it’s not YOUR toilet, clean up your mess.
OH MY GOD YES.
Non-sitters are the worst kind of hypocrites. “Oh, my ass is too pristine to touch a seat that may have residual pee on it! I’m a delicate princess! I’m going to squat over the toilet and pee ALL OVER the seat, therefore contributing to the ‘problem’ that didn’t even exist before I splattered my piss everywhere!”
Thank you. I thought I was the only one who got angry about this.
This is awesome! Nice to see some women that think like me.
I am a hoverer, but I must say I am a skilled hoverer from way back- I wasn’t sitting on toilets since I was seven. Only when I’m in a hurry, though. Once I sit, well, then I can kind of lounge, you know? Slowly take the tp, slowly wipe…slowly etc. So I do it when I’m rushing. Or if there’s pee already on the seat.
But I must say I only get pee on the seat when I try to be careful- ironic?- If I clench to try and soften the flow, it starts to run along places it shouldn’t. I’ve learned to just let fly, and nothing gets anywhere it shouldn’t.
It’s like pouring from a mug. If you try to be “safe” you spill it everywhere but where you want it to go.
Plus, i kind of like the feeling of air flow over my private bits. It feels nice, and sitting doesn’t usually allow that, unless the bathroom is really really drafty.
AMEN. Ugh. I work in public and women leave the bathroom SO NASTY. Why? Because they hover and sprinkle piss all over the seat and then they use too much toilet paper and don’t bother to get it in and them someone else tried to get it in with more toilet paper and now you have a gross nasty toilet seat covered with disgusting paper with pee.
Save everyone time, just sit the fuck down. I take a wad of paper, wipe around the seat of a decently clean bathroom once and then I *sit*. Never, not once in my life have I gotten any diseases from doing so.
Thank you! I sit my happy hindparts on the toilet seat. It’s like this…..any germs you’re exposed to INSIDE the bathroom is already ON YOU. People bring those things in and if you are halfway decent and wash your hands after it’s all done, you’re fine. Besides, it’s not good to be so afraid of germs. Part of having a healthy immune system is giving that bad boy a work out….not preventing any self-respcting germ from visiting you. Kissing, shaking hands, opening doors, using phones and drinking from public water sources is MUCH nastier than sitting on the potty.
I agree. Sit on the toilet.
[...] old-school squat toilet, you’d better have really strong quads, since sitting is impossible. Sorry, PhDork.). Then there’s the worst-case scenario, where you wind up in agony with no place to go. My [...]
I agree. Sit on the toilet.
But, if you absolutely must hover, do so without peeing on the seat. Rip off a little square of TP, delicately lift the seat out of the way, then squat over the bowl. With another square of TP, put the seat back in place.
Wash your hands.
Well, I’m almost exactly an entire year late to this party, but HOLY SHIT YES.
“Sit on the toilet” is my new mantra for the week.
Yes, thank goodness. SIT THE HELL DOWN and stop flushing with your footwear. Goddamn if every woman would stop their bathroom shenanigans it would make life easier for us all. I hate the people who mess up the bathroom and then whine about it being disgusting. If you make a mess, clean it up. If it disgusts you that much then plaster the seat with toilet paper, but stop hovering. Most women are just not that skilled and end up making a mess; which they don’t clean and leave for the next person to deal with.
Okay, I have to say, it pisses me off pretty damn bad to see piss all over the seat. The reason for this is that generally when someone has pissed all over the seat and not bothered to clean it up, they have not only willfully created a nasty mess for me to clean up myself, but they have likely done so with the snobbish belief that *they* are too CLEAN for the toilet seat. Fuckin assholes, man!
On a less angry note, I really don’t think the issue should be how people choose to pee. If you are more comfortable squatting, then that’s fine. Stand on it for all I care. Just don’t leave a mess. And that goes for sitters too, please.
It is most upsetting to walk into a stall when ya gotta go, only to discover that you can’t sit down and take care of business yet, because you need to wipe up someone else’s PEE first. Hmm, wipe up someone’s pee, or experience the pleasant sensation of cold piss on your bare legs. Uhhhhhhhhhh…Man, just thinking about it puts me in a bad mood.
So um, to sum up: Please, just DO NOT LEAVE A MESS. No pee on the toilet seat. Thank you.
1. Urine is only sterile in the bladder, once it is in contact with the urethra, vagina etc… it is not.
2. Putting toilet paper down on the seat will do absolutely nothing. TP is absorbent – whatever it touches will soak right through, leaving you right where you started.
3. None the less … sit your ass down! Less mess makes everyone’s day.
4. Wash your hands, wash your hands, wash your hands – and don’t touch the taps, or door knob on your way out or you’ve wasted your time.
I will NOT sit on the toilet. The urine in the seat is not sterile anymore. It’s already rotting. And imagine this: there is menstrual blood from unknown women, feces and some other undetermined stains. NO. I will not sit on the toilet.
The solution: I have learned to aim properly. If I ever miss, I have in my purse a very well known germ-killer and tissues. I use them so the next woman will use a clean toilet.
People, learn to clean after yourselves so one day we can all sit on the toilet.
thank you for sharing this! too many times have i been in a rush and sat on a wet seat. for all you hoverers saying how un-sterile urine is, why don’t you take your own advice and save us practical ladies from wet “un-sterile” asses! i don’t care how awesome you think your aim is, unless you’re actually sitting on the seat after you’ve done your business, you don’t know. i swear that stuff blends in sometimes!
what about some trans women and other lady-identified folks for whom it is much easier to stand to pee? we all miss the toilet sometimes. the much less transphobic request is to clean the seat off, not a demand to always sit.
If you’re going to squat, lift the seat please.
My University has a handy invention in our toilets though. Little dispensers of sanitising liquid in all the stalls and a diagram on the wall showing how you can squirt some on to a piece of toilet paper and wipe the seat down before you sit. Thus eliminating the need for hovering by sanitising the seat.
If you’re not going to sit on it, you don’t need to put the seat down. Lift it up if you’re not using it.