Men, Do You Put the Toilet Seat Down?
When Thomas Crapper popularised the modern flush toilet in homes around Britain, he could not have known the magnitude of the domestic problem he was creating. For years, toilet etiquette has been a topic of consternation, with the seat in particular opening a rift of disagreement between the genders.
It is popularly preached that men should put the seat down after relieving themselves, but why – in this age of so-called equality – is this still the case? “Chivalry!” you may shout; “kindness!” you may yell. Well, OK – but is that good enough? Because, shockingly, men like touching the seat just as little as their female cubicle-mates.
To solve the toilet seat dilemma, we must delve into the wider problems that surround it. These problems can be divided, rather neatly, into three separate areas of argument: equality, psychology and bacteriology. So let’s pull up our trousers, flush out the problem and wash our hands of this khazi conflict once and for all.
The Equality Experts
The toilet seat debate may be timeless, but it is also potent with contemporary issues.
Universities around Britain have recently started to implement gender neutral toilets in order to nullify any ostracisation transgender or intersex people may feel. However, the reception to these loos has not been universally positive, with one third-year female student at Sussex University complaining to me that “there are no rules about how to leave the toilet seat, and that means we have to move it all the time.”
“Sometimes you can tell that men haven’t put the seat up, gone to the toilet and missed,” continues the student, who wishes to remain unnamed. “And I don’t see why we should have to deal with that when it should be their responsibility to move it in the first place.”
The inference here, that altering the position of the loo seat is a man’s role, is reiterated by Donna Dawson, a relationship expert who playfully (I think) brands me a “misogynist” for suggesting that the undesirable task of lifting or lowering the toilet seat should not be exclusively left to men.
Dawson suggests that equality is represented by “compromise and meeting each other halfway; the important bedrock of a relationship”. Quite so – but she repeatedly describes a lowered seat as the toilet in its “natural” or “original” position. To paraphrase the age-old maxim, is this not trying to have your urinal cake and eat it?
After our conversation, I spend (too long) formulating a ‘one-touch’ rule. In short: everyone agrees to touch the seat once during their lavatory trip. Men put it up at the start, women put it down. What could represent a more equal compromise, I humbly ask?
Leave a Reply