I’ve never understood the whole “toilet-seat, up or down, debate.” Let me put that more precisely: I’ve never understood why people talk about it as if it were some kind of real live issue in our society. Are there really men and women who argue over this? I don’t think I’ve ever even had a conversation about proper toilet seat etiquette, much less gotten into an argument over it. (Or perhaps I have, but have simply forgotten it because it‘s so fucking boring.) Over the course of my life, I’ve probably spent less time thinking consciously about the issue than I’ve spent writing this paragraph.
That’s clearly not the case with our good friend MarkyMark, a somewhat excitable MGTOWer who (wholly unintentionally) provides this blog with choice material on a semi-regular basis. He must get into arguments about toilet seats all the time, judging from the long screed he posted yesterday on the topic of “what the toilet seat says about women.” Apparently, the fact that some women complain about men leaving the seat up – I’ll have to take his word on this, as I don’t think I’ve ever encountered it in my life – is evidence that women are foul, selfish creatures indeed. As he puts it, laying forth his basic thesis:
The toilet seat is living proof that women will complain about anything and everything. The toilet seat shows us that women cannot and will not accept responsibility for themselves. The toilet seat shows us that women have no perspective about anything. The toilet seat is living proof of the eternal solipsism of the female mind. The toilet seat provides empirical evidence that, no matter what or how much they get, women will never be happy. Finally, the toilet seat shows us that women are spoiled, entitled brats. …
The toilet seat shows us what women are REALLY like, and it ain’t sugar and spice and everything nice.
So distressed is poor Marky at the thought of women demanding that the seat be lowered that he’s driven to reconsider the very idea of universal suffrage:
You know what’s sobering? We gave these creatures the right to vote! Yes, that’s right; we gave these childish, immature, spoiled brats the right to decide who has power over us, to decide OUR futures. With the way women handle the toilet seat issue and what it says about them, is it any wonder why they were denied the vote?!
If this were someone other than MarkyMark, I would probably consider this a joke, or satire, or some sort of reductio ad absurdum. But as far as I have been able to determine, MarkyMark does not in fact have a sense of humor; this is a guy, after all, who once wrote a point-by-point “rebuttal” of an article in The Onion.
Presumably at some point in the future Marky will take on the other pressing bathroom-related issue that bedevils the men of the world:
Why do women always go to the bathroom together? Are they lesbians? Are they plotting something? Or … both?
I don’t think this was a bad article, it was just too hyperfocused. I get his point- it’s merely one example of me constantly having their concerns and needs dismissed. Which it is. Women constantly complain about men who leave the seat up, yet I never heard men complain about women leaving the seat down. It’s not a huge deal in itself, but it neatly models the real world- women look down their nose at men, expecting them to do everything for them, expecting them to be little more than objects that bow to their will. They are entitled bitches. MarkyMark’s case would be stronger had he made that more explicit- ie, that the toilet seat is just ONE EXAMPLE, one reason.
“it’s merely one example of me constantly having their concerns and needs dismissed. ”
Your concerns and needs consist of NEEDING to leave the toilet seat up?
“Women constantly complain about men who leave the seat up”
How do you know what women “constantly” complain about? You can’t even get one to stay around long enough to have sex with you and I doubt you have any as friends.
MRAL: No, the point is that this doesn’t actually happen in the real world. Like many instances of MRA-cited ‘oppression’, this is just something made up or overinflated to try and demonstrate how women are just evil demanding bitches.
@MRAL
And you honestly wonder why women aren’t lining up to date you?
You people need to get off your computers more. Talk to a woman, gain her trust, and soon she WILL bitch and moan and “selfish men who leave the toilet seat up”. Why the fuck do we need to bow to your needs, whore?
Why the fuck do we need to bow to YOUR needs, MRAL?
MRAL: I have never heard a man or woman ever complain about the toilet seat in my entire life. Seriously, the only time I hear anything about a toilet seat is from lame stand up comedians, right after they tell jokes about how hard it is for adults to set a VCR but kids can do it so easy, or how lousy airplane food is. MarkyMark is desperately trying to think of examples of how the world is against him and he’s so oppressed. When we whines about something this mundane, he sounds like a major league drama queen.
I fell in the toilet once because my sister’s boyfriend left the seat up. And once I broke an old toilet seat at my parents’ place and fell off the loo entirely.
That’s the most I’ve ever discussed the toilet seat. Huh.
Yeah… I think that dude must be confused. Bleach and a wire brush sounds more appropriate for cleaning your fleshlight, not real live ladybits.
MRAL: You are, by your own admission, a so-called omega who women want nothing to do with. Our revered, though simple MarkyMark claims to be a Man Going His Own Way. How on earth do two men who so lack any contact with actual human women come to know so much about what women constantly do?
My guess: TV, internet, and other repositories of timeworn jokes. Am I right? Just throwing my personal experience in here: I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone seriously complain about this. Even as a joke, it’s got serious whiskers.
David: Yeah–I’ve seen that too! My first reaction to MRAs complaining about the sitcom male = buffoon thing is that it arises from lazy tropes by lazy TV writers (who are, at least to my knowledge, overwhelmingly male and writing from a male perspective for a male audience). I can’t completely write it off, however, because I do think that the things we see on TV repeatedly do influence how we think about life and the people around us. And female TV tropes bother me too. Mostly the ones about women being a pair of tits and not actual people with actual personalities, and the ones about women being murdered for purposes of male character driven plot advancement, but sure. TV stereotypes are dumb. That’s one MRA complaint that I’ll kinda get behind.
Women already pour bleach and caustic chemicals in their vaginas! It’s called douching, and it’s a horrible thing to inflict on a perfectly healthy vagina – not unlike Chris from Oregon.
Fortunately for everyone, Chris from Oregon apparently stays far away from vaginas and the women who host them.
Well – that was amusing.
Personally, I’ve never complained about the toilet seat one way or the other. My ex used to sit, and as someone upthread pointed out, that probably makes him some sort of pariah in the MGTOW universe.
What it made him in my universe was tidy. Cleaning the bathroom was no biggie.
I fail to see how women aren’t taking responsibility for themselves by not putting the seat down every time some inconsiderate male leaves it up. It strikes me that they are lacking in responsibility by not putting things back the way they found them.
I can only assume they leave the fridge door open too.
According to the rules of feng-shui neither the seat nor the lid should be left up.
Aside: Colour me puzzled as to how these men who avoid women at every opportunity know so much about how they think and interact with the men in their lives.
MRAL, I’m going to repeat my question from earlier.
Why are you so intent on believing that the world is a worse place than it actually is? You’re positive that women do nothing but trash-talk men when they’re alone. Why not assume that we are in fact telling the truth when we tell you that that’s not what happens?
You know, MRAL, some of us do actually talk to women or a regular basis. You know, I talked to some women today. Shocker that. Women make up a sizable portion of my friends and a many of my close family members. Most (but not all) of the people I have dated have also been women. I was female assigned at birth as well, and my parents tried damned hard to feminize me(a task which teachers and other authority members generally approved of). Not only have I had long and intimate “insider” conversations with women, I spent literally years of my childhood being hit every day trying to make me conform to stereotypes about what women should be. I think I can pretty safely say that my experience with how women talk and behave amoung themselves and how women are taught they should be is lager than yours to a massive degree. And, *gasp* some of the folks here are women themselves. You know, I bet women know what women tend to talk to those they trust about.
@Kenda, ah, potty training. I babysit my niece alot in the summers and my mom’s house has carpeted bathrooms. Carpeted bathrooms+a potty training toddler=hell.
I’m going to go ahead and admit that I complain at my husband from time to time (but mainly in my head)…it’s because cleaning the bathroom is one of the few chores I ask him to do and he rarely gets a chance…so it’s sometimes pretty gross on the underside. [In his defense for not doing it he suffers from pretty severe bipolar type II (the one that’s all depression, all the time basically) and he gets migraines.]
MRAL – I hate to burst your bubble and make you feel even worse and more bitter than you already do, but the sun is the center of universe.
Just thought I’d give you a heads up about it, seeing as you don’t seem aware of that.
HAHA – I meant, in all honesty, to say “solar system”.
I guess that’s what I get for not rereading my snark.
My experience has usually been: the more feminist the woman, the less she tends to worry about the position of the toilet seat. Feminists generally have bigger fish to fry. Of course, YMMV.
Wow. I can’t believe he spent that much time talking about toilet seats. I’ve had one conversation (ever)about toilet seats, and I’m a feminist/equalist. It was with a male roommate. I asked him to keep the lid down because I have a really stupid cat (it’s a long story as to why I have this cat) who can not figure out if the lid is down or not. It’s really unpleasant for your cat to mistakenly jump in the toilet then run through the house speading toilet water everywhere.
@chocomintlipwax
“And for guys who always leave it up, I guess their just desserts would be having diarrhea at 4 in the morning and falling in. “But why should I put it down?” THAT is why. Enjoy your wet butt.”
My thoughts exactly! Men might pee standing up (and not all of them feel the need to), but sooner or later, we all have to shit. And last I checked, you need to sit on the toilet to do that. Ergo, lid down.
As for chewing out someone who left the seat up, I probably wouldn’t unless I’d fallen in a few times.
Yanno, I have this really funny story about this one time–well, several times throughout my life, in fact–when I was in the presence of a man and he smelled like balls. My responses ranged from “Yeah, people smell,” to “Geez, this guy needs a shower,” but never ever got anywhere even close to “Men need to take a scouring pad to their junk.”
The moral to this story? There isn’t one. Or maybe it’s this: Christopher in Oregon is a psychopath. He sure likes to tell made-up stories a lot too, but I’m not sure that makes him not-a-psychopath. Oh, and here again I feel the need to point out the compulsive need in MRAs to make it seem like women are a completely alien species from men. Women ask people to do things! Women have complaints! Women’s bodies smell! Dear lord, fetch me my fainting pillow–this just ain’t natural!
My reasoning is that both men and women need the toilet seat down. Only men need the toilet seat up. So, really, men should put the toilet seat down, because down is the default state.
When it comes to the toilet seat, it was usually ME who reigned terror, forgeting to pull the seat down and having my sister fall in (That was when I was younger, though).
But even with that (anecdotal) piece of evidence, MarkyMark’s post is the equivalent of magnifying a flea’s genitalia and going “LOOK HOW WONDERFUL THIS IS! WHY IS NO ONE ELSE SEEING THIS!?!?!”*
*They’re probably filming that for a Nat Geo doc as I speak.
Well I am a bit on the fanatical side over having the cover down. After I found out that the toilet water aerosols, it was cover down for everyone who uses my restroom at my house (except for the pet’s bathroom but then, they do not know how to use the toilet.)
It is my house though so I have no idea if this will become an issue when I finally get around to getting married.