Men vs. Women

Now y'all know I've been a bit "down" on women of late, but I honestly do like women -- probably better than men (no snide sexual preference innuendos here). In fact, most of the readers (that I know about) of this blog are female. There ARE, however, differences between the sexes and it'd be silly to claim otherwise. Melusina complains about remote controls, but I've got a bigger fish to fry -- the toilet seat issue!

You know the basic issue, so there's no need for me to explain the problem. This issue came up the other night at the local coffee shop where I was "enjoying" the vocal performance of a folk/reggae/gospel group from Trinidad or Tonga or somewhere similarly exotic (a blog post in and of itself). Anyway, one of my coffee pals, we'll call her Frannie, went off on the usual rant: Why can't men just put the stupid seat down? Now contrarian that I am, I couldn't let that pass.

"Why," I asked, "is it assumed that it's the man's duty to put the seat in the position most desired by the female? Why shouldn't the female be considerate and lift the seat UP after use to make the male's next trip more convenient?"

You can imagine the shock and awe that generated. You'd have thought I'd drawn a cartoon of a prohibited religious figure! But I wasn't completely satisfied. No, I then decided to pour some gasoline on the fire. I pointed out that an economist at Michigan State had tried to solve the problem, but she wouldn't like his conclusion (trust me, NO need to read the paper):

I show that the "selfish" or the "status quo" rule that leaves the toilet seat in the position used dominates the down rule in a wide range of parameter spaces including the case where the inconvenience costs are the same.

In actuality, though, my favorite analysis of the seat problem is this tongue-in-cheek game theoretic approach. The "first best" solution:

In the morning John [the man] leaves the seat up after performing #1. In the evening he puts it down.

As I said, I didn't expect my "scientific" evidence to win me much support and it did not. Instead Frannie became even more agitated. She then went off on how GROSS it is to have to put the seat down. "First," she said, "you have to barely grasp the seat with two fingers, lower it, wash your hands, then use the bathroom, and finally wash your hands all over again!"

Now that seemed a little obsessive to me, but it did raise a question. I could understand her doing that with a public toilet, but wouldn't all the public toilets she used have the seats down already (I was assuming she only used women's toilets)? "Frannie," I asked, "do you mean you even go through all that at home?" "Yes," she said, "it's just GROSS to have to touch the toilet seat!" Now I had her: "That means you are asking men to perform a task that you, even at home, find repulsive! You say that you won't even touch the toilet seat at home, yet you expect men to put it down after each use! Where's the justice in that?" She had no answer.

Mind you, I have no illusion that I "won" the argument or changed Frannie's opinion a whit. No, I realize this is an ingrained "right/wrong" issue that will never change. I'm actually reminded of my friend, Karen, from grad school. She was ranting one day about her dad. "He NEVER puts the seat down. Even after all these years when I've practically fallen in the bowl in the middle of the night, HE still hasn't learned!" I couldn't resist pointing out to Karen that it might not be her dad who was slow to learn! "Hey, Karen, look before you sit!"

P.S. Full disclosure: Since I have cats and I don't want them drinking from the toilet, I always put the seat and the lid down so this is not an issue for me. Further, I always put the seat down in other settings just because it seems to be the "right" thing to do -- I've been indoctrinated. I just wanted to point out the lack of logic in Frannie's argument.