FIRST THEY CAME for the eaters of cupcakes (because they’re fascists). Then they came for the brown sauce lovers (because they’re colonialists). Now they’ve come for men who stand to pee (because they’re Stehpinklers). Yes, there’s a German word for a man who stands to slash. Just as there is for a bloke who sits – a Sitzpinkler.
Having spent so much time badgering us about what we put in our bodies at one end it was inevitable the loons would get round to badgering us about what comes out at the other. That’s why they want us men to sit down to let loose.
Standing up with the todger out is clearly an aggressive, patriarchal, misogynistic act of male dominance and privilege that cannot be allowed.
It’s not just because we have a tendency to miss the porcelain when we point Percy at it, but because standing up with the todger out is clearly an aggressive, patriarchal, misogynistic act of male dominance and privilege that cannot be allowed. And urinals are the greatest affront to our decency in promoting this “trope of hairy masculinity”.
That’s according to Peter Ormerod, who seems to be abnormally sensitive, even for a Guardian hack, to the requirements of liquid evacuation:
The thing is, I’d happily trade in my male privilege for a world without [urinals]. I’m 35 years old and have never knowingly used one. Now I find such matters phenomenally difficult to discuss, and struggle to utter even the gentlest euphemism concerning the expulsion of bodily waste. But all it takes for evil to triumph is for good people to say nothing – and as urinals are evil in porcelain, I feel a duty to let it all out.
Is it possible to use one “unknowingly”? If Mr Ormerod has never knowingly used a public urinal, should he be pontificating about everyone’s else’s use of them? It certainly appears that he has no knowledge of the etiquette of the British pissoir if he thinks he should splash his boots ”while maintaining conversations with ostentatiously unembarrassed neighbours.” Unless social rituals have changed radically since the last time I did a Jimmy Riddle at a urinal, the drill is usually eyes front and no talking (unless you’re next to a good mate). Ostentation plays no part in it. In fact, ostentation is likely to end up in trouble.
This particular idea to put men in their place is still but a minor agitation in the cortex of the deranged, but give it time. Already in Germany a man has had to go to court to assert his right to be a Stehpinkler. This resulted from his landlord demanding he sat down on the loo like a girl so as not to damage the expensive marble of the bathroom floor with his dribblings. And a local council in Sweden (you just knew the Swedes would go for this, didn’t you?) proposes to encourage its male staff to abjure their hairy masculinity and become Sitzpinklers. No wonder Sitzpinkler is a derogatory term.
I can see some Labour council in the not too distant future suggesting the same thing. They’ll be aided by the health and safety crowd on one hand and the mad feminists on the other with the equality and diversity mafia providing backup. The Daily Mail would enjoy extracting the urine and the BBC would welcome it just as they welcome anything that means they don’t have to talk about really serious matters such as mass child abuse in Rotherham.
