Continuation of Episode 1, Part 4
In this episode, Nick tackles the subject of peeing on the toilet rim.
www.sacred-truths.com
Continuation of Episode 1, Part 4
In this episode, Nick tackles the subject of peeing on the toilet rim.
www.sacred-truths.com
Welcome to Episode 1, Part 4 of “Ask A Dude” - three women, one guy – where we get real answers on subjects most men aren’t willing to talk about. This is Sacred Truths with Emmy Graham.
Emmy: Do we want to ask one more question? Does anyone feel compelled?
Heather: Well, Emmy’s question about toilet seat peeing, leaving pee on the toilets…
Emmy: (Laughs)…. a question about that? I don’t remember!
Heather: That’s been such a recurring one but if, I think that’s a really good one because it gets into that like, disregard, kind of, the permission to be disregarding.
Deborah: If, it seems to me, if the subject is disregarding, and toilet seats up or down, seems to me just the, just the tiniest edge of a huge, huge topic, because I’m thinking of it now, writ large, of the hundred thousand ways that my brothers got away with stuff that I couldn’t do, or the ways they behaved that were never called out, and we’ve talked about brothers, because they were boys and I was a girl, and those rules were completely different.
I come from a pretty peaceful childhood home, I don’t have hard complaints, but even now I keep sort of uncovering ways my brothers had privilege again, and again and again, and again. And that’s in a home with fairly enlightened parents. So then I think about I had it easy compared to the folks who didn’t, where the disregard (ment) was profound and daily and catastrophic. So I think it’s more than toilet seats, but it’s such a good test case.
Heather: Yeah, that’s what we found out,,,, that’s what I remember about our conversation…. Emmy was like, “What was with the toilet seat being left up?” Do you remember that?
Emmy: Mine was the pee…
Heather: Oh, it was not the toilet seat, it was the pee…
Emmy: I don’t know how we got to that topic. Somehow, I was complaining maybe it was women do more of the domestic chores or something and there seems to be a statistic, there had been studies done and women do more of the domestic work and I don’t know how we got on this topic.
Heather: I think you just asked it as one of your questions.
Emmy: Why is it… this is my experience: when men use the toilet and they dribble on the edge of the toilet, they don’t wipe it.
Heather: That’s what it was, it wasn’t the seat up….
Emmy: and my issue was, I think, is that they never clean it, (Okay I’m using the word ‘never’) but if one isn’t in the habit of cleaning the toilet or then you don’t care, or, I don’t know, I can only speculate. So, someone is a guest in my home, or someone is a domestic partner pees on the rim and doesn’t wipe it.
And I think every woman I know would wipe the seat if she dribbled on the seat. But men do not, as far as I know, many of them, do not wipe the rim when they dribble.
So who wipes the toilet? I do when I go to clean the toilet! Is it gross? YES! And I think, we asked that question was it just why? (Laughs)
Why Nick, why?!
Heather: Yes, exactly! Dude! What’s up, dude?
Nick: Right, right, yes. (laughs) Well, and so this is where, it’s really important that I not talk about anything in a way that implies any kind of excuse. So we’re going for, we’re exploring this for the interest of understanding and we’re not excusing bad behavior at all.
I want to be really careful here. My experience with that particular issue, was… I was completely oblivious to that issue. I know a lot of men that are, just oblivious to that, that there’s even something happening there.
It’s kind of hard to explain that level of obliviousness without sounding like I’m making excuses. Because in my experiences with that was so complete and so that was something I learned as an adult. To do that. To be mindful of that and to be polite.
Deborah: Did you just say, and I think you did, that a man isn’t keeping track of where he aims and he truly doesn’t see the edge of pee on the toilet or the floor? Pardon the incredulity in my voice!
Nick: We’re getting into a tricky one here, (laughs) right at the end. But, I can say, from personal experience, yes! (laughs) And it came up at some point when we were talking about…something about: You mean if you went to dinner at your boss’s house you would be oblivious to that? and I went, “Ooopsy, daisy!”
Up until I was in my 40’s. (laughs) Yes, I did go to my boss’s house now that I’m thinking back and I did not even think for one second that anything was happening, that there was even an issue to address, that there was even something happening in that situation, other than that I was going to the bathroom. I just didn’t even think about…
Every issue that you’re talking about was not anywhere in my consciousness, yes I can say that.
Deborah: So, to further clarify, so if your boss was a man, and then went into the bathroom after you, he might not notice either that you had just peed on the seat, but the boss’s spouse, if she was a woman, she might go in and say, “Ewww!”
Nick: That is a very, very likely scenario, yes.
Deborah: I know, I’m cob-smacked! This seems so bizarre to just not be aware…If I inadvertently put my glass down and it’s left a ring on Emmy’s table, I would deal with it immediately.
Heather: ….or if I accidently dripped my pee somewhere in her house.
Deborah: Correct! I cannot fathom… I believe you because you are a truthful person. I’m astonished.
Emmy: Can I just say, I’ve been cleaning pee off the rim my whole life from male visitors. And have you never done this? I mean every single week, if I’ve had a male visit, I’m cleaning the rim of the leftover urine.
Deborah: Just to carry this, I’ve never had the urine/rim problem, but I do know that if there’s a man in the house, I’m washing the floor a lot more often.
Emmy: The bathroom floor.
Deborah: Correct. The bathroom floor, and it’s not just dusty, just to be clear.
Emmy: I was just going to say, this is another question probably, but this is a topic that if you raise it with the male in your house, there is hell, it is scary, and there’ll probably be yelling about it, and I’m “overreacting” because I don’t like pee on the rim. I’m just bringing that up, but we don’t have to discuss that now.
Heather: That’s actually a much better direction, I was just going to exclaim something.
(All laugh.)
Emmy: You can exclaim!
Nick: It wouldn’t hurt.
Heather: Oh, actually, I just remembered, it might actually be connected. I wondered about how shame looks with this. Like, dripping your pee is really different than being, like, a stud, you know? What am I trying to say?
Like I can imagine if you’re truly oblivious, like Nick was just saying and then someone calls you out on something you’re truly oblivious about, and that isn’t cool like dripping pee, as opposed to like getting called out on what a stud you are and you’ve been hiding it from me. I’m wondering about that and I’m wondering if that connects with that like the response you’ve described that you’ve had from men when you’ve called it out or tried to ask for something different.
Nick: I think there’s some important distinctions there. Some of them pretty subjective. But I can speak from direct personal experience about the obliviousness piece and just say that was my lived experience and that was…I had to learn that as an adult. Be aware of what’s happening there and that there’s a polite way and an impolite way to do things in that situation. For sure that.
I think, what you’re talking about, the reaction of being called out, a seemingly simple thing releases this nuclear missile attack, (Bomb explosion noise). That, I think, we’ve covered that, about just how the system has to be maintained, there can’t be any zero deviation from this even in tiny ways, know that this thing…is like a marble.
And it has to be vigilantly maintained at all times even from the tiniest detail, or the whole thing is going to blow up. I think, that.
I think, the topic of shame is a whole other thing. Because once you get into shame that’s like an entire podcast worth of stuff there because the shame is used as the bludgeon for maintaining the social order.
So when a guy feels shame, and I’d have to really think about the context where that would happen with a woman versus with a father figure, that’s the conduit of shame is the father figure or the male authority. Or the shame of the group.
If there’s this gut check thing and somehow, you don’t make a convincing enough story to uphold this thing and suddenly they all zero in on the one guy and it’s just like (bomb explosion) just this barrage of doom that lands on the dude who doesn’t measure up. I think it’s hard to…
Shame is such a big topic that it’s hard to...and I’d have to think about that and I’d have to think about a situation where someone would feel shame.
In the situation with the toilet rim, that’s just upholding the misogyny, that’s just a nuclear reaction, shame isn’t really in there. That topic is a pretty big one, yep. I didn’t really answer that question very well.
It’s a little bit big. Shame’s kind of a big one.
Heather: To me it’s really interesting, interesting and helpful insight to hear your kind of clarity that shame is not really in that, because I would have guessed that that was part of it in that nuclear reaction.
Nick: It’s not impossible and once again, but I’m trying to be careful talking about in general, and not get into the head of any one individual person because anything’s possible in that space, but my sense when there’s that kind of reaction, that flame thrower thing, to me, that is upholding the misogyny system, that’s maintaining that system of subjugation.
The guy isn’t feeling, “Oh, no, I did something wrong, I have to lash out.” No.
Heather: That’s super interesting.
Nick: Yeah, anything’s possible, but that’s my impression. I would say that’s the middle of the bell curve; the most likely thing, not shame.
Deborah: I’m thinking about this, possibly more that I want to. I’m also thinking about…we talked about prowess earlier, and all sort of things associated with that sort of virility, and I’m idlily wondering if there’s this sort of this prowess piece like, (Growls and yells babble) I’m pretending to be a scary man.
I don’t care where my pee goes, and this is my part that can do anything! I don’t know, does any of that make sense?
Nick: For me, it was in the 100% oblivious category. I haven’t had a whole lot of conversations with other men about that whole issue. So I can say, for me, it was definitely in that obliviousness possibility.
I think there are definitely examples of that blatant disregard is a, for sure, part of asserting masculinity in the hyper masculine space. There’s definitely things like that. You know what, one of them is, that I was just thinking about that the other day, is littering. Littering. For sure. For sure.
Every now and then, on my road, there’s somebody, I’m guessing it’s a man. (laughs) Who knows, I’ve never met the guy. But I’m guessing he’s a dude. Someone buys a 12 pack down at Shop’n Kartand drives up Tolman Creek Road and drinks them.
And throws them out the window. And they’re evenly spaced, about every half mile.
Emmy: Oh, God, that’s a fast beer!
Nick: It’s been a long time, I used to ride my bike up that road all the time. But once a week, maybe it was Friday night, someone would do that and it would go all the way, up, up the road and the last thing was the box! Out the window!
It just vibrated, vibrated with that blatant disregard of just everything in the drunken space, you know, and it just was like, Arggh, it just had this Ooooh, that was…regularly, so that, that, for sure that. I get the energy off of littering that you ,,,the disregard for the environment and everyone else.
Deborah: It all sounds like the same thing, you know: Littering pee and littering beer.
Nick: So, right, I think, for sure that. Maybe that is that way for some, some dudes, I don’t know, the pee thing, it’s like that, it’s like littering, the equivalent energy.
I didn’t have that experience but I definitely, there are things like that, for sure, this kind of public disregard.
Deborah: In Europe, more so than here I believe, it’s a huge problem of people just peeing on the sides of buildings. It’s quite common coming home from bars, in my brother’s town, there are a couple of places that are particularly, people, it’s apparently okay for men to just pee on the side of the building. I can understand if you’re caught short and you run into the forest. That’s a different thing.
These are folks just in the town, after many beers just peeing on the street with folks walking by. I can’t think of anything more blatantly disregarding of community and society and other people’s enjoyment of…. Ugh, shocking to me!
Nick: That’s got the vibe, that has the vibe for sure. (laughs)
Deborah: Emmy, you could just ask your male friends to make sure they pee before they come over so you never have to clean up after them.
Emmy: I suppose, but then I just have to say that the toilet is off limits. I don’t know, I may just have to spell it out to everyone. “You may use the toilet and here’s what I need you to do.” It may come down to that.
Deborah: You could hand people Clorox Wipes as they go in there.
Emmy: Do you know how to use these? Do you know when to use these?
Heather: If you do that to a woman, she’ll end up, like, cleaning your bathtub.
Emmy: Exactly, “Oh, I’ll get right on it!” (laughs)
Thank you all for coming today to today’s podcast, thank you so much.
Heather: Yes, likewise, thanks everyone so much and thank you Nick for doing what you did.
Deborah: Thanks Emmy for hosting us. This has been great fun. And Nick, thanks for your courage.
Nick: Thank you, thank you everybody, thank you for the fantastic questions and thanks for hosting.
Emmy: For sure. Thank you all for being here.
Emmy: This is Sacred Truths with Emmy Graham with music by Lemon Music Studio from Pixabay, and with special thanks to our ‘dude’, Nick Oredson.
This concludes Part 4 of Episode 1 of “Ask a Dude”.
Please join us for Episode 2.
Please visit our website at www.sacred-truths.com.
Thank you for listening.