In German, there’s a word for one. Of course there is. In German, there’s a word for everything. But this is an especially excellent word: Sitzpinkler. You can probably guess what it means even if you don’t speak German: a Sitzpinkler is a man who sits to pee.
We have German friends: Flora, Till, their two boys. Flora confirms that the males in the house are encouraged to sit at home, as is common throughout the country. Some German bathrooms have amusing signs reminding men to sit. There’s even a device called a WC-Geist – toilet ghost – that lives under the seat and, when the seat is lifted, orders you to sit down. You can get a WC-Geist with the voice of Angela Merkel. Germany is a brilliant country.
Wait, though. Because, Flora says, Sitzpinkler is used in a negative way to imply unmasculine behaviour. Something like “wuss” in English. In 2015, a court in Düsseldorf ruled in favour of a man’s right to urinate while standing when his landlord sought financial compensation for urine damage to the marble bathroom floor. Stand up for your rights, literally. Not all German men are happy to sit.
Not all British ones, either. There is no reliable data (come on, YouGov, get on it). A straw poll of my male friends, mostly in their 50s, reveals the majority – about 70% – to be standers. Their reasons: they’ve always stood; men stand, women sit; why would they; no, of course they don’t pee on the floor (we’ll come back to that – in short, they’re lying).
I may need to change my friends. My editor Chris is half my age; this article stems from a conversation he had with his friends in the pub. Then he asked Twitter and got about 400 responses, with just over half saying they are sitters. Chris has better followers than I have friends, though he is a stander. I may need to change my editor.
There is a poll from 2020 showing that 70% of men in Japan sit. Five years previously the figure was 51%. It seems the world – Japan at least – is changing. To clarify, we are talking about inside the home. Out and about, where there are urinals and queues, it’s a whole different world and a whole different article. I should probably also say that though I’ve been talking about men, it applies to anyone with a penis.
Time to get personal: I am, I confess, a Sitzpinkler. No, not confess, I am proud to sitzpinkle. It wasn’t a sudden epiphany – a urethra moment, if you like – but things change as you age. Maybe your aim isn’t what it once was, flow rates decrease, bladders take longer to empty, you need more time, sitting is more comfortable and you can check Twitter while you’re at it (remember what happened once when you did that standing).
For some men it can also be healthier. In 2014, researchers from the department of urology at Leiden University Medical Center investigated how body position during urination affects “voiding time”, maximum flow rate and “post-void residual volume”. They concluded that sitting has a “more favourable urodynamic profile”, allowing the bladder to empty faster and more completely. For men with lower urinary tract symptoms (Luts), for example, caused by an enlarged prostate – “the sitting voiding position is preferable to the standing”.
We don’t have Luts, say my unreconstructed friends, our prostates are perfect. I think mine is OK, too. (Are we sure, though? We should get them checked.) There are other reasons to sit. Going back to that poor Düsseldorf landlord … Actually, no need, it’s hard to feel sorry for a Düsseldorf landlord with a marble floor and I can just look at my own bathroom floor. I have two sons who have been reluctant to adopt the Sitzpinkler approach. And the floor – not marble, admittedly, but fake wood laminate – is often disgusting. Awash. They piss all over it.
Boys will be boys; we’re grown men, say my friends. We may be getting on a bit but our aim is still true – we’re Robin Hood, snipers of the bathroom, the Jackal … Well, first of all, I don’t believe you. And second of all, even if you hit the bullseye every time, that’s not good enough. Once again we turn to science, this time to an American professor of mechanical engineering, Tadd Truscott. A while back, using a urination simulator and high-speed cameras, he and a colleague did an investigation into “splashback” caused by urination, which he presented at the 66th annual meeting of the American Physical Society’s Division of Fluid Dynamics in 2013.
Truscott now lives in Saudi Arabia and works at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, but I catch up with him by phone in a Japanese ski resort where – he admits – he has been investigating the fluid dynamics of a few sakes after a tough day on the slopes. Still, he manages to explain what happens when urine leaves the penile urethra. “A stream comes out but after between 3 and 6 inches it starts to break up into droplets, and that’s where most of the problem comes from. The droplets start to impinge on each other, then you get what we call satellite droplets and they splash off at very large angles and this is what causes it to splash on to your toothbrush …”
Yep, he said toothbrush, and maybe not just your toothbrush. It will depend on how big your bathroom is. “If your toothbrush is 3 or 4 metres away you’re probably fine; if it’s just 1 or 2 metres, that’s not good.”
That’s just from the falling stream. There’s also splashback from the wee hitting the surface of the water. “Water tends to have a large splash when droplets hit it from that height. That means a lot of splash can come out of the toilet. I was actually telling a friend tonight that when you pee into a toilet like that, you tend to pee on your toothbrush.”
Interesting topic for apres-ski chitchat. But this splash is ickier still, and possibly dangerous. “Pee in general is very sterile. It’s not really a big deal if it lands on your toothbrush and you brush your teeth then. But droplets are quite capable of harbouring bacteria, and in the toilet this is a problem if you’ve just used the restroom for something else. There can be faeces in there – urea is a wonderful harbinger of E coli growth – so later in the day it might not be safe to use your toothbrush.”
Stop saying toothbrush! Anyway, surely that’s enough to convert any remaining sceptics. For any splashback deniers or cavemen, I’ve got great role models too. Larry David, for starters. “It’s more comfortable when you get up in the middle of the night; you don’t have to turn the light on and wake up, and you get to read,” he says, in episode four of season four of Curb Your Enthusiasm. Lionel Messi, probably the greatest footballer of all time, admitted to sitting to pee on a Uruguayan TV show called Por La Camiseta (For the T-shirt). Messi by name, not so in the bathroom. Still not macho enough for you? Well, guess who he was talking to, also a confirmed Sitzpinkler (there is no Spanish word, we’ll have to stick to German). Only Luis Suárez – not only a brilliant football player but also a cannibal.
Speaking of cannibals and cavemen, I’m wondering what our ancestors and nearest relatives did and do. Ben Garrod, a professor of evolutionary biology at the University of East Anglia and a primate expert, tells me: “Gorillas and chimps just pee where they are. They might be walking through the forest and have a bit of a pee, they might be sitting in a tree eating figs and they’ll just pee beneath them and woe betide anyone beneath – I’ve been on the receiving end of that. We’re the only primate that is bipedal so we’re in a bit of a brave new world when it comes to peeing.”
Great apes don’t seem to mark territory. We are not olfactory-based like dogs or cats, which scent-mark. “That’s a sort of urban myth, that men pee standing up so they can pee higher and it’s all a bit of an evolutionary pissing contest,” says Garrod. “Sounds nice, sounds plausible, but there’s no evidence for it whatsoever.”
It’s thought that one of the reasons for humans becoming upright was to see further across the savannah. I wonder if standing to pee could be useful in spotting predators, and if squatting might make us more vulnerable. “I guess if I stand up while I pee I’ve got more of a chance of spotting a sabre-toothed cat running towards me, or someone from a different community who might wish me harm,” Garrod concedes. Again, sounds nice but no evidence. “It might be a nice addendum to my evolutionary journey but it hasn’t driven my evolution as a species.”
From an evolutionary point of view, then, it doesn’t really matter how we pee. Garrod has worked with many tribes and communities around the world. “And most of us … I don’t usually make a conscious effort to watch other people pee, but working in forests with other blokes you often see people having a quick wee … usually it’s standing up. As far as I know there aren’t any massive cultural differences.”
He’s talking about in the forest, away from rules and etiquette and porcelain, that’s the baseline. Of course I stand up in the forest, too. And if there’s a cliff, I’ll piss over that, while pummelling my chest. What does Prof Garrod do at home in Norwich, though? “I am a stander,” he says, almost apologetically. “Though I am also a runner. Occasionally, with very tired legs, I will indulge in a sit …” Too bad. I was going to ask him to be my friend, to replace some of the recently dumped.
Back to Tadd Truscott (no toothbrush talk, promise) – surely he sits? “I do, unless it’s a particularly gross bathroom, then I’m not going to sit on the toilet.” He has two boys and two girls: “The whole house sits down to pee.” He even has advice on how men should do it. “You can sort of aim for the side. If you don’t hear much it’s probably a stream, if it’s a little noisier it’s probably droplets and that’s when things get worse. But remember, by sitting you’re protecting the whole space with your bottom.”
Happy days, though doesn’t that mean droplets on your bum? “It’s good to bathe every day,” he adds, helpfully. Thanks, Tadd, we can be friends.
He is also currently skiing in Japan, remember. “They have these wonderful toilets with all the sprays and things for your rear end. I think men probably sit here because it’s comfortable. Right now it’s cold, you come in and the seat’s heated! OK! I’m going to sit down.”
Sounds lovely, and I’m thinking it may be the way to solve my own bathroom horror show: carrot, not stick. A lovely heated seat on a cold day – that’s got to be a better way than being shouted at by the ghost of Angela Merkel.