Why do girls think they own the toilet? This week I was in a public bathroom — a public MENS bathroom — and two girls walked in while I was at the urinal. They laughed at my discomfort, and then loudly demanded that the man in one of the stalls “Hurry the fuck up.” Unfortunately for the young ladies I was just finishing, so as I zipped myself up I confronted them. Briefly, I promised them that if they wanted to play in the men’s room, I was more than willing to treat them as if they were the sex who were supposed to be in that room in the first place (and needed a lesson in manners.) I was bluffing of course — I don’t beat women — but I still can’t forget the look of shock and terror on their faces. What else on earth could they possibly have expected?
I once worked at a theater in Hollywood that had four bathrooms, two for the men, two for the ladies. On big events we had to turn one of the men’s bathrooms into a ladies because the girls would not only use the men’s bathroom anyway, but they would cut in front of the men in line to do it. The men would stoically endure and say nothing. Despite the unwarranted privileges we granted the women, ten to twelve times a night each of the employees would be still screamed at by some woman for giving all the bathrooms to the men.
I know a guy whose wife threw a bucket of water on him while he was asleep because he left the seat up. I know this because she boasted about it to an entire group of people while we were eating at a raucous pizza parlor. I asked her why she got so upset, because I just don’t understand the anger. She laughed and said, “Wait till you fall into the toilet in the middle of the night because some inconsiderate jerk left the seat up.”
I asked why she didn’t look where she put her bottom, and she looked at me like I was from Neptune and replied, “Because it was dark — DUH!”
“Why was it dark?” I asked, and just looked at her.
“You mean why didn’t I turn on the light, don’t you Mr. Professor?” she sneared, “because I woke up in the middle of the night and I wanted to go back to sleep and I didn’t want the light to wake me up.”
I thought about that for a second, and said, “OK . . . so if your husband wakes up in the middle of the night, chooses to leave the light off so he will remain sleepy, and assumes you left the seat up, then you are responsible for him whizzing all over the toilet?”
(If at this point you can imagine a group of henpecked husbands begin to laugh and cheer, while the wives, suddenly forced to do an impromtu balancing act on formerly sacred terra firma, begin to yell and try to shout me down, you have a good mental image of the scene.)
I waited for them to finish or at least quiet down some, so I could get a cogent argument out of them, but all they had to offer to the conversation was. “You don’t know what its like!”
To which I replied, “Thank God, your husbands are pretty hairy.”
This allowed a bit of laughter, and the conversation got back on track, so I was able to ask, “Why, what is it about being a woman that makes you not responsible for your actions? Are you not the equal of a man?”
This predictably brought more wailing and gnashing of teeth, but the response that got my attention was by an usually quiet young lady at the end of the table who peevishly said, “You try raising a child and then talk to me about responsibility.”
Rather than point out that I was probably just as good at changing diapers — the old kind, with pins — and testing to make sure the milk isn’t too hot, and had long ago proven myself more than capable of meeting all the other demands a young child imposes on it’s parents, I simply asked, “So you only teach your sons they are responsible for watching where they are going? Even when they are climbing trees, or learning to drive?”
You get the idea of how this conversation went, and the point is not to put down the ladies. The point of bringing this conversation up is say how much fun I had challenging received consensus and forcing a rethinking of an issue by people who think they have a religious mandate to dominate a physical thing by virtue of their place in society.
As you can imagine, none of the ladies were convinced of anything, but the men certainly began to look at the issue in a new light. I don’t know if that will keep my friend dry in his sleep, but at least I won’t have to hear some inconsiderate screech brag about bullying her husband. Sorry to tread on what you thought was your territory ladies, but either you are equal, or not.
ADDENDUM: I’ve since learned that each of the ladies present at the above encounter — all four of them — have decided that I am no longer welcome at any of their gatherings, that their husbands should no longer be my friends, and that one of the women insisted on it. I wasn’t surprised, I’ve had more than a few ex girlfriends try that ultimatum on me too, but I was surprised that all four men could be such slobbering dogs to their women. Perhaps they deserve to be bullied in their own homes, perhaps not. I certainly don’t claim to have all the answers, but I wish them all good luck: God knows they will need it.