The Gender of Seats

Up and Down

Surely there is nothing less masculine than speaking out in defense of masculinity, as I am hearing men do lately with regard to seizing Greenland and renaming it for a Navy Seal, or something.

It’s weak, fellas. “Masculinity is back! Yaaaay! Let’s show our butts!”

No. What we have to do is face up to the really tough issues that arise when men and women dare to live together. We need to explain aspects of male-pattern behavior in a positive light—as I did some years ago in my book What Men Don't Tell Women.

For instance, the seating problem. Don’t tell me you haven’t run into this one at home.

Women's case rests on two assumptions: that seated activity (which we will call number two) is normal, and that standing activity (which we will call number one) is aberrant.

In defense of these assumptions, women point out that everyone performs number two seated. Seated activity, then, is part of everyone's experience. And seated activity requires that the seat be down. Therefore, women argue, the seat should always be left down for the next person.

For decades men have tried to get number two thrown out, on the grounds that it is the least frequent activity and should not carry as much weight as number one -- that it confuses the issue, which should be confined to number one. Men have never been successful.

So men's argument is as follows: If women are injured by discovering that the seat has been left up, then why are men not injured by discovering that the seat has been left down?

Women respond that the way in which women discover that the seat has been left up -- i.e, physical contact with ice-cold porcelain — is patently more injurious.

Men consider that this hazard is a function of women's approach to the seat, not of men's departure from it. Men argue that every approach to the seat should be regarded as a fresh approach, with nothing to be taken for granted except the routine necessity of visual inspection. Failure to look before sitting, men argue, violates the principle of caveat qui sedet, "let the sitter beware."

Women reject this principle. Women posit a principle of ground zero or middle C or home base -- that is to say, a point of return that provides stability, a center: the seat down.

Men point out the wasted effort that men's adherence to the latter principle would entail. First, no matter who might be using the facility next, men having engaged in number-one activity would need to lower the seat again. If five male usages occurred consecutively -- that us, with no female usages intervening -- then ten raisings or lowerings of the seat would be required, not one of which was necessary. Furthermore, men point out, it is a greater burden on men to bend over and raise the seat, than for women to lower the seat on their way down -- because women are shorter, generally, and because lowering-while-seating is a more natural, gravitational motion.

Women counter that if men want to talk about natural motions, they should go teach their grandfathers to eat eggs.

Men counter that women have that saying wrong. The saying, men say, is "Teach your grandmother to suck eggs." Women have got it wrong, not only as to the terms of it but also as to the point of it.

Women counter that who are men to tell them how a saying goes? Women assert that the saving they have used is a woman's saying; men may have in mind some men's saying.

Men counter that "Teach your grandmother to such eggs" is not a men's saying, it is a folk saying, which has been passed down by people of both genders for centuries, and that the trouble is that women never get sayings right.

Women counter that if women never get sayings right, then how can women have been involved in the passing down of this characterization of women as egg suckers that men have dragged into a discussion of the disposition of seats as an aspect of the natural order of things, which is seats should be down.

Men counter that how would women like it if men engaged in number-one activity without raising the seat.

Women counter that the only reason seats ever have to be raised in the first place is that men cannot perform activity number one with natural accuracy.

With that, the argument ends. Because men — out of natural graciousness — refrain from voicing the final, clinching point.

To wit:

Everyone knows that the only reason women complain about men’s behavior during number-one activity — particularly with reference to ice-coldness — is that women will never get over the fact that women, unless they are extraordinarily nimble-footed, cannot write their names in the snow.