>> Speaker A: And I'm here to tell you the language in a patent is wild because they have to describe in detail down to, like, the minute functioning of every portion of the mechanics of their patent. Welcome back to privy. Privy is a podcast about bathrooms recorded from my home bathroom. I'm your host, hunter hoover, and I love bathrooms. Thank you guys so much for being here. Thanks for joining us. Here I am in my home bathroom once again, the old. The old steed. Uh, and we
are fully into the spring season. You can. You can probably hear it in my voice. My family and I, uh, we did a little fire pit this evening, and anytime you do a fire pit, you got to get your. You really got to get your whole snoot right up in the mix to really get the fire really stewing and brewing. You kind of got to get your whole mug down in there, and it. And it just. It just smokes you out. And as a result, it just kind of makes the whole situation a little raspier. And
so, forgive me. Forgive me for my raspberry. Uh, forgive me for the rasp. But it's the spring season. The allergies are already real. And at the point of this episode, it. Today at the recording is April Fool's day. Happy April Fool's day, everyone. Uh, it's late by the time you're hearing this, but I don't really care. Uh, again, if you pulled any. If you pulled any fun pranks, uh, let us know on the privy socials. We'd love to see and hear
about those. You can send us an email@privycastmail.com, or share us on social rivycast. Um, and last month, we discussed feminine hygiene. It was International Women's Day. Uh, and also, it was kind of women's month. So, ladies, good job. I hope you enjoyed it. Uh, right at the end, our beloved president tried to shoehorn a whole group of people in on it. But. And in a statement that is probably all together out of place, I gotta say, you know, we have this month, this is. Hello, I'm a white
man. Um, so, obviously, I'm an idiot, but for the first time in all of time, the guys were kind of left out. Like, they didn't really get much of the action. Last month, it was kind of, you know. And so this week on privy, I thought. I thought we would venture into the boys space a little bit. We're going to talk sort of a little bit about something that is very, very akin to being a guy. Um, but before we fully launch into that, uh,
we got some things that we need to talk about. We're going to discuss urinals and we're going to discuss. And we're going to kind of trace, not trace in like the snow here. You'll see. But like the history of men standing to pee. Why do men stand to pee? And better yet, should they stand to pee? We're going to seek to answer those questions this week on preview. I'm going to go ahead right at the top here. We got a way to grip and rip. I'm thirsty.
There's something about a fire pit that just creates a real thirst. Now, the history of men standing to pee is really not as interesting as the history of urinals. Or better yet, the development of the social norms behind standing to pee. It's pretty straightforward. Men, you see, men have a PP, and the PP that men have is it makes it easier for them to stand and go pee. And I say easier because women can stand in pee and as we're going
to see often have throughout history. But it takes some work and maneuvering to do so without whizzing on yourself or as it has been put to me, peeing in your shoe. And I think the best method for ladies, ladies allow me to mansplain how to pee standing up is the idea of like the bear hug around the tree. You can use like a ratchet strap or a sweatshirt. And you go around the tree and you just
kind, you kind of hang back. You kind of drop deaf, you know, you kind of, you kind of throw that, throw that butt back there and just sling it back. And now in this squat position, you just let fly. Um, you can also do the hang. You can kind of hang beef and let it ride. But essentially you are holding onto something and then putting your butt, leaning back into this semi squat hanging position wherein you're peeing. Totally flattering ladies hanging beef. But it'll get the job done. It
squares out. Uh, it serves its purpose. You know, it helps you void. But men have this extra digit that makes standing to pee a lot easier. Like just a lot easier. It also makes writing and drawing or spelling your name, uh, in the snow a lot easier. Or as I received an image, you can, you can mark your territory when you visit various national parks, shout out, you know who you are. So, yeah, uh, the beginning, that's the beginning of
men standing to pee. Pretty much as long as men have been peeing, they've been standing to pee. And it kind of seems like that continued for a long time. Also, keep in mind, for hundreds of years when you went to the bathroom, you went straight into nature. You just blasted straight back into the source. You know, what goes around comes around. It's the circle of life, and
it m moves it. I don't know. I'm going to get slapped with some sort of copyright infringement if I keep singing, because old Mickey Mouse, old Michael E. Mouse is going to come and sanction me. Tyrant. Uh, but they were often not really worried about where the material went, like, up. And that's kind of the end of the concern. And as developments in cleanliness grew, you know, people began to realize, we need to spend less time in contact with the things that have already processed and come
out of our bodies. With the creation of the piss pot and the privy and later the toilet, these all began to have an impact on the development and progression of men standing to pee. You have to remember, men can pee where men and women must sit, and so there must be some splashing involved. Like when you. I'm going to tell you right now, as a guy who pees standing up frequently,
there is splashing involved. And part of, and part of growing up, part of parents, if you are parents of boys, part of raising boys is to teach them to manage their p. Stream it. And I'm gonna be honest, it is the job of the dad. But moms, you guys are superheroes, and you probably are doing this too. But like every, every man person, every male person with the male wiener has made a mess. Peeing, it's just part of it. It's part of the game.
And it seems that with this splashing, the seated options for bathrooms developed in men, even though they're splashing, would still opt to stand. But there are records of sitting. In some instances, new technologies developed. One of these was. Can be found in archaeological digs, uh, in Sri Lanka, uh, around the year 800. Uh, they believed that this was part of a monastery, but they dug up what they believe to be one of the oldest and most rudimentary
inground urinals. And, um, the development here makes a lot of sense. This urinal is probably one of many that became standard in buddhist monasteries. These were often habited primarily or only these monasteries, were they housed primarily or only men? And as such, it would be standard in the monastery to stand. To pee. You don't need sitting pee
stations. It is also because of how they had to dispose of their waste, um, to pee and poop into the same spot made just dealing with what could be a simple job, peeing more costly time, time impeding and it just took more of your time because now you have to, like, scoop the poo out of where you peed as well, where if you poo and pee in separate spots, you can sometimes just dump, um, the
pee. And so the idea of what they have going on here is it's like you pee into the hole, and now you don't have to deal with the poop, you just have the pee to deal with. Ingenuity. Since you would just be urinating these vessels and the cleaning rituals that followed could be more appropriately tailored to address the specific bathrooming job that you did. Did peeing in a space separate from where you would poo ensured easier bathing and
easier collection for cleaning. Essentially, what this thing looks like, this sri lankan buddhist monastery urinal, is, it's like a stone slab with these two pegs where you would put your feet, and then there's just like a hole, and you would pee through the hole and it would go into like, a pot or a cistern or something. And that is what it is. This is likely the first urinal, but I'm going to be honest, it's really just a hole in the ground.
And by this definition, my buddies and I peed into, quote unquote gopher hole urinals when we were a kid, if you know what I'm saying. Really, the next big strides in urinal technology were in the french pissoirs. And you can go listen to our. Our entire episode on these. I think it's just called something piss wars. Wee wee monsoor. Um, why are the French got so much to do with bathrooms? Like, I feel like every time I talk about bathrooms, I'm talking about the freaking Romans and
the French. Why. Why do they get their snoot on this seat so often? They don't even shave their armpits. Figure it out. But, uh, the idea of a place to pee with these pissoirs that were installed in public and hooked to the newly renovated french sewer, uh, system made the idea of public places to use restrooms a little more prominent. The word about these public pisswars spread, and as it did, they were adapted in other countries and large cities.
And there isn't really a lot of development in the world of urinals. These, again, were essentially a hole that you pee into. But they were technically not urinals because they could receive solids. Now, you shouldn't do it, but they did do it. The next strides in urinal technology came in the time of the American Civil War. The first us patent for a urinal is registered to a man named Andrew Rankin. He was granted this patent on March
27, 1866. And I say registered to because there's some scuttlebutt here, some sources, and they all seem to be quoting from the same source without ever stating what that source was. Um, all state that this was a wall mounted urinal, which is the first time in all this that the urinal in question looks at all like what we are thinking in our brain when we think of a urinal today. But. But the scuttlebutt here is that Andrew Rankin did not invent it, that it was actually
invented by a woman. And the way the story goes is that because women were not allowed to hold patents at the time, and the US patent Office thought it completely insane that a woman would be developing a men's urinating vessel, they would not grant her the patent. And so Andrew Rankin swooped in, pretty much stole the idea. Uh, and I want to know. The woman is not named, so there's not a way to give her credit if this is true. But what's
interesting about the patent, you can. And I don't know if you know this, but you can just go online to Google and you can just go read patents. Like, you can just read the language in any patent, if something's patented, you can probably look it up on Google, see the images, read the description language. And I'm here to tell you, the language in a patent is wild because they have to describe in detail, down to, like, the minute functioning of every portion of the mechanics m of their patent.
What this means is something even as simple as a wall mounted journal has a pretty wild patent description. But what's interesting is when you read through this patent is sometimes in Rankin's. In the case of Rankine's urinal, which is the name of this unit, by the way, it makes it seem like he might be stealing the idea. Like, if you name. If I named my, uh, video online video service, hunters YouTube, it kind of seems like I'm.
I'm stealing a little bit of an idea. Do you know what I'm saying? So Rankin's urinal much, um, of the design and the language that he includes. And this is, I think, another tale that we can key in, that maybe this was designed by a lady, is it's less focused on letting men pee standing upright. And the device, the urinal itself, seems designed to be focused on controlling the smell that is created by urine
sitting. The patent mentions numerous times being able to put deodorizing agent in the urinal to reduce the smell. Fascinating about all this is, you hear that, men? So, ladies, I don't know if you know this, but in a urinal where men blast urine is a little disc, uh, called a urinal cake. You probably know what a urinal cake is, but if you've never seen it, it's always a thrill because they do kind of smell nice, and they do make the experience of peeing really
cool. Uh, but what's interesting is his patent is rife with language about this deodorizing agent. But his patent came 20 years prior to the urinal cake being patented and developed. But that's for another day. In short, the modern urinal had, for all intents and purposes, been invented. These urinals became standard installment in factories during the industrial revolution. Reason being, many of these factories were staffed only or primarily by men. As such, prior to the invention, it would be
common for. For workplaces not to provide a place to pee. They would have a toilet for men to poop. And it was frowned upon for men to walk to that toilet to pee. Time is money, and if you're peeing, you ain't making money. And so men would opt to just pee right onto the floor, into the corner. You got to establish a pee corner. And in the american revolution, they did. Or industrial revolution. My bad. I'm not a historian. I've never claimed to be. I, um, am. But. So it's. So it's whack.
They got. They got pee on the ground, pee on their pants, and they're working with food, sometimes packing industries. It's not sanitary, it's not good. Uh, but it was the scope. But these urinals save space. They saved time. They improved hygiene and the working conditions and allowed men to pee and get back to work faster. You can, for, like, the same space that it would take to have one toilet, you can put two to three urinals in that space. Urinals are also less intensive on the plumbing.
What's truly interesting is the role women begin to play in the development of urinal culture for men. During the women's suffrage movement, it was a common point for many of the men who were against women to gain the right to vote, to tout their ability to stand NP as a mark for why they were superior as men over women. Now, first of all, we've made some jokes this episode, but to the idea that you are able to stand up, um, that NP, and that makes you better shut up. That's. It's not
that cool of a trick. Like, it's kind of cool, but it's not that cool of a trick. And one. And also, women can stand to pee. A, uh, reality that I became all too aware of when an unfortunately uncensored image on Wikipedia was all too keen to demonstrate that to me. Wild. That that's just on the Internet loose like that. Wikipedia, censor your crap a little better. But as such, men began to make it a bigger and bigger deal about being able to stand to pee. Wee. Look at me. I can vote, and I
don't have to sit to pee. This morphed into a cultural phenomenon in which men were then expected to stand to pee. It kind of had a little bit of sexism attached to it. If you sat to pee, maybe you're a little bit more of a lady. That's where this idea comes from. This coupled with the janky history of women's public bathrooms, which there was a huge shortage of at the outset because women were expected
to be at the home. And when they began to enter the workforce, there was this awkward, like, oh, shoot, they need a different place to go to the bathroom. We need to have a women's bathroom. Also, at the beginning, a lot of times they charged women to use the public restrooms. They had pay toilets. And while they were not just
for women, women could not pee in the streets. And so it kind of became just for women, because men, instead of paying, they just go blast it right into the street, where women were like, I'm not doing that. And as these amenities became more. More public and they didn't have to pay, and they began to make strides in making bathroom access more of a reality to everyone, people began to make a realization. We don't like it when creepy Doug blasts his stream in the middle of the street
in front of every. We're just coming out of target, and dudes peeing on the cart. Like, figure it out. Sort yourself, ma'am. No, sir. You know, ladies on this, but. And so it went. For some time, pay toilets and public restrooms were a toilet, no urinal. But as it became free, we began to have men's and women's rooms. Urinals were started to be installed as it allowed men to pee and get in and out quicker. Think of how many times you've been to a state fair, amusement park, or some
sort of venue. Any, really, anywhere where there's a large gathering of people and the women's restroom line is always longer than the men's. I've never seen it the other way. I'm sure it's happened. I've never seen it. And the reason usually is, if you have to pee, women still have to go about the same process of taking the drawers down, sitting, doing the business where men, you have fewer toilets, you can have urinals which save space. You
can have more urinals in that amount of space. It saves water. It saves time. And for many businesses, if this was an option to install urinals, it was a no brainer. It saved your water consumption, it saved your time, of your employees. It's less paper, all of these things. And this distinction turned into a further distinction. If a man can use a urinal, then it must be what a man does to stand in pee. And that's kind of the thinking.
And I know there's some whack job out there who will one day make the argument that it's sexist to stand and pee. If you stand and pee, you're being a sexist pee. I know that argument exists. I know someone out there is going to make it, but shut up. That's stupid. But that's kind of the thinking. It's annoying. And they're already trying to install urinals in women's bathrooms. Now, I should note, this is not a women's urinal which exists.
They are trying to put men's urinals in women's restrooms so men who want to make believe can still go in there and pee in a urinal, whatever. As noted, there are also women's journals for actual, real women. And that brings us to this segment of poo in the news. This poo in the news was published eight days ago at the. This episode's release, it looks like March 23 ish. And it's published by the BBC News of west England. And it's titled Pair behind female eyeing up european expansion.
They note that the company Pequol, designed by these two ladies in Europe, um, and it was designed to reduce time spent waiting in line for the women's room. The 25 and 26 year old say that these are six times quicker to use than a regular toilet. And the team have raised 500,000 euro. I don't know how much dollars that is. It's probably like $15. No, I'm just kidding. Um, and they're going to continue to improve the product. They're expanding into
Germany and Netherlands. Uh, and I should describe these, uh, the ones that they have. They look like these multi, like, stepped up into rims. And when you get in there, you have this, like, privacy thing. You have enough privacy to where you can pull your drawers down and do your thing. Um, and it's got a thing that minimizes splash. Very good. When you're trying to use a urinal, by the way, I've shared at length at my job at the high school there, there is an in ground urinal that I
use frequently. And when you wear shorts and use that urinal, you definitely feel the splashback. That's all I'm saying. But they have investors and they begin to drag these things out at festivals. Ah. And it's a shift in behavior. At the start, uh, a lot of people were like, I don't know about it, but when you don't have to wait in a regular 15 minutes line, the option is suddenly, like, there. They say, they, they say that the biggest thing is like, oh, the impact on the climate.
It's fine. We're gonna be fine. In addition, uh, they're trying to make the units out of plastic from the ocean. And they're in discussion about collecting the urine in the bottom and it being used to turn into fertilizer. Now, uh, I want to note, I looked at these, I had to go look these up to see what these look like. And, uh, they're
kind of cool looking, I'm not going to lie. But here's the deal. The mechanism by which women you would squat and pee in this is literally, it's a man made device to allow women to do the squat and hover bear hug method I mentioned earlier. It's just inside of a plastic cage rather than wrap your butt around a tree. And if you don't believe me, go look this up on YouTube. It's pretty clear what's going on. You pretty much like brace, hang beef, let's bray,
move on. It's pretty cool. It's a path forward, giving women something that's for them to use, that is quick, like what men have, rather than just making the experience the same as a man's. This brings us to the end of poo in the news. It should also be noted in the standing to pee and urinal technology. We have two other things we need to discuss. First is
the concept of portable urinals. Now, while I think the distinction between these and piss pots is essentially shape like, some of these ancient portable urinals are wild. And I have to say this. The opening of the portable urinal I, uh, you need, well, imagine a watering can. But instead of like a nice little spout is what appears to be like a two inch hole that protrudes from the spout itself. The pot itself.
I'll post pictures of these out on the privy social. But yeah, people were definitely sticking stuff into these devices. It's wild. Also, this is another thing of feedback to those of ancient history. Don't make the portable urinals look like animals. And if you're gonna make them look like animals, like if you can't help it, don't make the hole on the portable urinal correspond to a hole that could be found on the real life version of the animal.
Stop it. So many of these is like the mouth of the animal is the receptor hole. Please dear Lord, help us. Why the guys like spray into the container and then they dump it in an appropriate spot. And I think these actually probably had some religious usage. If you go back far enough, they just did it wherever. But if you need to get outside the camp or outside of some sort of an area that was affected by worship, this would definitely make disposing of your waste out of those areas much easier.
They have found these in all sorts of ruins from ancient Japan in the Europe in the 500s. It's wild stuff. The other stand to pee technology is a modern invention and it seeks to make the urinal using process less of a thing for just men. And add the experience for the ladies. Ladies, this one's for you. While much of this technology is pretty new, most of it came about in the last hundred years. It is really the updating and development of women's clothing to allow for easier bathrooming while
standing pants, if you will. Uh uh. Because a long time ago, like you go back 100, 2150 years, women didn't wear pants. It was like, what is wrong with her? But they're essentially devices for the collection or aiming of urine. One popular device is this cone shaped thing. And I think the woman holds it to her zone while standing to pee. And then it comes out the end in what looks like a more aim friendly shape. Others seek to collect it for the lady and then dump it in the toilet.
Similar to the urinal situation, the most popular of these, something called the urinal, originated in France and entered widespread use in 1996. But here's the deal. There are countless accounts and images of women standing to pee in pots and things throughout history. It's the urinal that fouls us up because you can't really stand and hover over your. No, not well. And that brings us back to the question. Men stand to pee. And the urinal followed. But should men stand to pee?
There's been a lot of debate about this in recent times and as we will see in times past, about whether men standing to pee has any health risks. And this original hypothesis dates back to 1883, when the english medical officer Raglan W. Barnes stated his concern about the number of bladder stones they were finding in the indian immigrant population. And he said that this was linked to the fact of them and their voiding position. Now, I
want to know. His hypothesis was definitely racist in nature, because he goes on to say that, like, because they pee in the position they pee in, they're savages. All this stuff. Now it's just another old guy. Uh, he's a product of his time. Okay, I'm not saying it was okay, but that was the belief at the time. We've moved on. And since, since his original hypothesis, it's only been researched a handful of times, and one of the most recent was in a study in
2014. And this study sought to determine if there were any health benefits or detriments for men standing to pee. Does it improve flow? Is there any data to suggest that men standing to be as harmful or helpful? And the one ongoing argument is that if you are standing up, you are going to be less able to relax and allow everything to just noose, rough out flow right on out of you. It's a hypothesis at minimum. And they did this study, and they found that there isn't really a benefit unless you
just prefer to sit. And here's the rub. You're free, baby. They said that for people with pre existing medical conditions, uh, luts, it's like lower urinary tract somethings, it could help you to sit to pee, but other than that, it's not going to make that much of a difference. And here's the thing. You're free. Uh, we here, where I make this show, we are free. We are in America. You might as well enjoy it while it's still free.
If you want to sit to pee, sit to pee and own that you're a man because you have the equipment, not based on what position you are when you use that equipment. So our takeaway is this week on privy. Sit to pee if you want, stand to pee if you want. Ladies, demand the technology developed to you, not just altering men's technology to fit you. This brings us to the end of another episode of
privy. Thank you all so much for being here. I hope you enjoyed our brief look at men standing to pee in urinal technology development. As always, you can follow us online at Privycast on all social media. You can send us an email. We're privy. Castmail.com, talk to us. Let us know your thoughts. Um, we got the privies. Go check us out. The privies. We got Randy Bowles. Go check out Randy Bowles. Uh, you can follow me. I am on all social
media. Leave us a rating or review. The five star options are preferred. You can do that at Apple podcasts, Spotify podcasts, or you can like the episode on YouTube or Podbean. All ratings. If you leave us a rating or review on Podcatcher, we will donate a dollar to wounded warriors and living water international as a way of saying thank you for leaving the rating and review. And that is a reminder to keep pooping in the free world. The free world was not always free. And not everyone has clean
water yet. We need to work towards that. Thank you again for listening. We want to thank Kevin McLeod and Poddington Bear for the use of their music this week. Uh, this has been another episode of Privy. Thanks for listening. Keep pooping in the free world. Own your stank. As always, don't forget to flush.