On the right (urinary) tract to equality.

I drink a lot of water. Seriously, a lot. I have a water bottle I got from a race that advertises a triathlon I didn’t run, but I still carry it with me like some stupid badge of pride or security blanket. I’m fearful of dehydration but according to the almighty Internet, if you drink more, you avoid snacking. It hasn’t really worked, but was has worked is my urgent need to urinate almost every hour.

While this happens mostly at work, I’m lucky with a home-based office that I share a bathroom with my boss’s son, and there are always good books to read on the scintillating subject matters of shapes, opposites, and ducks.  More seriously, I’m lucky that my bathroom isn’t designated by gender.

I don’t know if I’ll become enough of a crazy liberal to argue for those Ally McBeal unisex bathrooms, but I will argue that urinals are a waste of resources. And it’s not just me, the Navy also agrees. Recently, the Navy decided that all of their new carriers (you might recognize this class of ship by sinking it on Battleship) would not have urinals in order to accommodate for changing staff on the ship.

The change heralded by the Gerald R. Ford class of carriers – starting with the namesake carrier due in late 2015 – is one of a number of new features meant to improve sailors' quality of life and reduce maintenance costs, Capt. Chris Meyer said yesterday, 7/11/12 (CNN Blog) Plus, look how fucking sweet this new carrier is:

First of all, as a huge supporter of our military, I’m excited that the Navy is making the right measures to help improve the morale of the troops and spend the defense budget on something more apt, say, actually defending our country. Without urinals, bathrooms can be designated as male or female on a whim, and account for the changing population of the Navy (girl power!).

Second, urinals are not as inclusive as they sound (your-inals is deceptive). While I’ve never successfully peed in one, I know how gross they can get. Captain Meyer agrees too. “Urinals clog more than toilets and therefore can be smellier and costlier to maintain”. Obviously, because guys are fucking slobs.

One of my first blog posts ever was about sharing a bathroom with my previous roommate Alex, and his attempt to train me to leave the toilet seat lid down. While Alex was remarkable about not leaving the seat up (you were too Brock!!), I still wonder to this day why guys have to lift the seat up to pee, but can piss with seemingly (but never perfect) accuracy into the much smaller urinal. Men, you must weigh in on this inconsistency to me. The fact that you can’t aim when you’re sober is appalling to me.

I am going to share a ridiculous story with you. One time, when I was roughly 7 or 8, I accidentally opened the door on my Dad taking a leak. I didn’t see anything except the subtle difference that he gets to pee standing up and I had to pee sitting down. Plus, at that age I was neurotically wasting toilet paper to cover the seat every time I went, even when it was at home. I was bowled over. What a time saver! Why didn’t I think to pee standing up?! I realize my blissful ignorance came at the time that I also didn’t know guys had different parts than women, so it obviously made more sense at the time.

So, I tried a few hours later. I stood straight up and got as close to the toilet as possible without crouching, and peed. Shocker, I ended up pissing on my rolled down tights and underwear. That’s when I engineered a better idea, I would stand OVER the toilet, on top of the seat, and gravity would take care of the rest. Without taking off my urine tights or my shoes, I stood on top of the seat, one leg on each side of the lid, and finished my stream. It actually worked, until I slipped coming down due to how much pee I had on the floor. The injury wasn’t worth it.  Later, I’d chalk it up to being a hard way to learn that guys have a penis and girls have a vagina (Thanks Kindergarten Cop).

This embarrassing anecdote over, I return to my rant about urinals. Yes, in an ideal world, everyone could pee the same way and if we just had lines of uniform, walled-in stalls, would anyone be the wiser? No, but since anyone who stands up to pee ends up making a mess, we have to have separate bathrooms and it’s not fair that guys are genetically inferior and can’t learn how to pee cleanly and safely. Until they do, I fundamentally believe urinals should be outlawed.

And I’m not alone. Men in the Navy are optimistic about this change. Many sailors like to sleep in little clothing, Captain Brian Luther reports. On Ford, they won’t have to bother with putting on more appropriate clothing before hitting the head. A corpsman said he has seen sailors relieving themselves into bottles in their rack rather than having to get dressed in the middle of the night. (Navy Times Article) Now, everyone can experience the same agony of lumbering up in the middle of the night to take a leak in the toilet. God bless equality.

I applaud the Navy and its progressive attitutde with its flexible accommodations. I don’t think the switch over will lead to a caliber of less manly servicemen (some fuckwits online believe this can actually happen), but I think we should embrace the role of women in our service and hope that men who protect our great country can someday keep a clean bathroom and improve their accuracy. If they can’t aim the stream of pee coming out of their penis, do we really want them firing missiles at terrorists, anyways?