First we have act of putting as many layers of protection between the toilet seat and the fragile female behind. Some restrooms have dispensers where women can get flushable toilet seat shaped tissue protectors. I have heard women grabbing 4-5 at a time because apparently that protects you even better. (eye roll) If not -a protective cover can be fashioned out of toilet paper. If you're an idiot you grab the paper towels. (which plug up the toilet). A real treat is when you walk into a stall and some germophobes couldn't even be bothered to touch their own germy seat protectors to flush or throw them away. (lovely) Then there are the women where none of these options will do - so they hover. Yes - I am not kidding - they straddle the toilet and hover their ass over the seat and proceed to go. Now mind you they don't get everything in the toilet and leave the mess for the next person. But they don't care as long as they got to have a germ free tinkle. Of course there is the old stand by of flushing the toilet with your foot trick, which I don't get because if you wiped yourself, your hands are already "dirty" and you are going to wash your hands anyway, so why are you worried about touching the handle? You have to touch the latch on the door to get out of the stall - so what germs are you saving yourself from? Then once you get your hands clean you use a paper towel to open the restroom door and if there is no waste basket handy you just throw the towels on the floor. The other odd behavior I have seen, or should I say heard, is flushing the toilet before they sit down to go. Now for some unknown reason this is popular with the Asian women. I asked a Filipino woman I know at work who did this one day, and she said it was to get clean water in the toilet so if anything splashed back up you wouldn't catch a disease.
So there it is - it all boils down to this weird urban legend / old wives tale that you can catch a sexually transmitted disease from a toilet. Every woman I have talked to who perform all these germophobic gymnastics in the restroom have the SAME story. Someone told them that their mother's friend's sister's daughter caught an STD from a toilet. NO THEY DIDN'T. It's always somebody they don't know and have never met. I'll say "give me a name of someone you know directly that caught an STD from a toilet" - they can't name any. That's my point. This is an urban legend based in zero fact. I would also say bunk to anyone claiming they got an STD from a toilet. Chances are they got an STD from..... yes ..wait for it... having sexual intercourse. But since we still live in double standard times where women are supposed to feel ashamed for wanting and having sex, we have to make up stories about STDs and toilet seats, crabs and tanning beds, and herpes and gym equipment so we don't get labeled a slut or whore.
So I'll say this one more time. YOU CAN'T GET AN STD FROM A TOILET SEAT! OK ... for the sake of science I'll concede the fact that it is highly improbable. Every article I have read on this topic pretty much says the same thing. Germs can't live on a cold dry surface. So when Dr. Oz and other health related shows do their fear driven ratings getting germ segments, where they swab a number of public places, they fail to mention that all these germs they find are dead, therefore harmless. Infectious disease specialists say the only way to catch an STD from a toilet is if said germ happens to stay warm enough and wet enough to survive AND happens to enter your body directly through the urethra, vagina, or opening in the skin. While it's possible, it's highly improbable and next to impossible. I can attest that I have NEVER done any of this ridiculous things (even when visiting foreign countries) and I have not even gotten so much as a pimple on my ass. So ladies - can we knock off all this neurotic behavior and just go potty? Ironically the restroom would probably be cleaner.
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