"It doesn't happen when sitting": We just found out men like to sit while they pee. Wait, what?

There is a discussion doing the rounds on the interwebs that has us looking at the men in our life in a whole new light. You see, we’ve just recently found out that men folk are increasingly deciding to sit down while they pee.

It’s not necessarily a new trend, In Germany in 2004 a company created a clip on device for the toilet that admonished men from raising the toilet seat, encouraging them to sit.

In 2007 a poll of married couples in Japan found 49 percent of coupled up men peed sitting down. In Taiwan in 2012 the government even started to promote the practice. But we’ve only recently realised it’s happening in our own circles of men.

Our boyfriends, fathers and friends are admitting when asked, that they’re choosing to embrace the porcelain approach. Some full time, some just on occasion.

We’ll admit we’re a bit… puzzled. I guess male urination isn’t often on our minds, but as women who can only sit down while we pee (unless of course you’ve got a she wee but that’s a topic for another day) we are perplexed for a few reasons.

The main one being; peeing standing up looks brilliant why would you not enjoy that every chance you get?

We’ll admit, standing while you pee is one thing we’d like to experience if we lived like a man for a day. Post continues after video.

“Imagine,” we wistfully think to ourselves as our male counterparts duck into the bush to undo a zipper while we wait in a queue of thousands so we can hover over a gross public port-a-loo.

“How FANTASTIC it would be to make a discreet highway pit-stop,” we dream as we instead awkwardly expose our entire derriere in a side-of-the road squat if nature calls mid road trip.

So why are men choosing to sit rather than stand?

Reddit posed this very question, and the answers were, colourful.

“Thank goodness I’m not alone in this. This is the way I was toilet trained, but all my friends are always giving me crap for it,” one comment read.

“If I’m standing at a public urinal no matter how many times I shake it when done pissing, when I go to tuck it back into my pants three to four drops of piss will drip down my leg,” said another.

“This doesn’t happen when sitting, so for this reason whenever I’m in the comfort of my own home (or any non-public bathroom, really) I will sit down to piss.”

“Countless times this has rescued me from the horror of the half-dollar sized wet spot on my jeans,” agreed a third.

To be fair, from there the answers just went rogue which is what happens when you allow grown men to talk about toileting on a forum like Reddit.

“I sit and face the tank so I can hold on. I like to live safely,” wrote one man.

“I stand and pee in the dark. I like to live dangerously,” replied another.

Sigh.

Anyway, back to the topic at hand.

We decided to call in an expert to find out if this was in fact, a healthy way for a man to relieve his bladder.

"If we purely take the voiding I guess 'mechanism' into consideration, if you're otherwise healthy it makes no difference whether you sit or stand," Associate Professor Peter Chin from the Urological Society of Australia and New Zealand told Mamamia.

"A study in the Netherlands in 2014 looked at this, and measured how fast a man pees, how much he leaves behind, and how long it takes to empty the bladder. Essentially, it made no difference," he explained.

"On the other hand if you have troubles with your prostate, then by sitting down it gives you as good an improvement in your [peeing] parameters as taking a drug used to improve your waterworks does."

One of Associate Professor Chin's first questions to patients is; "can you hit the back wall of a toilet bowl?" and this helps him to get an idea of a man's... flow.

He says those that do have issues, choose to sit down because they simply can't stand up and get everything, well, in the bowl.

Apparently, there are numerous things going through a man's head when he is urinating.

"There is an issue with men peeing in public, some men really can't do it so they go into a stall and sit down. The other thing is when you actually pee, you relax the same muscles that hold in your flatulence.

"So if you're standing in a public place peeing but you feel like farting, you squeeze that muscle to stop yourself letting loose, and that stops you peeing properly," explained Associate Professor Chin.

"Others get worried about people seeing their 'slower flow' and they strain their bladder to get more out, and that too makes it harder to empty your bladder."

Mr Chin says choosing to sit during the night, is the most common time most men avoid standing.

"This decision is for obvious reasons - too avoid missing the bowl, and it's more relaxing and less anxiety provoking if you don't have confidence in your flow," he said.

So why don't we teach little boys to just sit?

Well, as Associate Professor Chin aptly replied: "If you ever see the difference between a line outside a female toilet and a line outside a male toilet, that'll tell you why.

"It's a lot faster and a lot more efficient," he laughed.

Yeah yeah, alright sir, rub it in.