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Berliners Protest Pee Proposal

DW staff (win)January 1, 1970

German men have long been ridiculed by males in other countries for succumbing to the matriarchal decree of sitting down while urinating. But now Berliners are standing up for their rights.

https://p.dw.com/p/5FA0
Please sit down to pee, it reads

It all began with a business-friendly proposal: Berlin's city leaders recently cut some red tape and allowed owners of small restaurants to provide a unisex restroom instead of separate ones for men and women.

Pubs and bistros below 50 square meters (538 square feet) in size will only have to install one toilet from now on. Those that don't offer alcohol and have less than 40 square meters don't even have to offer a WC, or water closet, at all, as Germans commonly refer to the place.

That's all great and dandy, the folks at Berlin's restaurateurs' association thought. But knowing how messy men get when they're not forced to sit down, the group has called for a ban on Stehpinkeln, or peeing while standing, in the new his and hers toilets.

German tabloid Bild didn't wait long to take up the issue and surveyed Berlin men about the proposal. Not one of them supported the idea and arguments ranged from fears of contracting diseases to disgust to seeing it as a waste of time.

"Men have been peeing standing up for several centuries," 43-year-old Ali, a scaffolder, told the paper. "I'm not going to let anyone take that away from me."

Bernd Meyer, a 16-year-old student, kept his calm, however. "I don't care what they'll tell me," he said. "Everyone does what he wants in the loo anyway."
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