Urination posture encodes gender hierarchy felt from early childhood

Evidence

There are countries where men urinate sitting down, and there are women who urinate standing up: this is the way among many women peasants; but in contemporary Western society, custom generally has it that they squat, while the standing position is reserved to males. This is the most striking sexual difference for the little girl. To urinate she has to squat down, remove some clothes, and above all hide, a shameful and uncomfortable servitude. Shame increases in the frequent cases in which she suffers from involuntary urinary emissions, when bursting out laughing, for example; control is worse than for boys. For them, the urinary function is like a free game with the attraction of all games in which freedom is exercised; the penis can be handled, through it one can act, which is one of the child’s deep interests. A little girl seeing a boy urinate declared admiringly: “How practical!” The stream can be aimed at will, the urine directed far away: the boy draws a feeling of omnipotence from it. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 685

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Beauvoir’s core thesis of woman as Other formed through bodily situation; also echoes the chapter’s broader argument that the body’s facticity is socially mediated rather than naturally given. — connects to: Excrement contests among boys can confer penis-like prestige through objectified alienation; Seeing male dominance, not genital difference, alters a girl’s self-consciousness — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 698; The body-as-metaphor legitimated social hierarchy as naturally given (+4 more)
• SEED: An essay angle: how mundane bodily functions become the first gendered site of transcendence vs. immanence — freedom of aim and exposure versus shame and concealment.

Broader Connections

• Seeing male dominance, not genital difference, alters a girl’s self-consciousness #corroborates (0.82) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 698
• Male dominance orientation persists even apart from social role occupancy #expands (0.80) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 3234
• The body-as-metaphor legitimated social hierarchy as naturally given #expands (0.78)
• Learning the truth of sex transforms the child into another being marked by shame #qualifies (0.75) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 728
• Gender differences are learned developmental outcomes, not natural expressions #corroborates (0.75) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 668
• Early divergence between boys and girls is socially imposed, not instinctual #corroborates (0.72) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 676