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It's to discourage "squatters", who may choose to balance precariously with their feet on the toilet rim.

2 hours ago, Zbigniew said:

squatters

 

Spoken like an expert.

Right! 

 

The squat toilet is viewed here as a more sanitary option, as well as being a more healthy option. People will try to perch like birds on the toilet rim rather than sitting down. 

They break the toilet seats doing that.  I've had to replace my toilet seat so many times after hosting guests.  

 

More sanitary?  The squat toilets are always stinky and messy places.  I think the "but your butt doesn't touch the seat" argument is used to justify laziness and poor sanitation.  

7 hours ago, vellocet said:

The squat toilets are always stinky and messy places.

So are the sitting toilets. I prefer a dirty squat toilet over a dirty sitting one. Nevermind other people's butts, I prefer mine not touching a dirty seat and squatting is a lot more comfortable than hovering.

7 hours ago, Lu said:

So are the sitting toilets.

I disagree.  Since you sit on the Western toilet, everyone knows it has to get cleaned more often.  They're never stinky pits like the squatties.  "Dirty seat" is just silly germophobia.  If it's that much of a deal to you, a quick going-over with the nearby toilet paper gets the job done.  If you're really paranoid, wet it down at the sink first.  It's just as good a job as any cleaner would do.

 

Squatting is murderously uncomfortable for anyone not accustomed to it.  If you grew up squatting, fine.  But for the rest of us, it's a difficult posture to assume for any length of time.  

 

Moreover things tend to fall out of your pockets and into the nasty muck on the floor.  Your phone, for example.  Eww.

My  two penn'orth:

 

Squatting over the hole-in-the-ground type is practically always going to be more sanitary than sitting directly on a sit-down type (other than a brand new one) provided the area the squatter comes into contact with has not been soiled by previous users. If the area the squatter comes into contact with when using a hole-in-the-ground type is already soiled then clearly squatting on a sh*t- and p*ss-free floor over a sit-down type is the more sanitary option, even if the bowl and/or rim is soiled, as long as no contact is made with the bowl/rim.

 

Given the shorter distance to the target, performing seated as intended on a sit-down type is the approach most likely to deposit your waste in the right place with no overspill and leave the surrounding floor clean for the next user. However, unless before you perform you first clean the seat thoroughly or cover it with paper, the close contact required between intimate parts of your flesh and a seat that has very probably already been pressed close by the least sanitary parts (generally speaking) of thousands of other people means you will inevitably be coming into closer contact with other people's pathogens than you would if squatting, other things being equal.

 

Have I left something out, or are we dung with this topic?

 

 

 

32 minutes ago, Zbigniew said:

... the close contact required between intimate parts of your flesh and a seat that has very probably already been pressed close by the least sanitary parts (generally speaking) of thousands of other people ...

My 大腿 are actually not that intimate a part. I mean I don't walk around with them exposed, but they are neither private nor unsanitary. Supposedly the toilet seat is one of the cleanest places in most houses and that makes a lot of sense to me: the body parts that touch the seat almost never touch anything else (except the inside of one's pants or skirt).

 

Provided, of course, that people who sit don't hover and people who stand put the seat up.

Lu, I was talking about public toilets not the private ones in the homes of intelligent speakers of second languages, as I'd hoped would be evident from the context established by abcdefg and my reference to "thousands of other people".

 

Also, I'm not sure what to make of your reduction of my use of "intimate parts" to the thighs alone. Surely you're not suggesting that all users of public toilets make contact with the toilet seat with their thighs alone, or that even if they do their thighs will necessarily be as sanitary as yours. 

I hope I am not irritating you because I find this discussion more and more hilarious and hope you feel the same. If you don't, please ignore my reply here.

 

33 minutes ago, Zbigniew said:

Surely you're not suggesting that all users of public toilets make contact with the toilet seat with their thighs alone

Now I'm really curious what other body parts people touch the toilet seat with and how those parts get dirty. The really dirty part usually hangs free over the pot, after all, not touching anything.

4 hours ago, Zbigniew said:

Have I left something out, or are we dung with this topic?

 

Hope we are dung with it!

Well I don't know about others but I sit on the seat with my bum cheeks, my thighs don't really get involved.