Monday morning, I walked into the women’s bathroom in the Campus Center, one of the larger bathrooms on campus with 12 or 15 stalls and it was dead silent. This on its own is not out of the ordinary, but as I walked around looking for a stall I found four pairs of feet frozen behind four locked stall doors. But still the room was silent. It did not take me long to guess what was probably happening here. These four poor women knew there was someone else in the bathroom and were patiently waiting for this anonymous other person to leave so that they could poop in peace. Unfortunately, they would all be sitting there for some time. Perhaps after a while some would leave without having pooped, seeking more private bathrooms. Others might become overwhelmed by bowel pressure and shamefully fill the space with sounds of farts and splash-back, then continue to wait until they believed they could leave without anyone else seeing their face and knowing that they, like every other human being on this planet, had pooped.

I have done no scientific study on gender and floating a log. All my experience is personal or anecdotal, so it is possible that there are many men out there who are also stealth poopers, but as far as I know it is essentially a female phenomenon. I have had many conversations with women of many ages discussing their fecal rituals. Common themes are not pooping in public bathrooms, not pooping in front of significant others, and holding it until you’re constipated because you are so against the idea of someone else knowing that you have to poop. Heaven forbid diarrhea should come into the picture. The horror of this noisy, smelly, and sudden infliction is enough to make some women never want to leave the house. We are trapped by our own bodily function.

At some point in time, most children read “Everyone Poops” by Taro Gomi, and the sentiment never leaves us. It is not as if anyone believes that women do not defecate. It is a joke that women fart roses and rainbows. And yet there still seems to be this stigma around the act. Perhaps it is in the vulgarity of it all, that pooping is not “ladylike” or dainty. But if you look around you there are very few modern women still clinging to the ideals of proper lady etiquette. Many women burp or eat ribs off the bone with their hands, smearing barbeque sauce all over their faces, or scream obscenities at the television during a sporting event. It often labels them as something of a “tom boy” or “guy’s girl” and to a certain extent the cool factor of such behavior could have something to do with internalized misogyny. Gender roles are complex and dangerous things, to say the least. But something about the idea of me walking into a mixed gender room and saying, “Man, I just took the biggest, smelliest dump. It must have been all that chili I ate,” it might not be the most socially acceptable thing. Granted, a man saying the same thing could be regarded as equally vulgar depending on the audience, but men get something of a obscene free pass just on the basis of being men.

I must admit, I myself have been a stealth pooper for many years. Even through extended backpacking trips filled with “number twos” in the woods and extended food poisoning on squat toilets for three months in Southeast Asia, I’ve harbored an admittedly irrational shame around the issue. Sometime in high school someone taught me that if you lined the water of the toilet bowl with a layer of toilet paper you could reduce the splashing noise and it’s a technique I’ve employed ever since. But there are days, like that morning in the Campus Center, where I just want to yell to all the women paralyzed with fear in their stalls, “Just s**t already! Move on with your lives.”

So I’ve been making the effort to be a more public pooper. I crap in all bathrooms, no matter how easily the sound may carry to places where many people may hear. I sit down and have the runs when I feel the need and I make a strong effort not to care who grimaces at the sounds of my obvious mild illness. In the war against sexism, it may seem like a small battle, but it is an easy enough one to win. And I do not advocate that all women must immediately disregard their shame about their supersonic sewer sauce. You do what makes you feel comfortable with your own body, period. But it might be worth thinking about why you doo-doo the way you do, because changing your attitude a bit might make your life easier in a very practical way. Imagine being able to poop any time, anywhere, with anyone around, caution to the wind, toilet paper fluttering in the breeze. People of the world, your poops are a beautiful thing. Let’s work to eliminate all shame about bodies and the things they do, even if those things are smelly and brown.

Victoria Knobloch is a Collegian columnist. She can be reached at [email protected].