Several days ago, just as the Iran war was entering into the absurdist realm of presidential incompetence, just as the annihilation of an ancient civilization was being threatened by a waddling, ignorant, half-senile gasbag with multiple emotional pathologies, The Washington Post ran a story about how women’s farts smell worse than men’s. In the aggregate, I mean. The story dutifully implied that one cannot extrapolate this into individual cases, such as yours.

I have no problem with this sort of story. The Universe is a big tent. Our tolerance of undiluted dreadful news is not without limit. There is room — and perhaps need — for all kinds of stories.

My main problem with the story is that it did not give me credit. I am the world’s leading pioneer in fart journalism — in particular, fart stories generated by the man whose work was at the center of the Post story, Minnesota gastroenterologist Dr. Michael D. Levitt. I am almost singlehandedly responsible for the preeminence of Dr. Levitt, having written an entire half chapter about him in 1998 in my book “The Hypochondriac’s Guide to Life. And Death.” In it, I famously reported his contention — disclosed to me and me alone — that farts might cause cancer.

Dr. Levitt has since advised NASA in how to keep astronauts from having to smell their own farts in their space suits. He is also the inventor of the Mylar pantaloons, which are baggy, airtight pants that may be worn for purposes of analyzing flatulence. As I reported in my book: “They were sewn by Dr. Levitt’s wife, Shirley, who is the Betsy Ross of intestinal gas research. Dr. Levitt’s Mylar pantaloons were used to spectacular success in one test of a commercial product, a fart-absorbing seat cushion.”

So. The point I am getting to is that I noticed that The Wapo’s fart story got a LOT of eyeballs. And inasmuch as Substack newsletters survive on eyeballs (Substack writers are human eyeball cannibals) I would like to report the evidence of my recent research into medical literature, conducted over a two-day period without the help of Dr. Levitt at all.

The thesis to be examined — postulated by myself on the basis of a lifetime of anecdotal observation — was “Are women more able than men to urinate and defecate exactly simultaneously?”

The short answer is:

YES.

Please share this with as many eyeballs as you can.

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Now here is the general explanation as to why. It is trifurcated:

Furc — The psychological reason: Women are accustomed to sitting on toilets to relieve urinary urgency. Men are — by and large — not. Should the double incidence occur to a man while at a urinal, it would result in ghastly consequences. Not so for a woman. So a man is mentally conditioned NOT to do this. A lady would not give a crap, as it were.

Bifurc — The primary physiological factor: A woman’s urethra is much shorter than a man’s, and its sphincter-release is closer to the anal sphincter than a man’s is. It is thus easier for a woman’s nervous system to coordinate these activities than it is for a man. For women, relaxing the pelvic floor to have a bowel movement often also relaxes the urinary outlet. Not so for men.

Trifurc — The supplemental, crossover physiological/psychological factor: Men’s urine stream is affected by having to move through the constriction of the prostate gland, making the act of peeing a little more difficult, in general; this effect potentiates when attempting to do something that feels, to the man, a little unnatural.

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Note: All people seem to have the physical ability to do this, but most do not choose to. For those who do, it requires some concentration — more so in men that women. In total, about 20 percent of women report the ability to easily accomplish this feat, and about ten percent of men do.

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Today’s Gene Pool Gene Poll:

My favorite three comments on Trump today, from the Web:

“Well, the bed is truly shitted now.”

and:

“Told my wife to have dinner ready by six or I’ll obliterate her entire civilization. So anyway, she now charges me a fee to use the bathroom that used to be free, and I didn’t get any dinner. So I’m pretty sure I won that exchange.”

and:

“Next month, the U.S. strikes Greenland and it ends up with Trump giving Alaska to Denmark.”

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Good. I am too embarrassed to ask overtly for money today. So I’ll just put this button here, and urge you to ignore it.

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