Every house has one, and you know exactly who he is. He heads to the bathroom with his phone and disappears for 40 minutes. By the time he comes back, his wife has fed three kids, cleaned the kitchen, and has zero interest in hearing how relaxing his poop was.
Olivia Howell, author of Divorce Happens, gave the habit a name in a Substack essay this month: “weaponized pooping.” Her argument is painfully relatable. In a house full of people who constantly need things from you, the bathroom is one of the last places where shutting the door means it’s your time and your time only. “‘I have to go to the bathroom’ is one of the most powerful sentences available to a person who lives with other people,” Howell wrote.
Men on X read “weaponized pooping” and just about lost their minds. “Women don’t even want you to poop,” one user wrote. Another called the essay “insane,” while someone else asked, “How tf can you even take feminism seriously anymore at this point?” A more philosophical response wondered if women ever thought that men might simply want “a moment’s peace?”
Howell’s point was a little less apocalyptic. She remembered asking her ex whether he minded if she went to the bathroom, basically making sure another adult was officially on duty before she could pee. He never made the same courteous announcement. He just went.
What Is ‘Weaponized Pooping’? The Bathroom Habit Driving Couples Crazy.
Many women have described similar stories online. One mom posted that her husband, while home on paternity leave with newborn twins, magically needed the bathroom whenever it was his turn to handle a diaper, bottle, or crying baby. “Anytime my husband SHOULD be doing something with the children…he ALWAYS goes to the bathroom first,” she wrote. He also brought his phone.
One survey estimated men spend about seven hours a year hiding in the bathroom to avoid chores and scroll in peace, a number that feels both absurdly low and completely believable.
One X user already saw where all this was headed. “If your husband is weaponizing pooping by staying in there for hours, don’t overreact. He will get hemorrhoids. Wrath is God’s to give, not ours,” the post read.
Unfortunately for the bathroom campers, medical issues have entered the chat. A study found people who regularly used their phones on the toilet had a 46% higher risk of hemorrhoids, and they were much more likely to sit longer than five minutes. “It’s a safe suggestion to leave the smartphone outside the bathroom when you need to have a bowel movement,” said gastroenterologist Trisha Pasricha, the study’s senior author.
Some women have decided not to wait for nature to run its course. “My partner took too many long poops with his phone in the bathroom so I divorced him,” one commenter wrote. And somewhere out there, a man is reading this from the toilet and deciding he probably has five more minutes.
The post Introducing ‘Weaponized Pooping,’ the Latest Relationship Debate Taking Over the Internet appeared first on VICE.
