About

I’m Maz. This website is my personal project.

Guiding Principles

• Peeing should be easy and accessible for EVERYONE.

• Pee how you want! Stand, squat, sit: it’s all good.

• Prioritize health and safety. Do what you need to do to keep yourself healthy and safe.

• There’s nothing wrong with having a vulva. Seriously, I got so sick of people telling me how wonderfully convenient penises are. They are, but it’s not the only way. Vulvas rock.

• Pee funnels cannot solve all social ills; they are a stepping stone. I believe in toilet access and parity. I also believe in not harassing people in bathrooms.

• I believe in keeping this site non-monetized and free of sponsorship. I make no money from it and do not receive free products.

If you’re looking to pee more easily, or more discreetly, or more quickly, or more safely, or in a way that affirms your gender, I hope you find what you’re looking for on this site.

Maybe you can hike longer, or camp farther out. Maybe you’ll feel more comfortable using your gender-appropriate bathroom. Maybe you’ll stop dehydrating yourself on road trips or other expeditions. Whatever problem a stand-to-pee device solves for you, I hope it brings you freedom, even if it’s just freedom from wet feet.

My Story

It’s 11:30 pm on Halloween. I have jumped out of my best friend’s Subaru in a Wendy’s drive-thru line to squat behind a dumpster and pee. I am dressed as Tom Cruise from Risky Business: button-down shirt, socks, no pants. If you’ve ever squatted to pee on flat concrete, you know there’s no good way to do it! Pee gets all over my socks.

I’m twenty one, and six years later I’d be sitting in my first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Good Girls Don’t

I was raised to believe girls NEVER peed outside for any reason. My dad and my brother could do it whenever they wanted. But me? A hard no. I don’t think my mother would dream of it. As a kid, I couldn’t really untangle the logic of this rule. Could girls not pee outside because it was too difficult? Because it would expose our bodies? Or was it simply a thing Girls Did Not Do?

Whatever the reason, I got a very clear message: men had a freedom from bathrooms that I would never have.

Wild Child

I’d love to say that I got into camping or hiking and overcame this hang-up that way, but in reality, and for many other reasons, I developed a serious drinking problem. That cured me of the “girls don’t pee outside” thing very effectively.

I have squatted in a vast array of unsavory situations. I was young and my knees worked well; I drank away my inhibitions; and I was pretty good at it. In fact, I was a little too casual about squatting. I was asked to stop peeing outside in situations where men were doing so. It made people uncomfortable. As such, squatting felt very feminist. Normalize the way women do things!

Then came the day when it all came crashing down—not for pee-related reasons, to be clear. I just hit bottom. I walked into a run-down AA meeting in a strip mall in Las Vegas, Nevada, and was welcomed unquestioningly. My life changed. And, in what seemed a footnote at the time, my days of naughty peeing were over.

New Problems, Old Ideas

Health is a journey, and after a while I wanted to get outside and start moving again. Suddenly the problem of peeing reared its ugly head. This time, my knees hurt when I squatted. I felt a new feeling: self-consciousness. I had to keep a look-out for private places to pee and stuff used toilet paper into a plastic bag. I felt like a child again, confronted with an unsurmountable unfairness.

Still, I was wary of stand-to-pee devices. As I discuss in my Criticisms section, I felt this pseudo-feminist obligation to say that squatting to pee was just fine, no big deal, barely inconvenient. I wasn’t going to say that something “men do” was better.

The Experiment and its Results

Then one day I was like, “You know what? I’ll try a pee funnel. I have nothing to lose. If it’s stupid, I’ll go back to painfully squatting.” I decided to make a project of it for my friends. If I was going to pee standing up, I was going to try every device, and document the results. And if it failed, I’d have a funny record.

It didn’t fail.

The material result of the experiment was this site.

The emotional result, for me, was that a weight had been lifted. An old weight. I felt free! That rope to the bathroom was cut. And it wasn’t just that it was easy to pee. I could finally stop pretending. For the first time, it honestly was no big deal to pee outside, just like I’d been saying for years, through my teeth.

One question I get a lot is “Does it feel manly to pee standing up?” For me, it does not. It feels feminist. It feels natural for me, as a woman. And it definitely feels like I’m giving one-in-the-eye to rigid notions of gender, which I enjoy doing.

But that’s my story. For many people, peeing standing up IS manly, and that affirms them. For others, it’s just something that allows them to do their job. For still others, it’s not about standing at all. It’s about having the freedom to use a pee funnel in a wheelchair. I love to hear stories. Send me yours at gostandingup@gmail.com.

There are people who ask, “Why is this even a big deal?” I think I’ve answered that question many times over. If you’ve felt the yank of the urinary leash, you know why it’s a big deal. This site is for you. Spread the word, and stand up for yourself!

Acknowledgements

A lot of people who have helped with this site wanted to remain anonymous (as do I).

I will simply say that a number of people helped me by editing my writing, providing advice on inclusive language, and giving me the most basic information about how websites work. Some of these people were personal friends; some of these people just cared about the project. It’s been very cool.