Pee If You Want to Go Deeper (2021)

I have a spinal injury and have experienced both catheters (both Foley, which have a balloon in the bladder, and isc ones, which don't) and modern absorbent underwear.

Catheters are evil pain sticks. Modern pants are wonderful and have dramatically improved my quality of life.

This seems like a sad example of "we'll do something to children that we'd never accept for ourselves, but it's OK because what can they do about it?"

I had this thought too. My best guess is that it's down to the length of the urethra. Have you ever lifted liquid out of a glass using a straw, by capping the upper end of the straw with a finger? That liquid wants to fall, but that causes the gas volume above the liquid to expand, so vacuum pressure pulls the water upward, counteracting gravity, and also pulls your finger into the straw slightly. I imagine that, for a longer column of fluid, that vacuum pressure is at least a contributing factor to the unpleasant feeling. (Not to mention that, when urinating, that column of liquid is already moving rapidly!)

Male here: it's a lot more manageable if you control it with your pubococcygeal(sp?) muscles, the ones you can also use to control ejaculation. I've had to do this while peeing into a bottle that wasn't necessarily big enough. It still sucks, but not so much due to physical discomfort.

As a guy I found this article oddly riveting — the author seems super cool for being so candid. But the “pee slowly” thing had me coming to the comments to learn more: is this something ladies can typically do?

I'm a guy but for me it just... takes more time to finish pissing?

Then again I found out in my teenage years that not everyone is able to stop urinating on command, too. Something to do with excessive drinking, pissing in public places, and some friends not being able to haul their little firehoses in before the cops took notice.

Does pinching it off mid-piss hurt for you, as well?

I would say that a primary reason to do it slowly is to not put too much pressure into it, which is true for both women and men. The p-valve involving gluing it on your body, and the tube is soft which can easily get kinks. It can balloon and there is always the risk that the pressure find an alternative way that is not the outside of the drysuit.

I do not find it too uncomfortable myself. The fear of rapture is fairly major one, especially the first time of a dive when your trust in the glue are a bit low. After that you can increase the speed a bit.

Never had that problem. Also male. I used to play games with it in middle school, hopping from urinal to urinal, now I modulate my flow to reduce splashing.

If there are anatomical differences, they're not entirely gender-based.

Almost all medieval armour is open from below at the crotch. So, you can just let go, but you'll wet or foul your underwear. Sometimes there are flaps or removable pieces. Sometimes not. It highly depends on the type or armour and the exact time period.

I have a full maille kit for reenactment. I can easily pee while wearing it. I only have to remove my gloves and helmet (so I can see what I'm doing). Defecating is harder but not impossible, but I just go before gearing up. I don't have armour on all day during reenactment events.

The armour needs to be quite flexible in this area anyway as your hips and legs need to bend. they just used flaps of chainmail rather than seal you in. Look at some images.

I'm a little confused by this - I've ridden motorcycles for a decade now and typically one simply stops, dismounts, and orients oneself looking downwind.

Do you have details on this? The (non-new) system is (At least in the US), a piddle pack. It's a thick plastic bag that folds flat, filled with kitty litter. Turns into pee gel. That's for men. The women's ones are more complicated, and have electrical pumps.

I wonder what kind of other jobs/occupations require having some kind of pee management system. Maybe astronauts?

Except for the gross factor? The author seems pretty clear that, yes, you can:

> For those of you asking, what are my options for diving in a dry suit? Well… you can just hold it (again, if you have a bladder of steel), nappies/diapers, the p-valve, or just pee in the suit (which is gross and defeats the whole purpose of the dry suit, right?).

The "purpose of the dry suit" is to keep you dry. If you're literally wetting yourself, and with a fluid that is rather more chemically offensive than water, then you're probably going to have a bad time. (I don't know how temperature-controlled dry suits are, but you lose heat a lot more easily through contact with a liquid (that's what sweat is for!), so the urine puddle probably makes heat retention harder, too.)

When I started diving I still didn't understand the difference between dry and wet suits. Although a dry suit could look pretty similar to a regular wet suit to a non diver from far away, the way of wearing it is way different.

A wet suit is used in warm/hot weather were the insulation provided by the neoprene and the wather that gets trapped between the suit and your body is enough. If you pee on a wet suit, well, your wet anyway, and it's not much of a difference.

A dry suit is what is used for really cold weather, and it's really dry inside. It's watertight. For keeping yourself warm inside the suit, you just wear some layers of "regular" dry clothes. So if you pee in a dry suit, your peeing on your dry clothes.

Would be like peeing in your flight or space suit (without a catheter like system like the described in the post)

You're generally not wearing just a drysuit if the water is cold. Under the outer shell, you often wear multiple undergarments to keep warm. Think a base layer, underwear, socks, 1-piece.

Beyond it being uncomfortable, it’d essentially be a thermal bridge - defeating the purpose of keeping an air gap on the inside of the suit.

When I was much younger, we would go surfing in a wetsuit. When the water was cold, taking a piss would be a nice little break from freezing while the layer of water inside the suit warmed up. Sounds gross but it gets replaced over time while you're in the water.

You lose heat 25x faster when wet.

The relief zipper installed on some men's drysuits isn't for use underwater. It's just for use on the surface, to save the hassle of partially removing the drysuit (can be difficult on small boats). But it's also a source of leaks so no one really uses them anymore.

It's more that you can go between dives without having to de-suit completely, I think.

As others have said, the zip is for use above water.

Underwater, men have similar choices – holding it in, wearing a diaper, or a condom catheter (similar principle but without the need for such precise and thorough glue application).

Peeing in a wetsuit is one of life's small pleasures.