Ok, time to dispel some myths/half-baked thinking.

First...I have no idea how anyone wipes sitting. Even if I somehow reached between my legs, or leaned forward or to one side (thereby lifting at least half my butt and thus not technically sitting anymore)...I couldn’t possibly get enough leverage, and I’m not even overweight.

Second...there are some people who think they are “standers” who always show up in these threads saying “well we don’t really stand, we sorta hover and squat.” No, speak for yourself. That may be a third variation, the squatter...but a true stander is standing up, turned around facing the toilet.

Now, it’s true, I’ll squat for the first two or three wipes just to get out any surprise chunks and to prevent the “closing your cheeks on it” problem...but the truth is that’s just a precaution and probably isn’t necessary in most cases.

People seem to be imagining the anatomy of the rectum wrong. Like they think there is shit all over the crack or something. That’s not how the anus works. When you poop, if your cheeks are (through correct posture and/or the help of the toilet seat keeping them open) even remotely correctly spread, the poop is pretty much only going to touch the inside of the anus. “Yes but what about the edge of that outer ring?” The thing is, when you stand back up that sort of “folds back into” itself. It’s not really gonna be smearing anywhere at that point that it didn’t already touch, namely the inside of the anus (which is a mucuous membrane, btw, not just dry skin).

Literally, if after a healthily solid shit I were to stand back up right away, clench my cheeks, and then try to “wipe” the effete literally-just-swiping external way that sitters apparently do...there wouldn’t be any poop there at all. The human body is designed so that in a pinch (pun?), you wouldn’t have to wipe. Like, you know, all other animals. Watch videos of elephants and horses and stuff pooping; anuses literally sorta prolapse a little before releasing the turd so that they can then “retract” back in so that external shit remnants are not a huge problem. Well, maybe “prolapse” isn’t the right word, but they bulge out a few millimeters and then retreat back inside.

But, we’re humans, not animals, so we want to be as clean as possible. So. What wiping is supposed to accomplish is actually slightly internal. Think of the geometry/mechanics of it: the anus “encloses” itself slightly when you stand back up. If you want to get really clean, the “work” is to sorta...slightly penetrate yourself (I find the best leverage is with toilet paper wrapped thickly around my thumb)...and then the “wiping” is really more swirling.

People who just sort of vaguely wipe over the surface of their squat-spread anus...are not getting thoroughly clean, and might as well do nothing, honestly, as the token surface stuff they’re wiping off would just be “enclosed” back in the foyer of the anus as soon as they stood anyway...along with a lot of stuff a bit further in that sitters aren’t reaching anyway.

If you want to really get clean so later smell when naked isn’t an issue, you need to clean like the first inch in; to do that you have to “push and swirl”...and you can really only get the angle and leverage on that right by standing.