Ladies, Stand Up and Pee!

Photo courtesy of SheWee.com

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Though from the looks of this thing I guess all we ever needed was a funnel. I guess it’s that easy? Fashion a funnel at an angle with a curved shoehorn-like bowl, and presto, women are liberated! It’s true that we gals really, really need an alternative to sitting on (or squatting above) nasty gas-station toilets. It’s a big-time pain in the ass for women to have to sit and squat all the time, same goes for things like menstruating, childbirth, and childrearing; we put up with a lot because of our anatomy. But on the pee front I’m not yet convinced that the Brits’ SheWee has broken the porcelain ceiling.

First off, the physics of it seems really challenging, which is probably why we haven’t seen a SheWee before. I mean, we have a female condom, we have boxer shorts for women, but, like lady Viagra, the bipedal pee has heretofore eluded us. Second, the site insists that you can use the SheWee “without removing your clothes.” Hmm, I’m not trusting that molded funnel to catch everything and keep my clothes, and shoes, wee free. Plus, it’s reusable and is supposed to be put back in a bag between uses, which means you’re carrying around urine between liberated pee stops. The SheWee is perfect, says the site, for so many occasions: in the car, while scuba diving, on Everest. In fact, the SheWee promises that NOW you can “hike/climb/ski/jog off the beaten track, miles from the nearest toilet.” Because women wouldn’t even think of doing any of these things if they didn’t have a plastic urine-covered funnel in their pocket.

It’s the usual feminine hygiene sell, that a device, whether it’s a Swiffer, douching with Lysol (“Still the girl he married“), or NuvaRing (“Let Freedom Ring“), is what’s going to free women from the bonds of their pesky vaginas.

All this said I just might get me a SheWee and give it a try, because how could anyone resist a product that lets you “travel the world with the comfort of home in your pocket.”

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We canā€™t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who wonā€™t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its futureā€”you.

And we need readers to show up for us big timeā€”again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We canā€™t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who wonā€™t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its futureā€”you.

And we need readers to show up for us big timeā€”again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate