It’s an age old male/female issue.
I’ll start by saying that I automatically lower the lid. It’s not a big deal. My mom trained everyone.
Before I get to my main point, I don’t like double standards. If I have to put the lid down, then so should you. You want me to close it either because you don’t want to look before you sit and you’ve fallen in, you don’t want to go through the work of lowering the lid, or you don’t want to see how nasty the toilet is.
Since the first two are just from refusal to learn or laziness, respectively, in going to assume it’s because women are ladies and want everything to be prim and proper.
That’s fine. If you want the bathroom to look nicer, then lower the top lid too. I don’t want to look in the toilet bowl unless I’m using it. So on your high value of aesthetics, close the lid! It’s a double standard that bugs me. My toilet is cleaned everyday someone comes over. Yours isn’t.
Point is, women are gross and have double sstandard. This double standard has always bugged me. I’m saying it now. Women, you’re wrong.
The Main Point
Aside from my tirade, I’ll assert that there is an appropriate situation to leave the lid up.
I do it only for the benefit of women. That sounds contra-women’s intuition, I know, but let me explain.
In public restrooms, I try to always remember to leave the lid up.
Public toilets, for whatever reason, have an opening between the left and right side of the sitting lid. I leave it up because I know some little kid (or let’s face it, some man-child) is going to think, “Wow! An opening just for me,” and will think he can aim. Let’s face it, he can’t. So he ends up messing up the seat.
So I leave the seat up in public, unisex restrooms so ladies don’t have to sit on lids that, unbeknownst to them, is caked with dry urine (hover much?).
Yeah, I leave the lid up (sometimes) because I’m considerate. Your welcome.