Seat up, seat down - do people really have nothing better to care about?

I have just been reading this post on PassiveAggressiveNotes.com and the subsequent firestorm about the seat-up debate, and I have to say, I still don't get it. In a two person house (such as the Boy Wonder and I inhabit) where one is female and one is male, the question of seat up or seat down should be academic - you leave the seat however you used it. I am aware that lid down is a much healthier proposition, but, given current circumstances and the Boy Wonder's acquiescence I feel that a diatribe about the fact that minuscule particles of poo can apparently be flung around the bathroom if you leave the lid up would get short shrift when delivered by someone who keeps a box of poo with a hedgehog in it next to the fire in the living room (see this post for details).
So if we ignore the potential for 'lid down' then we are left with seat up or seat down. I will always leave the seat down and want the seat down. The Boy wonder will sometimes leave the seat down and sometimes want the seat down. He will also sometimes leave it up, but then be the next to use the facilities (hmmmm - euphemistic) meaning I never even know whether it was up or down, but had I insisted on him leaving it down, he would have to adjust it to the down position twice for no reason. So, given that he will sometimes leave the seat in the position I would prefer it in, and I will sometimes leave the seat in the position he would prefer it in, why is it that women (and it does seem to be only women) seem to think that 'seat down' is inevitably the optimal position?
I'm strangely taken with the way I have made this sound like a maths logic problem, but really, is this what the war on sexism has got us? Women still get paid less, are assumed to be jealous of any woman they do not like and have to demonstrate 'manly' qualities to get ahead in male dominated workplaces, but we get to whine on endlessly about toilet seats as though we are in the right? I've even heard some women claim that they will 'fall in' without the seat down - what?! I have always been surprised that a couple of inches in diameter can really make that much difference to whether men can hit the right spot, but to claim that your tiny lady bottom is so delicate and dainty that you will fall in the toilet is just poppycock! How would that happen? Normally the bowl is so much colder than the seat would be that even the merest touch of bum-cheek on porcelain has me back upright, but even if you fell all the way in, and got water up your crack - you aren't going to get flushed away into the sea on a flow of poo, so what's the big deal?
I think there are plenty of people who might need to think about their comfort zones - I have some issues with toilets/public facilities generally, but I make an effort to put these aside for my own happiness when I go to festivals etc. People who willingly bring the war on loo seats into their own home/office/anywhere they go regularly should maybe consider an alternative hobby.

Casual sexism?

I'm under no illusions about my favourite genre of television. I love a mystery, but I don't really believe that if I was suddenly found dead in suspicious circumstances, a team of astonishingly attractive young people would turn up and stop at nothing to solve the case, working through the night to analyse every scrap of dirt and hair in the house to identify my killer. However, I was watching Numb3rs the other day (are the Boy Wonder and I the only ones who pronounce it 'Num-three-errs'? I'm always vaguely surprised that the inter programme announcers don't say it that way!), which was the story of a primary school teacher who had been shot dead whilst attempting to collect a ransom for a kidnapping. After the post mortem, when they were still trying to identify the body, the only regular female on the case for the FBI said something along the lines of 'Well, her breasts were real, but thank God her nose wasn't the one God gave her or I'd be really depressed right now'. I have never heard any of the men in the show saying anything comparable - in fact they are all so caught up in their work that they rarely stray into personal feelings outside of the prescribed 'home' and 'university' scenes where feelings are played out. I just wonder at the assumption that a woman would not only exhibit jealousy at any woman she considers more attractive than herself, regardless of whether she is actually alive or not, but that she would express it so casually, despite the fact that the woman was only shot that morning and they still didn't even know who she was! This is the kind of thing which takes up so much room in my head - I am frequently annoyed by the suggestion, mostly made in adverts, that women cannot function without chocolate, celebrity gossip, uneccesarilty expensive shoes and opportunities to share details with their bowel habits with one another over a cosy lunch. As someone who has come to hate shopping in all its forms, doesn't like ice-cream or cake, and has only a few female friends, I wonder whether I am genuinely an aberration, whether I have just never noticed that most other women do fit this stereotype, or whether we are just supposed to believe that they do because Sex in the City has told us that this is how women behave, and God knows, if you're a woman who hates Sex in the City it must be because you have no ovaries or a long term addiction to steroids worthy of the highest quality shot putter! Being able to see that another woman is attractive is considered out of the question - you must be either brimming with envy, or smugly enjoying your superior looks and pitying her for being so plain. Exhibiting no sign of jealousy is rarely considered a sign of evolved emotional development, rather as a sign that you are 'hiding it well', and every protesting word is considered to be further evidence that you are secretly burning up with an urge to scratch another woman's eyes out. So, instead of ranting to the poor Boy Wonder (who, incidentally finds himself unable to conform to stereotypes either, having as he does no interest in 'Nuts' magazine, cars or football) I shall now come here to vent my frustration at the world of lazy sterotypes. Like this.