I read (maybe heard) a story that because socially women are kind of expected to hold their farts in… women have measurably more hydrogen** in their blood—because eventually the gas is absorbed into the bloodstream—it’s got to go somewhere!
**(I think??? It was something like that… I couldn’t re-find the article… although now I have so many new answers for this question…)
Family story. According to my aunt. She had made some chili for her family one night—with a whole bunch of beans, and meat, and vegetables (maybe for some odd reason, cabbage? I think I’m making that part up. But let’s say cabbage, too, just to really pile it on). It was potent stuff. And they all loved it, ate it up. The next day at work she realized just how potent… as she was in an elevator (alone), she felt the gas. It made its presence known. It wanted to be released. She said she could just tell it was going to be bad, so she held it as long as she could (small, confined space + voluminous, odorous gas…), until finally she couldn’t any longer and it spread into the elevator. It was, apparently, noxious. I can’t remember the adjectives she used to describe it… just that when the elevator doors opened she was gagging. And there was “some poor soul” standing outside, waiting for the elevator. She didn’t warn him (mortified or couldn’t get her breath back, I’m not sure), but she said she looked back for a moment as the doors shut, sealing in his fate. At this point she holds her hands up in the air like she’s pressing against glass, and projects an expression of utter horror: this, she says, was his expression in those final seconds, as the final inches of the elevator closed him in with the power of her chili.