To be annoyed at the lack of bathrooms

[Applecharm25]

I have my period. I can feel that i need to change my tampon.

I'm out walking round my city. There are no public bathrooms anywhere near me.

I see a sign for a bathroom in a small shopping centre near me. I walk in. The bathroom is actually in a shop. I'm told that the bathroom is only available for paying customers.

So now I have to get in a long queue and wait further and buy something while I really need to change my tampon.

Surely there should be better toilet services available.

Yeah I wouldn't want a period pad/tampon changing room. How weird. You'd still need somewhere to dispose of it and wash your hands so might as well use a toilet. If councils can't keep public toilets open they won't be adding extra facilities. I do agree that more toilets should be available though

Could you just not have said you needed to find a toilet and that it was unreasonable that there aren't many where you are?! Would you have mentioned that you needed a massive shit?! No, I don't think you would, so why the need to furnish us with the intimate details, repeatedly?! 🙄

@Tagyoureit I stand corrected- and may have fact checked you in my very yellow paged 25(!) year old GoF - literally had to blow the dust off it which is a good reminder to dust the books.

I'll hang my head in HP shame, not worthy of my username

It’s been sometime since I had a period but I bet 99% of women will want a wee when changing their sanitary wear. The idea of just having a cubicle with no loo in it is ridiculous.

Or this post isveritten by/using AI.

This is such a good point and I realise the main reason for removing a tampon over the loo. Not to mention I usually wrap my used tampon in loo paper to make disposal more hygenic. So the tampon changing room would need a loo!

Well call me fussy but I don't want men weeing behind a bush. Kids might be running round and seeing more than I want them to, I don't want wee trickling over footpaths I don't want to smell it.

A very interesting thread. The comments on the use of 'bathroom' are just a distraction.

I've never linked the lack of public washrooms (to add a Canadian usage😂) to the independence and mobility of women. Now I do. Quite enlightened by this discussion, and I think you're absolutely right that we should be annoyed! It doesn't matter what it costs; it does add up. (And we're already paying for menstrual products.)

I always joke that whilst women have a longer life expectancy than men, all that extra years are probably for queuing for toilets and looking for toilets. 😂If tampon rooms were a thing, might actually cut the queues by half.

Uterine lining and pee are two separate things and a tampon changing room is not a bad idea at all. You don't need a toilet at all to change a tampon. All that the room needs is a bin.

On a practical note, OP have you tried menstrual cups or discs? You wouldn't need to change them for 8hour. On another practical note, I typically just head into a pub, busy or not, without buying any drinks. Or a Pret or Caffe Nero. Or hotel lobbies. Frankly, the front workers aren't paid enough to give a damn about this. Worst thing that can happen is they ask you to leave.

Anyway, thanks for bringing this up OP.

Completely agree! 😂

But how is it a better idea than just having a toilet.?You can use a toilet for three functions, and a tampon changing room for only one, so it makes more sense to just have toilets!

I don't need to. I'm a qualified nurse and midwife.
Why are you being so rude?

My DH is nearly 80 and needs a loo more often than I do if we are out. He has an app on his phone that tells him where the nearest one is.

I wonder how they deal with periods in the wizarding world. Do you think they have muggle san-pro? Or a spell to just stop it?

Didn't a public toilet finding app get published during Covid?

Well, or we could have doubled the number of public changing places/toilets for women. Sort of like the speedy checkout places and regular ones. The tampon changing rooms would be like the speedy checkout.

@Phineyj linked it above, there are several we use them at work as the contractors are out on sites give them a choice of three in their paperwork incase the mobile signal is down.

I'm amazed that people think peeing in public is ok. It isn't just to be clear.

It's a ridiculous idea for so many reasons, not least we can't even get the funding for enough toilets let alone speedy period lanes.

Only if you have light periods. I wish I could remove a tampon without a gush behind it (I also wish I could use just a tampon, but again thanks to the gushes, it is an all or nothing experience where I'll either have a dry tampon or a flood the soaks tampon and pad in mere seconds). Btw gynae has taken a look and no sign of endo.

I think we always tend to think of ourselves as "normal", and with periods I think there are so many variants of "normal" that quite simply, there isn't a norm.

Oh yes there seem to be several.

You'd need to test them.

I've just checked my town and one of the central ones is now closed.

This is totally off topic but a radar key allows access to the disabled toilet but to stop others coming in you need to engage the locking handle inside. This will stop any other radar users coming in ‘mid flow’!

I still remember with horror nearly pooping myself because I actually managed to find a loo but they only took cash to get in, no card machine 😢 😢 The woman looked so smug when she said I couldn’t come in and I had to hobble with the poo sweats around half a mile to the nearest loo. I genuinely thought I was going to shit myself!!

No, I don’t, but I really don’t believe it is a regional thing! 🙃And yes, obviously some people do say ‘ bathrooms’ to mean a toilet. I just meant it wasn’t common usage. But as I said before, whether it matters or not is a different question. I tried to be conciliatory in my last post!

Just an extra option for women who don't need a toilet while changing tampons. I would think that such rooms would cost less than toilets that require plumbings. Just an idea, nothing too serious.

I think you lost people at wanting a special place to change your tampon. Do you live in the city you are in at the moment? If so you should get a plan in place for the future. I know where several toilets are in the main cities that I travel to.