Nightmare in France mixed toilets

[Whattosay81]

Ive been in France for two weeks now and appalled at toilet rules here.

i have two young DD who I cannot let go to the toilets on their own anymore.

Bistro number 1, urinals, a male toilet and a female toilet. Past the urinals!!! So having to take my 8 year of and 11 year old past pissing men to access the toilet.

Restaurant number 2 - mixed sink area, 4 toilets one in male/female and baby changing, one male and one female and one blank. Took them both to the loo - had to put one in blank and one in female as baby changing was full. Then had to stop men in my rudimentary French from trying to use the blank one as my DD was in there, then having to listen to men pee etc and get my daughters out of there ASAP.

just shocked at how toilets are now mixed in France and feel I should warn you all.

mixed sink area

The horror. Men washing their hands. Your poor children.

Took them both to the loo - had to put one in blank and one in female as baby changing was full.

They are 8 and 11, why were you even considering the baby change??

France has always been like this.

I'm I'm my 40s and spent my formative years in Paris. It was quite common and even more so in the south than places like Paris. It has always been that way, perhaps less so, not more so now.

Men's backs can be seen while they pee; hardly an issue in my view. Shared hand basins can often be found in UK restaurants and I don't see the issue there.

The French are less "cover everything" in attitude than people from the UK. They consider privacy to be more about their lives rather than having a wee.

At least a lot of the squat loos (a double nightmare if you have trousers on, but even in a skirt you risk weeing on your knickers!) that were predominant have disappeared. Be thankful for that.

And there are many countries far worse.

Many smaller restaurants, plus nearly all cafés and bars in France have only one toilet IME, presumably for reasons of space and practicality.
But shopping malls, department stores and motorway service stations are generally well provided for with separate male and female facilities. Even 'aires' or rest areas on motorways may have a toilet block with separate sections. They can vary hugely in terms of cleanliness, though. And some are still 'squat' type holes in the ground.
But if you think the French aren't obsessed with genitals you don't really get them! It's more that they are not that bothered about bogs.

The ones that come out of the floor (on the streets)? Plenty in central London (they just aren't up all the time). Big grey things.

🤣

I've not been to France that often in recent years but I definitely remember having to walk past men using urinals on more than one occasion over 30 years ago when I was in my 20s. I remember I found it quite unpleasant but I was sometimes desperate so used them anyway. To be fair no one behaved inappropriately,I was just very self conscious..

Oh give over. No-one is saying it's cool. They're just saying that that's how it is.

Different countries have different attitudes to toilets. I suggest you never go to rural China where they don't even have separating walls. You just squat in a trough next to your neighbouring wee-er or poo-er. Definitely not cool, but I had to do what I had to do.

I've spent every summer (a month at least) in France for thirty years. I'm surprised that your experience is different from mine. French toilets are just a bit grim in general. Especially the ones in aires.

I don't know if there are any still around but there used to be Victorian urinals in the street when I was a kid. They were usually green painted metal. There was one almost directly under my bedroom window and the smell in summer was horrific. If you were lucky they went down to the ground, if you weren't there was a gap at the bottom so you could see the urine.

I can understand why walking past urinals is a problem but why is having a manin the next cubicle? Why is hearing a man pee so offensive?

Whilst I am not keen on opening up women's toilets to all people who desire to use them, France does have a long history if casual, questionable toileting. Doesn't make it pleasant, but doesn't make it a trend.

I did want to make a (possibly poorly articulated) point about fragility though. I think encouraging outrage and an attitude of not being being able to cope with faintly unpleasant life experiences is a mistake. I have a pop science theory that a lot of adolescent anxiety is routed in this - inability to cope due to never having been challenged as life is made so safe and sanitised.

Obviously I get that some women have been horribly traumatised, and things like men in women's prisons are unacceptable due to the vast proportion of vulnerable women in the prison system. I am not asking for a uniform policy of 'stiff upper lip' - but on the other hand, we all have it in us to be a bit relisilent, and expecting protection all the time from absolutely every bad event that could ever (but fortunately rarely) happens is counterproductive in the way we view ourselves.

I expect to get pushback on this. I have namechanged especially 😆 but I genuinely believe that it is vital to encourage antifragility so our kids can cope with life.

So your daughters now know that men urinate. When were you intending to break it to them?

TBH it sounds like the same arrangement as in most of the bars and restaurants I’ve used on my regular holidays to France. I usually go to the Charente Maritime region. It’s the way France is! Along with shops closing for lunch and not being able to grab a “late lunch” as the restaurants close between lunch and the evening (or only serve drinks).

i had family in France. In rural France Bathroom arrangements are … different. They bought a house which needed renovating. Hired a local tradesperson to fit a bathroom and a shower room. Picked all the stuff out and ordered it. Went back and he’d done a lovely job but hadn’t installed the toilets. He was shocked when told that there was supposed to be a toilet in the same rooms as the bath and shower. He basically said that you don’t have a toilet in the place where “your wife does her beauty routine”.

@Iwasafool eep!

tell me you've never been to France before without telling me you've never been to France before.

Shock horror. Different country does things differently. They have squat toilets in some places too.

You seem unusually anxious about toilets and etiquette? Whatever you do don’t go to a public pool as the changing rooms are mixed!

Talking about London, there is an open air arrangement outside Vauxhall station labelled (I think) “Very public toilet”. It has about 4 divisions with waist/chest-high barriers round the outside and guys just walk in and do what they have to do.

Perhaps he needed to empty his colostomy bag....if it doubled as the disabled loo 🤔

I personally feel like this reaction is a bit OTT, tbh…

I understand that the urinal situation in the other bistro felt very uncomfortable, but the second instance doesn’t sound too bad. Many places simply do not have the space for two separate sink areas.

and why would the lock fail? And even if it did (happened to me once with an electric lock), what do you think would happen? Especially with you being this close?

Totally normal and common in France. Really not an issue. It’s not a new thing at all - my first trip to France was 40 years ago when I was a child and it was like that in loads of small bars and cafes. I remember my mum and I giggling about it. My dad had also previously warned us that this might be the case in some loos, as he’d been travelling to France since he was a kid in the early 1950s.

It has always been like that it is not new. Be grateful that the public toilets are not an hole in the ground now. As a p.p. has previously said no toilets were in bathrooms, that’s a new idea.

It’s great idea @4weeknoalcohol
there are different MN guides about products and parenting tips etc, why not this one?
Hope MN HQ will spot this.

Have to say I’ve seen it too. Was slightly agog at the time.

I think we took a laughing view with the kids. Your attitude is important as to whether it will scar them or not.

We have a mobile home near La Rochelle. The toilets are better than they were when we first started going but not great. One particular Bistro has a curtain around the toilet and the urinal in the same room and the door doesn't have a lock so you can have someone pissing in the urinal while you are weeing behind a curtain.

The majority of the local bars have just one mixed toilet and they are pretty grim.

I havent come across a squat one for several years though.