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.

I think women in France (I have lived there) consider there are more important issues to worry about rather than the positioning of urinals in mixed public loos.

In the UK most Zizzi Restaurants that I have visited have unisex loos. No urinals though.

You need to visit a lot more toilets!
What is true is that in many places you have to pay to use them and there is a toilet attendant, usually an old woman supplementing her pension, colloquially called 'Madame Pipip' (no joke!). They often use the same cloth to wipe all the seats though and it results in longer queues.

Funny when you consider what Zizzi means in French.

France is also a lot less concerned about nudity generally. It stands to reason that a country with a liberal attitude to nudity on the beach would have less issue with mixed toilets.

@Gwenhwyfar 😀I thought about going there but hesitated!

"I also find it annoying that pissoirs are an example of men being rewarded for their tendency to piss wherever they like whereas women who hold it in are required to continue holding it in. Pander to men but expect of women."

I agree with this. I've seen UK towns with public urinals for special events and nothing for women.

But do the women in France actually like these toilets? Would they actually choose mixed-sex toilets over single-sex if given the option? Has anyone ever asked women if this is what they want? It's an example of society being designed around the default male and not the invisible female. Of course there may be more important issues, but that's what women are always told, isn't it?

Belgium has more or less the same attitude towards nudity as in the UK (topless sunbathing isn't usual for example), but still has toilets where women have to walk past the urinals and unisex changing rooms in shops.

"But do the women in France actually like these toilets?"

I would imagine some don't like them, but these types of toilets tend to be in the cheaper cafes so it goes with other things that people might not prefer.

It's definitely been like this for years.

I remember one rural restaurant where you walked in to the room, with no lock, there was 3 urinals on one wall and 2 loos with half height walls and no door.

Horrible to use as a 12 year old on her period.

@EsmaCannonball - Obviously I can't speak for all French women. But the ones I have spoken to about loos have tended to take the attitude that they feel quite neutral about it and don't care as long as it's clean. Which often they are not, but that is a different issue.

To be honest, I doubt either men or women hugely love the often questionable French facilities; but it’s a toilet set-up most common in older buildings and in rural towns with smaller and more traditional cafes and restaurants: difficult and costly to retrofit modern facilities and apparently not much appetite to do so. And if you’ve always been used to it, as many French women are, it probably doesn’t seem as much of a priority to change.

I'm French but live in the UK. I'm at an age that I'm just glad to find a toilet when I need one,even if it's not the best.

I'm not an expert in France but I have been a few times and I have never encountered that.

I also have never encountered a Bidet either (in France or any other country) though. Which if forums are to be believed is standard everywhere else and only British people are 'disgusting' enough to use toilet paper.

I have been visiting France since the 1970s and have seen plenty of these type of joint facilities. In Royan the public ladies had big glass windows through to the mens - completely bizarre! I always sent DH to check them out before I would use them for myself or DD and he always took younger DS . We occassionally used them when desperate but tried to avoid going back to the places that didn't have decent toilets.

In my experience, like the UK it is a mixed bag. We've not long come back from.10 days in the South of France (Perpignan/Sete/Montpelier).

Most bars and restaurants we went to were small so usually had a single, unisex cubicle. At one popular beach resort and a modern museum toilets were the traditional two rooms separated by sex. A couple of old school bars just had squat toilets (fun in a maxi skirt!).

We encountered the rather open, shared situation in a city centre covered food market that had been partly gentrified to included a open air bar and various street food style food counters. The toilets were an area concealed behind a half wall and there were urinals and hand washing trough and one cubicle to the rear of the area.

Thank God your daughter has you to protect her from the horror of seeing men pee!

I went in a Bosnian restaurant in Dubrovnik a few years ago that had this arrangement. You had to squeeze past the urinal to get to the Ladies cubicle.

"having to listen to men pee etc" 😲😲😲

🙄🙄🙄 no wonder some describe all this as a "panic".

Toilets in France and lots of other countries have always been different. It's part of the travel experience.

I have family in rural France and they tell me women typically don't, they hold and go at home.

As a tourist without a home, I have used such facilities a lot and thinking about it, haven't often seen French women doing the same.

It would be interesting to understand how much these traditional arrangements were unisex in theory but single sex in practice because women weren't traditionally part of public/non domestic spaces and life in general.

I don't understand this. Why would you want your daughters to see strange men weeing? Indeed, why would you want your mother, sister, friend or even yourself to see it? Why are people who'd prefer not to see that to be mocked?

Some replies on here are batshit. There is nothing sophisticated or admirable about providing poor public toilet facilities, and women who object to them aren't at fault.

I don't think anyone is saying they admire French public toilets. Just that unisex, or passing through the men's to get to the women's, has been commonplace for decades and isn't anything to do with the trans agenda.

Public toilets in France have been improving at a snail-like pace since I used to go as a child - holes in the ground are now thankfully rare - but there's still definite room for improvement. What's annoying is that where public toilets have been "upgraded" they now tend to be those automatic-locking ones that you have to pay for and not unlikely to hose you down mid-pee as they do their "self-cleaning". And they still don't reliably have toilet paper or soap!

YES!

Toilets in France, and many other European countries is just not high on the agenda, any agenda. Squat toilets are still regularly found in Italy, toilets without seats, toilet paper and soap are common. No, it's not great. But it's due to a lack of toilet agenda, not because of one (like unisex toilets here).

your kids are old enough to go to the loo's on their own fgs.

My friends and I were aghast at it when we did a post-A level tour of France in 1982 so it's definitely not a new thing.