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.

It's not new, remember having to walk past urinals 30 years ago

The French definitely have a relaxed attitude to urinals. Doors wide open to men’s and having to queue for the ladies seeing men peeing away. This has been the case for the 10 years I’ve been going. Mainly ski resorts. Do they not have those pissoirs in the streets?

And it's only 6 years since I encountered a squat loo (west coast inland a bit, had pulled a bit off the autoroute to find a small town for lunch and avoid tolls)

Oh and whatever you do, dont holiday in Germany, there's often completely naked adults swimming . My dd (then aged 10) asked me if they were too poor in Germany to afford swimming costumes

I've been holidaying in france for 40 years. I have never experienced what OP is referring to. Often there is only 1 shared cubical toilet but i have nnever had a step around a pissing man to get to the toilet.

As a claustrophobe, I would choose shared loos any day (or a convenient bush!) over those automatic-locking stand-alone abominations. Just the thought of getting trapped in one...😱

Me too, dancingferret - prefer the hole in the ground option to being forcibly locked in a toilet.

My experience also. Don't like it and cannot understand why French women put up with it. But cultural expectations are different.

@EsmaCannonball
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.

Exactly. And of course we're going to find it disgusting if men piss in public, or where we can see them (which is basically public) because we've been trained all our lives to hide behind private closed doors to do that. We've been taught it's disgusting.

@justteanbiscuits
There is also the whole side of "every country should be like the UK". We're not Americans. We can accept other cultures behave differently and don't have to meet our British standards surely?

I think it's much harder to mentally switch to a different cultural norm when still required to behave in the way we're used to. So we, as women, still have to find a cubicle somewhere whilst men piss openly. It's hard to get into the mindset of pissing openly being normal when you're not doing it yourself. I say this with fair travel experience of different loos/pissing by roadside. When you're all doing it, you get used to it pretty quickly. When it's just men, but as a woman you must retain your usual sensibilities and pee in private, it's much harder not to find it disgusting.

@ProtectAndTerf I think part of that is down to anatomical differences!! It is MUCH harder to me to have an outdoors wee than someone with an easy to angle pipe!

@justteanbiscuits - From my experience, in using mixed sex loos anywhere in the world that "easy to angle pipe" is not so easy to operate. It appears that it's more akin to a shower head that has been dropped in the tray.

Personally, I don't care if I am sharing a loo with women, men or martians as long as it's clean.

Outdoors! I specifically mentioned outdoors. Having a penis you can whip out to wee is a lot easier than navigating layers of clothes us women have on!

I find women who hover over the seat have a similar effect.

"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)."

Yes, Italy is the only place I've seen toilets without seats. Haven't seen a squat toilet in France for many years now.
To the person who said she's never seen toilets with bidets - it's not a thing in public toilets but some old houses have them. As a student 20 years ago I had one in my room that I used to wash clothes in.

What the she-wee is for I suppose, but you'd have to carry it around everywhere.

I see toilets without seats in England often. Lots of public toilets don't have them, especially ones in parks (I'm looking at you Hackney and Tower Hamlets councils!)

I worked in Kuala Lumpur for a while. In our office (of a global well known organisation) the Ladies toilets were all cubicles (as you'd expect) but when you opened the cubicle door, half of them were squat toilets and there was a trough that went along the length of all the doors that all the pee ran down. You literally had to step over the trough as you opened the cubicle door. So not only did you hear your colleagues pee, (cover your ears now OP!), but you saw their pee as well. 😖 So even if you got lucky with your choice of door and got a Western toilet, you still had to step over and see the trough of pee.

I dehydrated as much as possible during the day to minimise toilet usage. After several years of living and working in Asia, I'm pretty good at squatting (even with tights and heels on) but the view and the smell was a bit grim.

Actually there was a bar in Hong Kong that we went to sometimes and I had the unpleasant discovery that their only toilet was a urinal. It was in its own little private room but it was still just a urinal. Desperate times...I worked out that if you back in towards it, you can pee and it works fine. Not something you'd want to do with an audience though unless you didn't mind doing a full frontal flash.

I lived in France around 20 years ago and have visited regularly since. This has always been common. I've always disliked it.

we've been going to france for years and years, my parents live there. This is normal in France not any sort of response to gender identity. I've never had a problem with it, and certainly never had anyone behave inappropriately in any way to me or my children when they were young. It was very strange to begin with and now i just see it as quirky. If you really object - supermarkets usually have single sex toilets. If you want to explore real French culture rather than touristy places you are going to find the toilets you describe.

also, why are you so worried about the men? They pee, Men pee loudly if you have a man in your life he probably pees loudly too. It's just pee, why would this be a problem for your daughters to hear? What might have happened if you hadn't got your daughters out ASAP? France is just a lot more relaxed about stuff like this, I'd avoid it in future.

This whole bloody E.U. business was a bad idea from the beginning, and we're best off out of it. Let's all stay at home where we belong.

I'd be less bothered about heading a man pee than him hearing me ( or my daughter)
I very clearly remember a middle aged man telling 20 yr old me how he had enjoyed hearing me pee in a mixed toilet. ( Vom)
I don't think the toilets are public/ mixed in France because they are more free and easy (French people can be quite rigid!) It's simply because men are prioritised.

I think it’s fine, probably healthier? We go to France twice a year, never bothered me or the kids. French seem happy with it, kids grow up thinking there’s nothing weird about it, everyone pees!

They have ones lie that in Tignes, and usually thy have no toilet paper can be a bit manky.

I got slaughtered on here a few weeks ago in a discussion about toilets, but I was going to say on that thread that recently I was at a French service station with a huge q for the woman's toilet and none for the mens. A French women joined the q then looked at her watch and went straight into the mens. I think they are not so hung up on the toilet situation.

Yep I had to use one of those too. And the toilets at the Eurocamp we stayed at were mixed. Pretty sure that the showers were too although there were some rather confusing, possibly M/F symbols on the doors.