Today you have the bidets you can install on your toilet, but traditionally they were a thing on its own, that required about as much space as a toilet and all the extra pipework associated with it.
In some European/ Mediterranean countries (I suspect France may have started the trend) this caught on well, and bidets were a must have in most houses that had toilets as part of their main architectural structure. Most people in South America had bidets this way, it’s rare to see a house without at least one bidet, and this comes from the culture inherited from colonial times .
Now, things are different in othe parts of the world. England seems to traditionally have the toilet separate from the house and for some reason the bidet trend never caught on. This is in turn reflected both in USA and Australia. I don’t know about bidet popularity across all of Europe, but this is definitely a cultural thing and I suspect distance and language may have kept UK without bidets until relatively recently. And as you know, old habits die hard, so… Yeah in Australia I use the shower.
in Italy, there is literally a law obligating houses to have a bidet. the separated from the toilet kind.
Just another reason to like Italy even more.
the separated from the toilet kind.
I don’t understand how those work at all…seems like that would be a recipe for poop tracks from the toilet.
well… it is time to explain to an internet stranger how we clean our bum.
- you shit on the toilet
- you wipe with tp one or two times
- get up, sit on the bidet
- water, soap on the hand, and you scrub your ass with your hand, no this is not gay
- go again with water and soap until you feel your ass is clean
- dry with a small towel
the towel is generally personal, and we change it every couple of days.
That may have been sarcastic, but I appreciated the info. It beats having to take a shower.
Legit question: Do you wash your hands again after that?
oh, yes, felt like it was obvious… i’m not touching anything without washing my hands after that.
Well I mean I do that in the shower, and I don’t wash my hands again after the shower, so I have no idea what the mentality is.
What part of cleaning your ass could be misconstrued as gay? Feels like an unnecessary aside, haha. Thanks for the step by step though, that makes sense!
i legit have no idea, but on every tread talking about bitets, there is always someone that discards it because is gay to touch your own ass
That would never fly in the US. They complain about water usage so much that they regulate shower heads so that they barely drip water, and toilets so that they don’t have enough water to flush solid waste. The bidet would just blow the regulators’ heads with all the water usage.
Which would be short sightedness on their part, since bidets actually save water in the long run by reducing TP usage
I fixed then. My bidet has indefinite heated water. I can sit on it for an hour cleaning my ass. It is glorious.
The bidet would just blow the regulators’ heads
Only if they sit on it backwards for the drying portion.
this isn’t a thing at all.
brit here.
can confirm. i sit on the side of the bath and wash my arse with the shower. The only house i have seen in the UK with a bidet was essentially a mansion
Fellow Brit, I just shave my arse crack to prevent Klingons.
“today is a good day to die!” flush
“Glory! To you and your ass!”
Right now I live abroad and we have just the tub, so yeah same remedy. It’s cursed and annoying though, so I hate it so much
Just get the toilet seat bidet. It’s probably like 40£
only outputs cold water, right?
Yeah, you get used to it quickly
Look up the Tushy 3.0 bidet. Costs less than 100USD, and connects to both hot and cold taps at the sink. No electricity for a heater and you get the warm bum treatment! I got one for each bathroom
they make attachments you can add to your terlet for such activities, although i’m guessing the UK uses some special kind of non-standard HrH style plumping fixture to supply water (like a square pipe or something?) so maybe they don’t exist there?
Also in the UK, the aftermarket toilet attachments are not in line with building codes because of the possibility of contamination of the water supply, so it’s quite complicated if you don’t have room for a separate bidet.
England seems to traditionally have the toilet separate from the house and for some reason the bidet trend never caught on
Uh… wut?
The UK has lots of old housing stock, built before the concept of indoor plumbing, so there was nowhere to put a toilet in lots of properties when they started to become a thing, hence you’d put it seperate from the house in an outhouse style set-up. We also lost less of the country to warfare during the two wars so didn’t have to rebuild whole cities, so the conversion to move those toilets inside was still going on as we moved to the later half of the 20th century. My old man didn’t have an indoor toilet in his childhood home until he was a teenager, he was born in the late 50s.
You still go to pubs these days that are old enough that the loos are disconnected from the main building as they’ve been there for so many years.
I live in the UK and nothing you’ve said here is congruent with my experience. I don’t recall ever being in any building whatsoever that had no indoor toilet, including pubs.
there was
In the past. A long way in the past.
as we moved to the later half of the 20th century
The move to the later half of the 20th century was 70 years ago.
Near where my sister lives on the edge of Bristol there are several pubs with outdoor toilet blocks. It’s usually country pubs or ones old enough to be listed. You’re not going to find many in cities these days.
This must specifically be like, row homes, right? Where it’s too tightly packed to fit a new room.
It’s not like houses here in sweden are brand spanking new and yet they all have toilets nowadays even if some of them are ancient.My old man’s was semi-detached, but yeah density is part of the issue here too.
This what I’ve been told- I’ve never been to England, my understanding is that back in the day this was the way especially for suburban and farmland, and that that’s why many old Australian houses still have the toilet separate. Obviously this doesn’t apply to dense or modern areas.
Spain checking in here. Bidets are definitely popular in Spain. I suspect that’s how they made their way to south America.
The utopian city of Atlantis sunk due to bidet overuse.
They might have sunk the city, but their butts were sparkling clean
There are a large number of Americans that think:
- Anything touching them there makes them gay - still not sure how your hand and TP is any different
- It will hurt - yeah… IDK
- It’s gross, or it doesn’t get you clean - uh…wiping some paper on it does? how???
I know someone who thinks it just sprays shit over everything
I know a lot of people think the same thing. I’ve even seen people say so on here/reddit, on other bidet posts.
Because unfortunately, even stupid people know how to use the Internet.
Some american men refuse to touch their own penis while washing, due to a fear of it making them gay. I’d tell them they need therapy, but they’d tell me that therapy is for the weak.
I’m pretty sure those are the same types that start anti pedophilia groups to then be charged with and convicted of pedophilia. Or the anti gay/drag people who end up being gay AF. Or the ones that try to ban porn, only to have 10tb of porn on their computers when they get fired/breakup/get arrested. But I know what you mean.
You mean these aren’t well-adjusted, healthy men? Yeah, you might be right.
I only have anecdotes, but as an American, it’s #1. It was my initial off the cuff thought. Buttholes are verboten here. Full stop.
Right? It’s really weird though because a lot of those same people talk about eating ass, a LOT.
Everybody, touch your asshole. Just once and from that day on you will be different
Heterosexual men, if you’re with a lady and she wants to stick a finger up your ass, you need to let her do this. You can thank me later.
CUZ EATIN ASS FUCKIN RULEZ
Its really the first one tho.
Striaght american men will fight you before they will let water spray on their dirty asses.
As an American who’s unsure.
I don’t like the thought of water spraying into my ass
I started using them in my adult life so maybe I can give some insight
it feels a little uncomfortable the first time. Not because it’s necessarily uncomfortable, but more because it’s a foreign feeling.
You get used to it after the 2nd or 3rd time though. Once you use a bidet it’s hard to go back to TP
It doesn’t spray INTO your ass. I mean, I guess it could, but you’d have to REALLY try to make it happen.
You just need good sphincter control! It’s quite refreshing.
I’ve just been traumatized by water jets before 😅
There are valid concerns with regard to bidet use. They do result in aerosolized particulates in greater number than results from wiping, which means you are literally breathing more feces.
Is it enough to be problematic? Probably not, but that may also depend on how aggressively/frequently you use them.
See also:
- Ali, Wajid, et al. “Comparing bioaerosol emission after flushing in squat and bidet toilets: Quantitative microbial risk assessment for defecation and hand washing postures.” Building and Environment 221 (2022): 109284.
- Abney, S. E., et al. “Toilet hygiene—review and research needs.” Journal of Applied Microbiology 131.6 (2021): 2705-2714.
Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but shit is literally aerosolized any time you flush the toilet. And it’s not contained the bathroom. And it doesn’t matter if the toilet seat is up or down.
Mythbusters did an episode on exactly that. It is worse than you’d think. I can’t find the actual episode right now, but someone wrote an article about it/the findings.
The other brushes were placed elsewhere in the home, including the kitchen and even an office on the other end of the building, and all of the other ones were rinsed daily but not used for brushing. At the end of the month-long experiment, the toothbrushes were analyzed by a microbiologist, and they found that every toothbrush had a microscopic amount of fecal matter on them, regardless of the distance from the bathroom. source
Bidet or not doesn’t matter. Shit is literally all over EVERYTHING. ALL the time.
Oh, and if we really wanna get fun about it, those hand dryer things……LOL dude. Sooooo much shit going EVERYWHERE.
Oooh you remind me of a study where those Dyson things were flinging shit 2-3m away
No one understands what a bidet really is.
In the old days, they were a separate free-standing device. Not a lot of people have space or money to add one of these types of bidets to their bathrooms
Now they make them as toilet seat attachments that don’t require extra space and really aren’t that expensive.
But people don’t know. Older people will be like, “Oh a bidet? No I don’t want another toilet like device in my bathroom”
So that gets rid of all those people.
Next you have the people that know about the new style bidets that’s just a fancy toilet seat.
Their biggest deterrent is probably cold water. Spraying cold water on their butt doesn’t appeal to most people.
You can get bidets that heat the water, but you have to have power behind your toilet, which not everyone has.
Then you have older people that just can’t work them or don’t feel like they can. Like my grandfather, I installed one with all the bells and whistles for him. Yet hitting a button and doing all that was too complicated. He was 90+ and could barely use a cell phone for basic functions. But he’d rather wipe his butt like he knew than mess with the “complicated” bidet.
Eventually everyone is going to own a bidet, it really is the way to go.
We just aren’t there yet.
Cold water, yeah in winter in Canada your cold water is something like 1°C (33°F), not a pleasant thing
Water doesn’t have to be 0°C (32°F) to freeze.
Depending on your elevation, it can change.
If the water in your pipes is even close to 1°C you have a serious problem.
You can also hook a bidet to your hot water line
The first bit of water will be wall temperature water and it will take a bit to fully warm up because you have to clear out the lines (some bidets will drain the first bit of water before squirting you)
For me it’s because I have had to suffer from UTI’s before and I don’t want to risk some stream of water blowing bacteria into my vagina and then I gotta pee every five seconds and wait for a damn doctor visit because for some fucking reason UTI meds aren’t over the counter where I live.
I can buy the UTI “pain reliever” over the counter but it just temporarily fixes the pain, and the UTI of course continues. Pretty fucking pointless.
I think you me question is missing some key words. “Why isn’t the use of the bidet more widespread in the USA and other western countries?”
I am in Vietnam right now and nearly every bathroom has a bum gun to wash your bits. When I was in Japan nearly every bathroom had bits to wash you built into the toilet seat with digital controls. These are not just in homes and nice places, but also at 7-11, train stations, airports and even hole in the wall places. Wish USA/Canada had this as we all know how much it sucks when out and you have a forever wipe.
Bum gun >>> bidet
I find wiping just doesn’t do it for me… I can wipe myself raw and still have itching…
But a trip to the bidet clears it all up.
Same as in Thailand, Japan, Cambodia, Malaysia, Singapore, India, Pakistan, Iran, China… Yeah it’s most of the world.
Because the tradition of wiping until it’s red is deeply rooted in american toilet culture.
It’s refered to as “better red than dead”
I have never heard that and it deeply disturbs me because this does seem like it’d be an American thing…
It’s a joke. The phrase is “better dead than red” and is an anti-communist phrase.
“better red than dead” is a joke - that’s usually a play on political parties or football teams. But what isn’t a joke, something that I’ve heard from american women, is that they’ve dated some american men who:
- don’t masturbate because touching a penis is gay
- don’t wash their penis with soap and water, just water, letting the water run down the penis, but not touch it, because you’d be holding a man’s dick in your hands.
- if they do masturbate, they might just leave their mess on the floor, even if it’s carpet, for years and never clean it. Stains under a computer desk should be treated with a hazmat suit. This is different from the american men who save their mess in jars… I have no comment for that.
- don’t touch their penis when they pee. that’s what the zipper in the front is for. I mean, doing this in public would mean other men see you with a man’s cock in your hand. That’s … uh you know…
- don’t get prostate exams (this one may be more self-explainitory, doesn’t make it right though).
And then they (guys who say this stuff) wonder why american men have a mental health crisis. Well (addressing the guys who say this stuff), buddy, part of it is you.
And then they wonder why american men have a mental health crisis. Well, buddy, part of it is you.
What part of any of that makes it partly because of me? This seem more like an off-topic rant.
I am an American and the only two I’ve heard is:
“don’t masturbate because touching a penis is gay”
Every time has been religion driven homophobia related.
don’t get prostate exams (this one may be more self-explainitory, doesn’t make it right though).
Goes back to the last one as well.
Probably why religion has been on a decline.
I think that by “you” he means American men.
“Damn, we’re having a mental health crisis.” “Part of that is on you.”
Am I making sense? Sorry if I’m not.
Sorry, not you you… I was refering to the men who do the things I outlined.
Nah, I understand. I just didn’t comprehend lol But yes, I agree!
toilet paper mafia.
Americans voted for him though
It’s a matter of planning and availability. In my country people don’t renovate their houses often and even rarely build them from scratch. Having a bidet requires planning and leaving space for it. Japanese style toilet seats are easier to install in smaller toilets, but they require electricity and/or hot water.
Washlets don’t require hot water or electricity, though, they can pull right from the toilet water supply
Japanese style toilet seats
That’s what most people in the USA mean when they say bidet. They’re bidet toilet seats or washlets.
Ah, okay. When people say bidet, I am thinking separate utility.
I always understood bidet to mean a separate fixture, unless specifying the toilet/bidet combo
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Most adults in the west don’t even wash their hands after using the bathroom.
I’d like to think the pandemics changed that… please don’t burst my bubble
I know you said please, but…
pop
My wife works in a school. Have some bubble wrap while I look for a vaccine for hand foot and mouth
slowly pops the bubble wrap with an empty stare
It would be easier if you popped the bubble wrap with your fingers.
MOST!?
(Source conspicuously missing.)
I want to believe that most wash their hands after defecating, at the least.
Source?
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OK, maybe we should just accelerate this climate crisis and get rid of humans, something has clearly gone wrong.
Big TP conspiracy :)
I’ve read that one reason could be due to prostitution during WWI / WWII.
Americans saw bidets over in Europe during the war, mainly at brothels, which gave them the idea they were unclean, non-Christian, idk. Maybe if you said you liked bidets then everyone knew you had been to a brothel.
I didn’t fact check it. Doesn’t really matter - I’m taking a poop right now and I’m about to blast the poop away with my Toto. Eat this pleasant, warm water, turd balls.
How hypocritical to be in a brothel thinking “Feh… not clean enough for MY holy bung.”
For real. Also though, I think most people patronize businesses every day whose employees they consider inferior to themselves. So like, at least it isn’t unique to brothels!
As a European (Netherlands), nobody has them here, I know them from Asia
EDIT Okay, Europe is a big and diverse placev I’ve added my country for clarity.
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Damn. I should move to Italy.
I once read a book where this particular bathroom appliance was very intimately connected with prostitutes throughout history and that association created a big push against having it in every house. It was an interesting read.
In my country in particular, it became mandatory in every newly built house starting around the 50s and later it became mandatory to have one bidet and one bathtub in every house.
This was pushed to enforce a notion of hygiene that was lacking, as the country was very poor at the time. Paradoxically, it was easier to have higher standards of hygiene in the country, where access to water was easier and the field labour demanded a minimal cleanliness to be at the table and socially than in the growing cities, where poor living conditions made very difficult for the poor to access running water.
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In America? Because we are barbarians.
I kinda think that’s why we are all so pissed and ornery most of the time….because our tushes are dirty.
