Because of “big toilet paper”. They even tried to assassinate a spokesperson for japanes toilets.
Holy shit? Do you have a source for that because damn. It’s something I would expect though.
It’s was joke. That’s the plot of a south park episode.
Honestly I wouldn’t even be surprised if Procter and Gamble did that shit lol
Kimberly-Clark about to send their death squads out for people who prefer a bidet over TP
It’s a joke from South Park
I wish I could find it again but this was years ago now that I saw a news story about the rise of women getting UTI’s from bidet usage in Japan specifically.
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.
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
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.
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.
not surprised that Italy (who has a history of fascism and from what I heard currently has a fascist leader) has an authoritarian law requiring that people do things in their own homes (kinda like some HOAs in the US. Although, I have to admit, we must have lucked out with a HOA that’s not one of the shitty ones you always hear about)
fascism is when regulation
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Yeah! Fucking fascists and their safety and building codes. Don’t even get me started on smoke detector and fire codes. Goddamn government always trying to keep slumlords down.
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“Hey you need to build the house with these features in order for it to be approved”
“Wuh what??? This is literally fascism”
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you are not obligated to use it.
a funny story, a couple from England transformed it into a vase and planted flowers in it.
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?
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
Yeah, you get used to it quickly
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.
Lol. Out of ALL the European countries to pick as example, you chose the worst.
France definitely does not like bidets and French will even ask you why even bother having one, assuming they even know what it’s for.
Try again with Italy. Basically every household has one.
Interesting. Well, not losing sleep on that. Good on Italy and Spain though.
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
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.
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.
Weird, in my current country bidet is in widespread usage and I haven’t known anyone getting a UTI from bidet usage.
I’m more susceptible to UTI’s than other women (or people with vaginas)
Well, for starters, you don’t pee from your vagina. You could get a yeast infection, yes, but that’s a different issue.
That said, if your bidet is angled so it’s hitting your vagina or, especially, your urethra, it’s likely not installed correctly or you’re sitting way far back on your toilet.*
- There are bidets you can get with the option to angle for washing period blood away, but they tell you in the instructions to wash your butt first so that you don’t get bacteria into your vagina, and you also don’t need to use that function either. I never found it super useful myself, so I’d recommend the cheaper version without that function these days.
Well, for starters, you don’t pee from your vagina.
why are you explaining that to me, a woman with a vagina.
I’m aware of that.
stream of water blowing bacteria into my vagina
Because that doesn’t cause issues with your urinary tract.
- A man with a longer urinary tract
holy fucking shit do you know anything about PH balance of the vagina.
Well he probably knows that vaginas can’t get UTIs
You could just find one with low pressure. You don’t need a high power jet.
Simply soaking your crack with water and wiping is a big help.
I’ve never heard of your problem, though, so it’s an interesting point. I know some bidets even have intended settings to wash your front as a woman.
Yeah its just easier for me to get UTI’s so I have to be extra careful. I had a summer where I had 3 UTI’s back to back and it was a nightmare.
Most women get them from sex and there’s a lot of misinformation out there about women’s health.
I have a seat one that only does cold water and it hits different in the summer honestly. Sometimes you just need a splash of cold water in your asshole to keep going.
Comes in handy for spicy food night.
Having used both types, including a water warming seat installed one, I can’t say enough good things about the free standing ones. The toilet seat ones though seem like a waste of time, even if they warm the water.
Cold water, yeah in winter in Canada your cold water is something like 1°C (33°F), not a pleasant thing
If the water in your pipes is that cold, you’re likely looking at a burst pipe issue anyway
Well you flush and that takes out the water in your pipes. Then you get cold ass water from the pipe outside in the ground.
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)
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 think the answer is just that most don’t know about them, having grown up in homes without them. They are quite nice though.
They may also be perceived as too expensive, if they only know of full toilet replacement kinds and not the seat replacements you can get for less than $100.
Cost me half that and I love it. It’s a life changer.
Maybe, but I’d still go with having no idea such things exist. That was me, and the first type I knew about was the seat attachment/replacement
There are dozens of choices that work great for twenty some dollars online here in the US and don’t even replace the seat.
I got a $400 one, and it was the best $400 I’ve ever spent. It’s something I use every day, and damn does it improve my day just a little bit more.
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.
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 suspect it’s a case of “We always did it this way, so it’s the superior way”.
This. In my part of the world, Nordics. No one has it, except really old bathrooms that have a separate bowl with o detachable shower head. But I only saw that once in my life. I installed one a year ago and it’s a game changer.
tbf is not ideal for cold as fuck places
toilet paper mafia.
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.
a toilet that requires electricity is mind-boggling to me, an american
There’s a lot of misunderstanding in this thread. Normal bidets that you buy on Amazon just get fitted under the toilet seat and connected to the water line that drives the toilet. There is no electricity wiring or extra .doodads needed
Unless you want heated water. My bathroom water gets pretty damn cold in the winter, but honestly, you get used to it. I don’t have hot water to my bidet, but I survive
This right here. Winters can be really cold and I think with water that cold my anus could cut rebar.
Same here. Warm water might be even better, but I don’t want to know so that I can continue installing dirt cheap bidets that require no extra work or plumbing :)
I purchased a bidet insert that has a valve that can intake hot and cold water (2 pipes) and output a medium temperature as part of the bidet. It was slightly more expensive, but in winter, is worth it. No electricity needed.
Yeah, because they have many nice features, from warming the seat to drying and washing.
I neeeeeeed one of those!
I’ve had no issues with the cheap $20-40 USD bidets from Amazon, while I’m sure the fanciness of a heated bidet would change my life I don’t see the need.
When you say bidet you are referring to a toilet seat with water or separate wash head next to toilet. When I say bidet am referring to what french call bidet, a separate toilet-like utensil next to toilet. Those things require planning and space since they require drainage, water source, etc.
I think it’s more common now to call a bidet insert a bidet. So just an inser that you fasten between the seat and bowl with an arm for turning on and off the spray. That connects to a T adapter at the inlet on the toilet. Works really good and costs 20-80€/$
Depends on which part of the world obviously.
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
Washlets don’t require hot water or electricity, though, they can pull right from the toilet water supply
I was overseas and recovering from surgery. I’d never seen a bidet before arriving in Argentina a few days before, so I still wasn’t used to them.
In any case, I was sitting on this bidet at 3am or something, on painkillers, and almost falling asleep while I sit there. I’m leaning forward, and turn the bidet, and it turns out this bidet has a jet of water almost powerful to reach the roof. And because of the angle I was sitting at, I get this jet of high pressure water right on my clit. I’m pretty sure the noise I made woke most of the neighbours! It was not a fun experience
That being said, I’d still get one here in Australia if I could :)
A bidet can find the clit and I can’t? WTF
/s
I found that discovery to be a highly welcome one personally
Americans voted for him though
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.
In the US, mostly because of the associations with prostitutes made by American soldiers in Europe during WWII. They were frequently called “whore’s baths”. Personally, I love mine and hate having to use a toilet without one.
The worst part of having a bidet is going places where there isn’t one.
Agreed. Once you’ve acclimated to using one regularly, it feels nasty not to use one.
You realize just how many people go about their lives with shit-stained asses
In Belgium toilets are in their own room, smaller than a super small storage room, with just the toilet, and they don’t have bidets; I call them ghettoilet
That sounds awful, how do you wash your hands before touching the door? You can’t
It is. It’s literally pain. To wash my butt I have to sit on the tub, it’s uncomfy and annoying and disgusting
