With Tampons and Concrete, Vandals Hit Paris Urinals Seen as Sexist

PARIS — To some, the new street urinals in Paris are a mere eyesore, to say nothing of the men using them. To others, they are no less than an emblem of sexism, still more evidence that men’s needs are put above women’s.

Now, protesters have taken concrete action.

Vandals plugged up two of the urinals — with cement — and took the opportunity to festoon them with tampons and protest stickers aimed at men.

“Are you a dog? No?” said one. “Then why are you urinating in the street?”

Another complained of a double standard.

“Women who expose their breasts to breast-feed are asked to hide themselves,” it said. “Men who take out their genitals to urinate are subsidized by City Hall.”

The two damaged urinals have been removed. On Thursday, where one of them had stood on the Île St.-Louis, the only sign of the controversy was graffiti spray-painted onto a nearby stone wall overlooking the Seine. It showed a clenched fist in a Venus symbol.

The city began installing the eco-toilets to address the long-standing problem of men urinating in the street, and the first ones caused little stir.

But when one popped up earlier this summer on the picturesque Île St.-Louis, detractors began speaking out, calling the bulky device ugly, unsanitary and too visible for comfort. At least, for the comfort of onlookers.

The other urinal that was targeted was near the Gare de Lyon. The others scattered across the city appear safe. For now.

Though the police were investigating, those responsible have not been identified.

Some feminist activists said the vandals had made good points.

Chris Blache, a founder of a think tank that works on gender and city planning, said she did not believe the city had set out to discriminate. But, she said, the street urinals sent an unintentional signal that women had fewer rights in public spaces than men.

“This kind of urinal, clearly, can only be used by men — and not any kind of man either, because a child, a little boy can’t use them,” Blache said. “And I’m not sure that an elderly man would be comfortable using them either. So there is an unfairness in the perception of what is authorized or not authorized to do in public.”

She said that while men had “very broad” freedom to do as they pleased, women were “constantly being called to order” on their attitude or their clothing in public. Just this week, she noted, French tennis player Alizé Cornet was assessed a code violation at the U.S. Open for briefly removing her top, violating a rule that did not exist for men.

Like other major cities, Paris has struggled for years with public urination. With varying success, city officials have experimented with ways to discourage people from relieving themselves on the street. These include mirrors intended to shame offenders, and hydrophobic paint that bounces urine back onto their shoes.

The city has also made public urination a civil offense and has a dedicated force of agents who seek out people who degrade public spaces by urinating or by other means, like throwing cigarette butts on the ground. In 2017, more than 5,300 fines of up to 68 euros, or nearly $80, were handed out for public urination, about double the figure from the previous year, according to city statistics.

City officials point out that Paris has roughly 450 unisex bathrooms, 150 of them open day and night, far outnumbering the urinals deployed this spring and summer.

Olivier Fraisseix, the head of sanitation and water management at the Paris City Hall, defended the urinals, saying they were only one of many experiments the city was trying. Public urination, he said, “is invariably one of the main issues mentioned by Parisians when you ask them about cleanliness.”

“There is a problem of quick, daily urinating in the street, and it is for the most part a masculine thing,” Fraisseix said, adding that if more men used the street urinals, the unisex bathrooms would be freed up for use by women.

Some women argued that the city should do still more to develop unisex facilities, and that it should also work with cafes, hotels, museums and other public places to encourage them to allow women to use their restrooms.

“I am well aware that men are the ones peeing in the street, and that we have to fix that problem,” Blache said.

But street urinals, she said, “only further enshrine the idea that they are the ones who are legitimate in public spaces, not women.”