If you’re trying to navigate the world as a woman, the struggle is real.

Men don’t seem to get the message that their love for their peen is not universally shared.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve looked out the window of my car to admire the scenery only to be confronted with some dude, rocking out with his cock out, as he relieves himself on the side of the road.

Don’t get me started on dick pics.

The epidemic is so out of control, that some crooks have even managed to capitalise on the impulse to snap a pic of junior and send it to a stranger online.

Much like dick pics, the public urination thing is a worldwide phenomenon, and in France, they tried to solve it by introducing public urinals.

But women aren’t having it, saying that the open-air urinals are “sexist and discriminatory”, reports The Guardian.

Feminist protesters have begun vandalising the new open-air street urinals in Paris.

Several of the eco-friendly urinals have been placed in public spots in recent months as an experiment to counter Paris’s problem of urine-soaked pavements.

But protesters in recent days targeted two on the Île Saint-Louis and near Gare de Lyon station – plastering them with stained sanitary towels and tampons, then blocking them with concrete.

Notes left behind attacked Paris authorities for encouraging men to unzip and relieve themselves without cover in open public spaces – even though public breastfeeding still elicits scorn.

It’s true. The debate over breastfeeding has been raging for a while. Women have been asked to leave public spaces, experienced abuse from onlookers and been generally shunned for trying to feed their babies in restaurants and other public spaces, while men openly free the peen whenever they don’t want to put the effort in to find a bathroom.

Equality campaigners and women’s groups, along with local residents and parents, have complained that the open-air urinals are sexist and discriminatory.

Without stalls or cover, the five experimental sites carry prominent signs showing a man proudly relieving himself in public. But no extra facilities are provided for women.

Feminists warned that authorities were sending the message that men owned the streets and could freely expose themselves in public – something at odds with debate in the wake of the #MeToo anti-harassment movement over how public spaces should allow women the right to feel at ease in the street.

Gwendoline Coipeault of the feminist organisation Femmes Solidaires had the following to say:

 “It is not just men who occupy the public space, but also women and children, who might not want to see men publicly urinate.

“These urinals are designed to comfort men and reinforce the idea that women aren’t welcome in the public space. It is discrimination and reinforces the stereotypical, sexist idea that men can’t control themselves in any way, including their bladders.”

She added: I don’t know a single woman who regularly goes to Paris who hasn’t witnessed a man urinating in public – openly on streets, in the metro – which reinforces a feeling of insecurity.”

There are hundreds of closed public toilets in Paris, and men should be encouraged to use them, as women have, rather than unzipping outside.

Chris Blache, a feminist and urban anthropologist, was not surprised by protests against the urinals. “Frankly, these urinals are a provocation to women,” she said. “It’s not about prudishness, it’s about gender equality in the public space.”

She warned that far from solving Paris’s problem of street urination, the open-air urinals reinforced the notion that it was fine for men to expose themselves and urinate in public, while women were still criticised for breastfeeding outside.

Blache, who has advised the Paris authorities on gender-equality in town planning, said she was not attacking the mayor, Anne Hidalgo, but rather the institutional sexism of technical teams who had not thought through the message they were sending.

In response to the vandalism, men have weighed in to suggest that women just use the public urinals with the help of a funnel, but as Blache puts it:

“If a woman did that, it would be seen as a provocation and certainly not as the simple need to publicly relieve yourself after drinking too much beer, as it is seen for men.”

In the first half of 2018, police handed out 5000 fines to people for urinating in public – almost all of them men. Something which is ridiculous if you consider that there are 450 self-cleaning public toilets across the city, open 24 hours a day.

Paris City hall has responded, saying that they didn’t mean to discriminate, and will take women’s views into account.

Seeing as France was the birthplace of Simone De Beauvoir, I should certainly hope so.

In her words:

“All oppression creates a state of war. And this is no exception.”

[source:guardian]