A controversial new open-air street urinal has been removed from the historic centre of Paris after it was vandalised by feminists who branded the contraption sexist and discriminatory.
Local authorities confessed that the row over the highly conspicuous “uritrottoirs” – a play on the words urine and pavement – had turned them into a “laughing stock” over the summer.
But they warned that their removal leaves the problem of where to go when caught short unresolved.
Several of the letterbox red, eco-friendly urinals had been strategically placed in public spots in recent months as an experiment to counter Paris’s “wild peeing” problem. The stench of urine is all-pervasive in some areas of the capital.
According to the creators the urinals, topped by a flower-box, allow the needy to “pisse in peace”.
But without stalls or cover, they were slammed for encouraging men to unzip and expose themselves while providing no extra facilities for women. One was placed right next to a primary school.
Protesters targeted two on the Île Saint-Louis and near Gare de Lyon station – slapping stained sanitary towels and tampons on them, then blocking them with concrete. The ultra-chic Île Saint-Louis one has now been removed.
“We were a laughing stock all summer,” Anne Lebreton, deputy mayor of Paris’ 4th arrondissement from President Emmanuel Macron’s LREM party told locals at a meeting on Tuesday.
“It’s totally unsuitable here, next to a school and where children come to sit on a bench to eat their afternoon snack,” the headmaster was cited as saying in Le Parisien.
Ariel Weil, the Socialist mayor, said the urinal “meets an identified need by residents due to the nocturnal attractiveness” of the nearby Seine riverbank. She suggested “moving the installation a few metres with the neighbourhood council’s approval”, Le Parisien reported.
Colette Guez, former president of the neighbourhood council, said residents had tried “in vain” to get a closed public toilet installed on the Ile Saint-Louis but their requests were consistently turned down on the grounds it is a listed area. “And now we find this contraption.”
She called for “proper toilets for men and women on the lower banks where more and more strollers come in the evening”.
Feminists were appalled at the new urinals, saying it sent the message that men could freely expose themselves in public just as the #MeToo anti-harassment movement gathered pace.
Gwendoline Coipeault of the feminist organisation Femmes Solidaires said: “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.”