Opinion: I honestly think trough urinals are great

[lollipopbonehead 10]

I’ve noticed as a 18 year old male, the era of trough urinals being common place in public bathrooms has long since faded away. I would hear stories of these forgotten relics and wonder how they would have worked. These days, everyone my age and beyond is so obsessed with privacy and individuality, we have completely forgotten that we are all just men, with the same parts down there as any other boy or man.

It’s completely commonplace for guys (at least my age) to go their entire lives using stalls in public, or not even bothering to use the bathroom in public at all, out of fear of having that privacy broken. And hey — if you value that and and have anxiety around the potential of having your genitals seen by others that share the same type, all the power to you to use the bathroom wherever you feel comfortable.

In fact, I was one of those people for the longest time. Through my first 4 years of high school I refused to use anything but the stall at school. I wouldn’t even go near the urinals because of their lack of dividers and privacy. It didn’t even occur to me that I could use them. But in my last year of high school, I realized: what’s the big deal? I couldn’t let my fear and anxiety control me like that. I’m not sure if it was how I was raised amongst my peers or what, but I had let this completely normal thing of using the urinal at school get to my head.
 

In my last year of high school, I finally said enough was enough. I challenged my anxiety of being seen or going around others, and decided to use the urinal one busy lunch hour. And yanno — it was great! I could finally use the bathroom as it was intended for a guy. I was quite proud that I had managed to get over such a irrational fear. Although those were still just individual urinals (quite close, however).

I have vague memories of seeing trough-style urinals when I was younger, although I never remember using one. I obviously couldn’t imagine myself using something with that lack of privacy in earlier years, but as I was going through my last year of high school (this year), my mind continued to wonder if I could, now that I had gotten over my fear of at least going at school. So I decided that next time I came across one — I’d just say fuck it and give it a shot.

 

That brings me to this summer. My friends and I were hanging out at a park in the evening. A while in I needed to take a pee, so I started heading toward the public restroom in the park. This park had a small restroom building, and was quite old (maybe ~40yrs) with a men’s side and women's side, obviously. On my way, I remembered that that washroom was one with a single stall and — you guessed it — a trough urinal! It was about an 6 foot wide indented section of tiled wall with a trench and drain at the bottom to catch the urine falling down the wall. 
 

It was a hot summer evening, and I really needed to pee! So I decided to give it a shot rather then hassle with the stall as I normally would. But, as I entered the bathroom, I noticed and older gentleman (maybe late 50s) already stood towards the far corner, making use of the urinal. In that moment I needed to make a decision. Was I still going to use it? Fuck it. I stand walk up, towards the wall, unzip, pull out my unit, and just start peeing like no one was around for miles! Even tho the older gentleman was no more than 3 feet to my right, using the same wall as I was. We both just looked straight ahead and observed the silence. He finished off about 20 seconds before I did, stepped away and left. I walked away soon after.

 

After that event, I realized that these super awkward troughs I had always imagined for through my life were really not a big deal at all. I could use one of those things any day. I knew the man beside me would be respectful and keep eyes to himself, just as I did. After all, we were both men and that’s the mutual respect we have for each other. It’s nothing special, we both have the same parts and are at the trough for the same thing. I guess trough urinals are just one of those places where a silent, mutual understanding like that is made. There’s nothing weird about it. It’s a place where men of all ages co-exist in doing the same thing — going pee. Looking forward to the next time I see a trough urinal so I can have an experience like that again. Being able to get over those fears I had has been such a weight lifted from my shoulder.
 

 

[Spectator9 303]

We've become very body-conscious in recent years, and we've seen too many pictures on the Internet showing what we "should" look like.  In reality, most of us don't "measure up" to the dick pics, and that can make guys uncomfortable at a trough urinal or even at urinals without so-called modesty barriers.  

Trough urinals are the most efficient fixtures for accommodating large numbers of men in stadiums and such, and they're easier to keep clean.  I can recall times in the past when I was full of beer and would have gladly pissed shoulder-to-shoulder with other men at a trough instead of holding it until my turn at a urinal!

 

[Pronto 53]

I agree. Just like in the locker room, trust me nobody is looking at your unit. Everybody (especially at that age) is so self conscious about there "own" that they see right past everyone else's imperfections and lack of. Somebody should do a study on this and how it relates to the rampant prevalence of anxiety issues faced in our society today.

[oliver2 4,408]

11 hours ago, lollipopbonehead said:

In fact, I was one of those people for the longest time. Through my first 4 years of high school I refused to use anything but the stall at school. I wouldn’t even go near the urinals because of their lack of dividers and privacy. It didn’t even occur to me that I could use them. But in my last year of high school, I realized: what’s the big deal? I couldn’t let my fear and anxiety control me like that. I’m not sure if it was how I was raised amongst my peers or what, but I had let this completely normal thing of using the urinal at school get to my head.

I felt similar in my teens - not so much as to avoid urinals but certainly I'd have been wary of showering naked in a group shower.

[Pronto 53]

How bout a movement to bring back the troughs? Might solve a lot of problems in our society today!

[lollipopbonehead 10]

5 hours ago, Pronto said:

How bout a movement to bring back the troughs? Might solve a lot of problems in our society today!

I actually totally agree! I feel like if I was exposed to the use of troughs through my entire life, I would have had less irrational anxiety issues surrounding my body throughout my teens years. And if you think about it, it just makes sense in terms of efficiency to have a urinal trough in busy areas such as schools, stadiums, parks, etc. 

[Spectator9 303]

10 hours ago, Pronto said:

How bout a movement to bring back the troughs? Might solve a lot of problems in our society today!

Once we bring back the troughs we can bring back the gang showers.  That way boys can learn that not every guy is hung like what they see on the Internet and that they are "normal" after all!

[oliver2 4,408]

38 minutes ago, Spectator9 said:

Once we bring back the troughs we can bring back the gang showers.  That way boys can learn that not every guy is hung like what they see on the Internet and that they are "normal" after all!

If you have a gang shower, a urinal is redundant 😈

[beachmom 1,809]

On 8/27/2020 at 7:38 AM, oliver2 said:

If you have a gang shower, a urinal is redundant 😈

Very true. Honestly I always thought of urinals as being redundant, as they're usually mounted on a tile wall and above a tiled floor with a floor drain near. I've seen several beach or pool locker rooms where they simply run a water line across the wall waist high and locate a couple drains in a recess in the floor along the wall, that seems to me to be the simple solution. But then I don't really see the harm in just peeing against a wall either, it's all gonna run to a drain anyway.

[oliver2 4,408]

1 hour ago, beachmom said:

Very true. Honestly I always thought of urinals as being redundant, as they're usually mounted on a tile wall and above a tiled floor with a floor drain near.

Clearly they aren’t expecting guys to bother to aim too carefully. I don’t know why the bowls on the wall design is now more popular than troughs & porcelain walls - maybe for privacy, but urinals are never very private.

On the pier at, I think it was Portsmouth, there used to be a wall urinal and the drain was just a hole in the pier floor with the sea underneath. You could look down and watch your piss falling into the sea.

[yellowii 238]

Urinals are in fact great when used by women! 

[lollipopbonehead 10]

10 hours ago, oliver2 said:

Clearly they aren’t expecting guys to bother to aim too carefully. I don’t know why the bowls on the wall design is now more popular than troughs & porcelain walls - maybe for privacy, but urinals are never very private.

On the pier at, I think it was Portsmouth, there used to be a wall urinal and the drain was just a hole in the pier floor with the sea underneath. You could look down and watch your piss falling into the sea.

Yeah, that’s what it was like in the locker room at my school. Big communal shower (that’s never used) with a recessed tiled wall at the back of it, which was the locker room’s urinal. It gets a lot of use, and I had managed to use it a few times over my senior year. It was great, super efficient in terms of space and capacity. Regardless, I’m surprised they don’t have more urinals of that style around nowadays. That was literally some of my only experience with a trough urinal lmao

Edited August 29, 2020 by lollipopbonehead

[beachmom 1,809]

15 hours ago, oliver2 said:

Clearly they aren’t expecting guys to bother to aim too carefully. I don’t know why the bowls on the wall design is now more popular than troughs & porcelain walls - maybe for privacy, but urinals are never very private.

On the pier at, I think it was Portsmouth, there used to be a wall urinal and the drain was just a hole in the pier floor with the sea underneath. You could look down and watch your piss falling into the sea.

One of my sons has always taken notice of the futility of taking an effort to build urinals that just drain to ground or river anyway. Anytime he's seen one he has told about it, often photographed it, asking what's the point. He first noticed them on trains, where the toilets open to the tracks as well. In Amsterdam they built outdoor toilets that drain into canals. At a German castle the floor trough drained to a scupper on the side of the building where it dropped 2 or 3 stories to the ground below. Toilets on ferries that drain overboard,  piers as well. We've noticed street side stalls that drain to street drains or just to the street. We always thought it useless, easier to just pee in the water or in the street.

[gldenwetgoose 21,460]

Here in the UK I'm sure there are still a good number of trough urinals across pubs and clubs. Often stainless steel and wall mounted so the gutter is at mid thigh level, and some antique porcelain ones which have a gutter set into the floor and then porcelain back up to sort of chest height. Some of these porcelain ones are cast in sections so they naturally have a space for each person, but without a full divider between each.

Obviously there is a balance to be had in that, as has been said, it's easier to accommodate more people at a trough, but conversely the individual urinals I believe use less water to flush - some are even waterless.

I know there are some guys who'd always use a cubicle if they could - maybe it's a 'stage fright' thing of peeing between two other guys, maybe it's an inferior 'yours is bigger than mine' thing. Something I noticed a while back, is when I stand and pee and look down, my tackle looks far smaller than if I looked at it through a mirror.  I've always been able to use a trough without too much fear, but I do wonder if I and other guys are doing ourselves a disservice by imagining the people either side are bigger than us - when actually we're imagining that we're smaller than them.

The other thing I've become comfortable with is that it doesn't matter.  I think I'm smaller than average. Nobody has laughed at me that I can remember. My wife hasn't left me for a porn star. So if it doesn't bother anyone else it doesn't need to bother me.

I'm getting off topic, but if you want to visit a few venues with troughs in England, I can assure you there are plenty.

[Ms. Tito 2,387]

Would you guys be comfortable with a decently endowed girl standing next to you peeing in a trough urinal?

[Ms. Tito 2,387]

On 8/27/2020 at 7:59 AM, Spectator9 said:

Once we bring back the troughs we can bring back the gang showers.  That way boys can learn that not every guy is hung like what they see on the Internet and that they are "normal" after all!

But what about trans women who have severe dysphoria?

[speedy3471 10,655]

11 hours ago, Ms. Tito said:

Would you guys be comfortable with a decently endowed girl standing next to you peeing in a trough urinal?

I wouldn't have a problem with it

[Dawen 198]

12 hours ago, Ms. Tito said:

Would you guys be comfortable with a decently endowed girl standing next to you peeing in a trough urinal?

I would be happuly with it. Aiming would be a bit more difficult than usually but it's understandable 😆

[gldenwetgoose 21,460]

12 hours ago, Ms. Tito said:

Would you guys be comfortable with a decently endowed girl standing next to you peeing in a trough urinal?

 

12 hours ago, Ms. Tito said:

But what about trans women who have severe dysphoria?

 

Am I over simplifying when I say that everyone has a choice to pee at that trough, or not.

If I was walking through a park and considering whether to piss on a tree, and a well endowed girl walked up then I would change my plans - I wouldn't want to embarrass her, and wouldn't want to get arrested for exposure either.  But if I'm in the gents and she appears next to me, then she has chosen to enter the room and put herself in that situation - her choice and her placement. She has accepted it's the male toilets and therefore males will also be using that trough.  I believe I can proceed with my pee (arousal permitting) on that justification.

I appreciate there are people who will feel uncomfortable or pee shy standing next to anyone else.  A trough urinal doesn't have to mean you're any closer to the next person, and in the case of a lot of stand alone urinals then side to side doesn't block anyone seeing your bits anyway much more than the trough.  So wait until it's quieter maybe or use a stall?

Final point - and I'm asking to be educated here more than being deliberately discriminatory - but what is the issue for a trans woman?  How does it differ from anyone else?  By trans woman, do you mean a person who is in soul and mind a woman but has male genitalia?   I have a (maybe invalid) sense that you want to be treated as a woman without being discriminated as different, yet it seems to be you yourself that are applying that discrimination?

As far as dysphoria - I just had to Google it and for anyone as dim as me, it's the opposite of euphoria - so a type of deep depression.  I'm old and brought up by parents who were used to doing without and roughing it. Like a lot of my generation (and a lot of the teachers of our childhood) we had a sense that we had to take the rough with the smooth, we had to fit in and life wasn't always going to be kind to us.  "Don't worry, worse things happen at sea" and "Keep crying and I'll give you something to cry about" were common parental nurturings. If we got in trouble at school we could expect double punishment at home. Not all of that was right of course and civilisation has moved forwards in the right direction. Sometimes though we have to accept things that are what they are, and aren't going to change just to suit us.

 

Anyway - back to that trough...  squeeze up big guys and make room for me, I don't need much room...

[oliver2 4,408]

14 hours ago, Ms. Tito said:

Would you guys be comfortable with a decently endowed girl standing next to you peeing in a trough urinal?

I might be pee-shy the first or second time, but otherwise, sure

[oliver2 4,408]

14 hours ago, Ms. Tito said:

But what about trans women who have severe dysphoria?

She’ll have to wear a blindfold and piss in the urinal’s general direction?

(More sensibly: have also enough stalls or private toilets available)

[yellowii 238]

19 hours ago, Ms. Tito said:

Would you guys be comfortable with a decently endowed girl standing next to you peeing in a trough urinal?

endowed in the tits? 

[Ms. Tito 2,387]

5 hours ago, oliver2 said:

She’ll have to wear a blindfold and piss in the urinal’s general direction?

(More sensibly: have also enough stalls or private toilets available)

I was talking more about the showers.

[Merkus 196]

2 hours ago, Ms. Tito said:

I was talking more about the showers.

I think there would still be more private showers so everyone feels comfortable. Although, if you wanted to use a communal shower, I’d hand you a beer and we can have some shower beers together!

[Ms. Tito 2,387]

1 hour ago, Merkus said:

I think there would still be more private showers so everyone feels comfortable. Although, if you wanted to use a communal shower, I’d hand you a beer and we can have some shower beers together!

Shy introvert me: I don't know....Communal showers make me uncomfortable.... 

Exhibitionist me: But don't you wanna be naked around so many sexy people of all genders? Doesn't that sound hot?~~~