Hygiene practices differ across the world. Different cultures have different standards for what is considered cleanliness and proper bodily grooming. Yet, many non-Westerners are unified in their shock and disgust at the typical Western bathroom — they seldom have bidets.
From Asia to Europe, many people across the world are accustomed to seeing bidets in bathrooms — experiencing a culture-shock to discover that bidets are not a standard bathroom practice in North America.
Something as basic as the ability to comfortably use the washroom is not equally exercised by students, because many of us require alternative methods of washroom hygiene. At U of T, students come from various countries around the world — many of which, unlike Canada, commonly use bidets — and I believe the lack of bidets on our campuses has begun to represent a broader lack of the university’s cultural recognition and inclusivity toward its diverse student body.
The cultural importance of bidets
Bidets are sanitary devices that allow users to clean themselves with water after using the washroom. For many people, simply wiping is not enough to be or feel properly clean, and a lingering sense of uncleanliness arises when bidets are not available.
As a South Asian Muslim student, I feel doubly strong about U of T’s lack of bidets. For Muslims, cleaning ourselves with water is essential to our faith. If we have not cleaned ourselves with water, we are in a state of impurity, during which we cannot pray.
Muslims pray five times over the course of the day. For university students, this means praying on campus and between classes to avoid missing a prayer. For Muslim students at U of T, the lack of bidets presents both a challenge in practicing religious cleanliness. I see it as a broader exclusionary impediment to our ability to practice our religion on campus.
From my experience at UTSC, it’s not always practical to go from building to building in search of a bathroom with a bidet. Even then, not every stall in each bathroom has a bidet. From my own experience and talking to others in the campus community who choose to use bidets, I know of only four bidets across two men’s and two women’s bathrooms. However, students on other U of T campuses are deprived of even this impractical option, often resorting to carrying alternatives — like water bottles or portable bidets — or avoiding the bathroom entirely.
U of T students spend much of their time on campus going from building to building, so these alternative efforts are simply impossible to constantly exercise. Many students now feel that bidets are a need that is being overlooked and that a change needs to be implemented for the university to be a truly inclusive space.
Emphasizing the cultural divide
This issue is exactly what I see the student group, Bidets at UofT, seeking to address. Through its Instagram account, @bidets_at_uoft, this initiative — launched in December 2024 — advocates for bidets to be installed across all three U of T campuses. In a post on Instagram, it said the reason for their activism was that “As a globally renowned and diverse institution, it is unfortunate that something as essential as a bidet is lacking.”
Bidets at UofT has given a platform to many domestic and international students from UTSC and the rest of the campuses to express their struggles with U of T’s lack of bidets. For many domestic students, despite having grown up in Canada and being familiar with the typical lack of bidets in Canadian bathrooms, they remain uncomfortable with using bathrooms.
As one domestic UTSC student explained in one of Bidets at UofT’s Instagram posts, “I avoid using the washroom unless it is very urgent and once I do, I do not feel clean.”
For international students, this cultural divide is even more pronounced. One international student explained in another Instagram post that “While the university has done a commendable job addressing many aspects of the international student experience, this is one area that seems overlooked […] adding bidets could go a long way in making students feel more comfortable and at home.”
One commonality between the posts on @bidets_at_uoft is that many commenters report being of South Asian descent. I think that implementing more bidets on its campuses would allow the school to take a step toward bridging the cultural divide between U of T as an institution and the U of T student body and exercising more cultural awareness and inclusion.
U of T can do better
Having grown up in Canada, I never thought of the predominant lack of bidets as a matter of inclusivity; I merely saw it as a cultural difference. Now, as a university student, I spend over 10 hours on campus some days in which my access to bathrooms is significantly limited. After listening to similar experiences from other students, my perspective has shifted on the necessity of bidets.
U of T campuses are situated in incredibly multicultural areas in Canada, and the campus welcomes international students from across the world. I think bidets would go a long way in making students from a wider range of cultural backgrounds feel more acknowledged and included. Being able to comfortably use the bathroom should be a basic component of inclusion.
While I won’t advertise bidets as the peak measure of cultural inclusivity, incorporating more of them onto U of T campuses would, at the very least, make more students feel comfortable and reduce our stress over something as fundamental as using the washroom.
Zainab Abdul is a first-year humanities student at UTSC.
