I’ve never actually seen a bidet (unless you count the one on Crocodile Dundee, but I’ve been curious about their use.
Are they used by both sexes; or just females?
Do you use the toilet paper first, then transfer to the bidet; or do you just hop over to the bidet and wash there, using the paper to dry? (The latter sounds as if it could be a bit problematic.)
What cultures use them most often? Why don’t the others use them?
Just curious.
I’ve tried. God knows I’ve tried. The cinematic equivalent of my attempts is best shown in the classic scene from “All Of Me”, where Richard Libertini communicates with a bidet.
Anyone have the SD on what SEEMS on the SURFACE to be a brilliant and hygeinic answer to a <ahem> ticklish problem.
Cartooniverse
If you want to kiss the sky, you’d better learn how to kneel.
I don’t know if I did it the RIGHT way, but I once used a bidet. (There was one at one of those little romantic getaway places where we went once–it’s where my husband proposed to me, not that it has anything to do with the OP). Anyway, what I did was, after using the toilet, I turned on the water on the bidet. FYI–check the temp when you do this, or the result is nasty. Then I just sort of squatted over it and let the water hit my butt. Then I dried off with the paper.
I also found lots of sites that sell them. One invites you to come to their showroom for a test drive.
Just my assumption on how it works:
While in Scotland, I wandered (mistakenly) into the ladies room. What I took to be a urinal was not, and in fact pissed back at me when I attempted to flush. This was my first, last and only encounter with a bidet.
FixedBack
“When learned men begin to use their reason, then I generally discover that they haven’t got any.”~~*G.K.Chesterton 1908 *
I probably should have added the fact that I was in an extreme state of enebriation when the encounter with the bidet occurred. 
FixedBack
“When learned men begin to use their reason, then I generally discover that they haven’t got any.”~~*G.K.Chesterton 1908 *
I was under the impression that a bidet was pretty much a douching machine, designed for womens’ use as a vaginal freshener. Am I mistaken?
Live a Lush Life
Da Chef
Yes.
It never occurred to me to use the bidet as a way of washing after defication/urination. Wouldn’t that be rather like getting in the bathtub afterwards?
I always just used the bidet for normal cleansing. Very useful if one doesn’t need a shower, but wants to freshen up. Also, obviously great after sex.
“I should not take bribes and Minister Bal Bahadur KC should not do so either. But if clerks take a bribe of Rs 50-60 after a hard day’s work, it is not an issue.” ----Krishna Prasad Bhattarai, Current Prime Minister of Nepal
You just lean over and drink from it.
Sheesh, some people are so ignorant.
The Dave-Guy
“since my daughter’s only half-Jewish, can she go in up to her knees?” J.H. Marx
How come they don’t have seats? Squatting has to be uncomfortable after even a little while and that porcelan looks cold.
I don’t think Chef Troy is wrong… the bidet exists as an easy way for a woman to clean her genitals (before, during or?) after sex.
It’s not intended as an ass-wipe substitute.
My impression is that a daily shower would make a bidet obsolete. Since they originated and are still in use in countries where bathing is not necessarily a regular ritual, I believe they are used to extend the interval between thorough cleanings without repulsing those nearby.
This also accounts for the heavier perfumes used in Europe.
When I was a kid in Italy, My siblings and I used to use it to wash the sand off our feet after coming back from the beach. 
VB
I could never eat a mouse raw…their little feet are probably real cold going down. :rolleyes:
I always assumed it was for menstruating women. My English-Japanese dictionary describes it as a feminie genital cleansing device. However, Webster’s describes it as “a bathroom fixture used especially for bathing the external genitals and the posterior parts of the body”. From this it looks like both uses are covered.
We have one of those Japanese multi-function toilets, and the butt washing mechanisms has two settings - standard and bidet. When you push the bidet button, the device aims the water farther forward, so I think it’s obvious what they mean by bidet here. By the way, this toilet has to be the most gratuitous overuse of technology I’ve ever seen - e.g. the controls are on an infrared remote so you can mount it in front of you next to the toilet paper without any wires to get in the way.
Well Chef Troy is wrong in that it’s not a “douching machine” – douches are internal. (BTW, douching is not a good thing.) I believe the bidet was originally intended for women, but why not let the men use them? You guys need to freshen up too! There was a thread on wiping methods a few weeks ago (to which, I am not embarrassed to admit, I contributed);got into toilet habits of various countries. In India it has been common practice for a long time for men, women, and children to use a sort of bidet to wash after using the toilet. Shantih may have a point about the bidet originating in countries where bathing was not frequent, but daily bathing doesn’t make it obsolete. You go potty a number of times after your morning shower.
I could see a bidet coming in handy when one was indisposed with a digestive upset or on one’s period. Why must one have to take three or more showers or baths a day in order to keep an air of freshness about one’s nether regions? Why am I talking like Miss Manners?
Well Sycorax thinks that Miss Manners would agree that when talking about such an intimate subject, one must distance oneself by referring to oneself in the third person, thereby assuming an air of respectability, musn’t one?
During my last junket to Paris, my dear mother and I stayed in a little hotel right near Les Gobelins metro. Our room had a bidet but no shower; there was a communal shower on the fifth floor for which tokens had to be purchased. The bidet was extremely useful, I find, because all of the parts of one’s body do not get smelly at once. I used the bidet (and washed my underarms at the washbasin) each day or so, and then took a shower before going home, and managed to stay fresh as a daisy without going through the expense and the foofaraw of a shower each day. Almost makes me wish I had a bidet in my apartment right now.