For me this is just another reason to make all bathrooms unisex and install cubicles worthy of the name. Whether you're male or female or something in between, whatever is between your legs and whatever is in your head, you go into the same room and pick a cubicle. Go into the cubicle, close the door, do what you need to do, and leave. At a stroke the whole "which room should the transgendered" use goes away - use the same room as everybody else. Pick a cubicle, do what you need to do, and leave. Nobody knows what's under the dress. It also means that people in your situation Dani (and I'd hazard a guess there are far more people like you than there are transgendered) are also helped. If you're a mother with a disabled son, or a father with a disabled daughter, or you have a disabled spouse or parent, you go into the single room, pick a cubicle, do what you need to do, and leave. Even if your child isn't disabled, if you're a parent with an opposite-sex child who is maybe 7 or 8 you might not want to just leave them alone in the gender-appropriate changing room/bathroom so you can take them into the single unisex facility with you. I'm really struggling to see many downsides, except for possible one-off implementation costs. It would be interesting to see if those who are vocal about the transgender community would see it as a way to be treated just the same as everybody else and therefore a Good Thing, or a way in which they lose the right to shout and draw attention to themselves and therefore a Bad Thing.
Absolutely not, ever! While I'm a proud global Interwebs citizen and freely interact with my fellow Internet dwellers, written words from people far away have only a very tiny (to nonexistent) impact on my personal feelings and life decisions. Offense, when it happens, is usually confined to close physical proximity. Such as gross lack of basic accommodation during air travel, an absolute dearth of adequate mobility equipment, and the like. Then again my kid is so far off any standard medical charts, we've had to figure out things along the way because we've had very little to go by as far as "normal" is concerned. He continues to baffle even the most experienced physicians, because he shouldn't even be alive by most standards. Yet, here we are. On the bright side, we've also experienced the very best that far outshines the crap we've had to deal with. Thankfully. God has taken very, very good care of us. And will continue to. However, we all have to learn to adapt, overcome and grow strong, so major challenges and painful experiences are to be expected along the way. We're not fragile, although we are of course human.
Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised by the latter. But if nothing else it would make it very clear that anyone still unhappy when faced with a system that treated them exactly the same as anyone else was just looking for a way to Be Different while claiming to want to be see as the same.
They like to argue for the sake of arguing. Someone ultimately will get paid for this and they want to have an excuse to use taxpayer dollars, unfortunately. I agree that a neutral bathroom for both parties would be the ideal scenario and that way it can't really be contested, but ultimately I think they just wanted a reason to have their paychecks written out to them.
I realise this is a really old post but the thread popped up with a new reply. The trouble with this line of thinking is that it rapidly spins into all sorts of silly places. If you're really worried that the guy in the adjacent cubicle is getting excited at the thought of your daughter getting changed, what difference does it make if he's in a cubicle in a different room? If he sees your daughter go into the ladies' room as he goes into the men's room, what's to stop him getting just as excited at the thought of her getting changed in her cubicle? Is that somehow better, simply because there's a little less proximity? What about if he sees your daughter in her swimsuit and gets excited, and goes home to indulge his fantasies? At what point do you accept that weirdos are going to weird stuff and move on? The simple truth is that nobody needs to know what's going on in the next cubicle. Of course another advantage of unisex areas with individual cubicles is that you can be present to protect your daughter from the weirdo who conveniently "feels female today", should that prove necessary.
It's amazing how fast California shut them down when the law changed. Those they didn't brick over, were converted to special needs and folks with an assistent, which is good.
It really shouldn't be that expensive to change the sign on the door. It's not as if new bathrooms need to be built ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
All public bathrooms everywhere should be as accessible as possible and as safe as possible, for whomever, whenever, however. It doesn't matter if someone is transgender, or disabled, or identifies as a unicorn. They're public bathrooms, and therefore all members of the public have an equal right to use them, privately and safely. The end. So however you gotta achieve that ... is what you put in place to make it happen. That means if a teenager in a public schools identifies as a leprechaun and wants to use a private, neutral, safe bathroom, then that teenager, as a member of the public, has every right to that. This includes all public places including schools, parks, state colleges, and etc. And if you don't like that this is how public bathrooms are being regulated, then you can go use a private bathroom somewhere. All this squabbling about public bathrooms, as if they're private bathrooms ... I don't get it. People need to get a grip. This isn't about certain groups of people and their personal preferences. This is about the public in general, and therefore every.single.public.restroom in the country should be as accessible and inclusive as possible while also offering as much privacy and safety as possible. And if that's too big of a problem to figure out for our current powers that be ... then elect different powers that be, who can actually get the job done without making a fuss about it.
In Ghana, one of my favourites was a large wooden open-air grate over a pit. It was behind the restaurant.