image credit: pannapadipa via pinterest

Best practice I think is to write “Toilet” on the toilet door, and not call attention to anything other than what’s behind the door, ie it’s a toilet. In using that one simple, single word, no one is excluded, nor does it unnecessarily allude to the fact that other toilets are segregated. Signing them as anything other than “Toilet” is making them ‘progressively-motivated doors of judgment’ upon which all dis/agree, when all someone wants to do is to relieve themselves in a judgment-free zone.

Not to mention the cost of changing toilet doors to add redundant adjectives when “Toilet” (or signage to that effect) is already on almost all toilet doors. Perhaps, only those labelled “Unisex Toilets” should just have their adjective removed, or the stick figures of each gender standing together could be replaced by a silhouette of a loo instead of people. An inclusive environment is one where people simply just aren’t excluded, and attention isn’t brought to the fact that there are other places that they’re not so included.

An equivalent example was during segregation times in the US, you’d have laundromats for “Coloreds” and “For Whites Only”. Later inclusivity didn’t dictate signage be “For Whites and Coloreds”, nor “All Races” or “Color Neutral”. Rather, all signage just said “Laundromat”. Adjectives are redundant. If you were going to be inclusive by adding adjectives, you may as well go all the way and write “All genders, All races, All sexual orientations, All shoe sizes” or “Gender Neutral, Citizenship-Neutral, Orientation-Neutral, Feet or no feet, etc… etc…”.

Furthermore, “All genders” or “Gender neutral” may be the standard word of choice now, but no matter how much we push to be ahead of the pack to use these terms, guaranteed, they will be old-hat by the time new toilet signage using those words has rolled out. You can see that in how it began as LGBT then became LGBTI, then LGBTIQ, then LGBTIQ+ ect. Language keeps changing, and new signage will be obsolete as soon as it gets put on the door.

“Toilet”: everyone’s included, no one’s excluded. The doors aren’t judgmental or socially-motivated one way or another. Costs are saved, and we won’t ever need to change the adjectives we chose one year when in about five years’ time, a new more appropriate adjective will be the flavour of the month, making us have to change them all again or be accused of being behind the times in such a rapid linguistics-changing society we’re a part of.

Edit: Here’s an interesting response from someone:

“In houses, it works. In small restaurants/cafes, with one, two or perhaps as many as four toilets, that can work. Beyond that, you start to move into the territory of ceding cost and efficiency to ideologies, to some extent.

There is no getting away from the fact that making banks of urinals available to men is not only cheaper, but better for the environment, results in less real estate given over to toilets and increases throughput of users of the toilet. If there is a higher frequency of male users than females in the user population, this effect is amplified. When you add alcohol consumption and people being in a hurry, the effects of this are further increased and there are some other soft factors that come into play. When you scale this to the size and situation of a soccer stadium, there is no getting away from it: individual cubicles for every user is outrageously wasteful.

If people are interested in further explanations of these ratios, Neufert’s Architects’ data is not only an authoritative source, but if you live in the west has almost certainly been used directly by the designers and architects in planning the public buildings and private offices you yourself use.

With the advent of significantly increasing numbers of both trans and Muslim men in the West, whilst the model used in Neufert remains the most efficient, it is no longer working socially. There are certain parties not willing to cede that efficiency. Some in genuine pursuit of maximal efficiency, others for ideological reasons of not much caring for the existence of one or other of these new ‘intruders’ and using the argument of efficiency as a mask for what is really bigotry.

The best compromise I can see, to minimise social friction, whilst retaining something that begins to approach efficiency, would be to have three categories:

1. Male symbol. Tiny number of cubicles, bank of urinals. Reserved for the use of biological males.

2. Female symbol. Small-medium number of cubicles. Reserved for the use of biological females.

3. Toilet symbol. Large number of cubicles, some of which are large enough to accommodate wheelchair users and which have fold-down baby changing tables in them. Useable by anyone.

Exact proportions of these TBD, based on new studies of contemporary usage, current demographics and forecast demographics over next 25 years.

This should generally be the ideal for designing new secular buildings, but I’d stop short of advocating that Planning ought to mandate it. As an example, conservative religious organisations ought to be allowed to model for their specific population.

I’d also emphasize; that’s for new buildings. People will have to suck up the fact that some old buildings will likely be prohibitively expensive to retrofit.”

Someone else responded, “No point in words or symbols unless they actually have objective definitions. If men can say they are women because they feel and/or look like it, then these discussions become ridiculous.” Then OP replied:

“…in all these instances, the cubicles are single occupancy (albeit the smaller numbers of larger cubicles in “3. Toilet Symbol” could fit three adults comfortably, with shuffle space). The wash basin areas are communal, perhaps even as hubs between different “types” of bathroom.

In the “1. Male symbol” and “2. Female symbol” toilets I described, there would be no need for floor to ceiling. In “3. Toilet symbol”, there would be a requirement for floor to ceiling, with the exception that at least one of the larger cubicles there must be without floor to ceiling, for disabled users at risk of falling to electively use.

In case it was unclear, when I said, for example, “Reserved for the use of biological [sex]” I meant precisely that. Yes, there’ll be some sexual predators who’ll intrude, or trans trying to make a political point, or even just testing how convincing they look by seeing if they are challenged, but I would like to think that those are fringe cases of willful transgressors, for whom sanctions ought to be available and that the overwhelming majority of people would play by the social rules and not violate #1 or #2.

I would argue that even if your position is that you simply don’t want trans (biological men) in “your” bathroom; my model still makes more sense than the current one. People generally aren’t in favour of hard consequences for violations under the current model because it penalises/others trans people unnecessarily, even when they’re not trying to prove a point or test the waters and simply want to use the bathroom. If my model were in place; people in the wrong bathroom really would be troublemakers and I think you’d see broader popular support for ejecting them and more severe penalties for repeat offenders.”