For those who are gender non-conforming, it is hard to decide which bathroom to use.
When one's appearance or biological sex don't match his/her sexual identity, it often causes a trouble especially in the gender-segregated places such as bathrooms.
Historically, there was time where men and women were segregated in various ways in order to protect women from the crude danger of the male world. However, times have changed and people are seeking for equality now. Perhaps, the public bathroom is the only everyday social institution in which separation by gender is the norm.
Why don't make all the bathrooms gender neutral then?
Apparently, this is a both social custom and laws themselves. A part of the problem is that businesses are legally prohibited from offering only gender-neutral bathrooms.
Another problem is that there are certain amount of people who think gender neutral bathrooms would result in the increase of sexual assaults. In fact, Indiana has recently proposed a law that would make it a crime for a person to enter a single-sex public bathroom that does not match the person's biological gender.
However the correlation between the effect of gender neutral bathroom and sexual assaults is not based on or supported by statistics.
Personally I think gender-neutral bathrooms are also good for women if we could think it as a remedy for an enormous line for the women's bathroom. I do not think it would directly cause the increase of sexual assaults. There are lots of cafes and restaurants that have only gender-neutral bathrooms in Tokyo. However, if closed stalls would shield others from view, there seems to be no difference between gender-segregated and gender-neutral. Revising the existing laws might not be so easy but gender-neutral bathroom should be accepted widely.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/04/18/why-all-public-bathrooms-should-be-gender-neutral.html
http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/whos-afraid-of-same-sex-bathrooms
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