Unisex Bathrooms: Flushing Away All Restroom Controversies?

Author, April Rose Scnheider, of the article, "Unisex Bathrooms: The Controversy. One for All? Why Unisex Bathrooms May Help Transgendered People," argues that unisex bathrooms are the solution to the urgent issues of personal safety and transgendered inclusion in regards to segregated bathrooms. I find that unisex bathrooms are a ridiculous solution to a problem that effects less than one percent of the US population. 

A boy walks into the room with the image of a pant-legged stick figure;
a girl walks into the room that shows the stick figure in a cute
little stick dress; this everyday, given no thought, human instinct
action has become as natural as brushing your teeth in every morning.
From the first “sanitary facility” in China dating back
to 206 BC, within the tomb of a king of the Western Han Dynasty,
bathrooms have been a place of privacy and safety. Despite bathrooms
(head, privies, latrines, powder room lavatories, johns, loos, and
outhouses) being a place of refuge, a reading room, etc, they entail
one major issue: segregation. April Rose Schneider, writer of the
article, “Unisex bathrooms: The Controversy” believes
that “the solution may be unisex facilities…"
(Schneider, paragraph 2). Bathroom segregation origins are difficult
to discover, but this segregation ended with the Civil Rights Act of
1964, which outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion,
sex, national origin-in voting, employment, and public services. This
act is currently outdated as it fails to define the category of sex.
“Definitions of men and woman that vary from culture to culture
– and the emergence of third and fourth genders in global
society – create the need for a new approach to an old problem
(Schneider, paragraph 4). There are many reasons to justify unisex
facilities: both mothers and fathers could care for there baby in the
bathroom at the same time, opposite-gendered caregivers could stay
with their ward, and there would be a greater prevention for
man-on-women crime. The main reason of this article is to introduce
the fact that bathroom segregation has become a catalyst for
transgendered people to feel uncomfortable and face dangerous
situations. While one tries to “pass” as the sex that
matches the stick figure upon the bathroom door, for a variety of
people, “from butch lesbians to transitions trasngendered
people, the bathroom hold the same potential for violence as it does
for safety” (Schneider, paragraph 7). Unisex facilities have
been gaining popularity in modern day. Are unisex bathrooms truly the
solution?

Being disloyal (just for a moment) to my open-minded and feministic
approach on life, I have to strongly disagree that unisex bathrooms
are the solution to bathroom segregation. It’s understandable
that transgendered people are at a high risk of facing danger in the
place of privacy, but it is not necessary to make the rest of the
population uncomfortable, just so the .25% of transgendered people in
the U.S. can be safe. Many people today- for those pee shy people-
have enough trouble sharing a bathroom facility with others of the
same sex; I don’t see how adding members of the opposite sex
into the room would make their situation any easier. Transgendered
people make the choice (key word choice) to change their body types
and present themselves as how they perceive themselves to be. By
making this choice, and following through on it, they also take on
the hardships that being a transgendered person involves. One of
these hardships includes facing adversity in the bathroom.

Don’t get the wrong idea about my morals and views of the LGBT community;
I’m all for equal rights for same-sex marriages and
transgendered rights, but I just don’t believe unisex bathrooms
are the solutions. Granted, transgendered people will be satisfied,
but on the other contrary, unisex facilities are creating an
uncomfortable environment for the majority of the people. I don’t
think the fact that “bathroom segregation simply divides the
girls from the boys,” (Schneider, paragraph 6) from a
superficial perspective, is the most horrible situation in the world.