every public bathroom must offer gender-neutral toilets

On Friday, I went to Antwerp. We went to the fashion museum. I went to the toilet and, to be honest, was a bit confused. The usual icons for men and women were nowhere to be seen. Instead, I came across this: gender-neutral restrooms. I was already familiar with this concept and have encountered it before, but on Thursday, I had chosen this topic and was happy to have the opportunity to examine it with a critical eye. My verdict: I didn’t feel unsafe, there were no queues, everything was super clean, and everyone looked happy.

So why is there such a debate about this?

First, we need to understand the principle of gender-neutral restrooms, and for that, we first need to understand gender. Many people think that sex and gender are the same. Everyone has a sex. There are three sexes: you’re either born with male organs, female organs, or you’re intersex. So, a sex is determined by nature.

When we talk about gender, we have to look at culture. There’s a very broad spectrum of genders. A cisgender person is someone whose sex aligns with their gender. For example, I was born female and identify as female. But some people are born with a sex that doesn’t match their gender. These people are called transgender.

There are also people whose gender doesn’t fit within the binary of male or female. These people are non-binary. There are people who are gender fluid: they sometimes feel more male, sometimes more female. So the question now is: which toilets should they use?

It’s difficult to categorise public restrooms by sex, because then there are transgender women - who look completely female - who have to use men’s restrooms. Do you think they’ll feel safe there?

We can’t categorise by gender because then there are transgender men - whose sex is therefore female - who have to use the men’s restroom. There, he’s all alone with cisgender men who probably won’t react appropriately.

At the same time, we can’t ask every person who walks into a restroom what their sex and gender are. The only sensible solution is to find a middle ground: gender-neutral toilets.

This also has advantages for everyone: yes, transgender or non-binary people finally know where to go and finally feel safe, but others also have advantages. People with disabilities who may have a caregiver of a different gender sometimes have trouble with choosing a toilet. Parents with a child of a different gender can hardly send their child to the other restrooms all by themselves: they certainly won’t be safe there. Single fathers, whose restrooms don’t have changing tables, would have these facilities. Also, everyone - and especially women - have had to wait for ages in a queue while no one was queuing for the other toilets. All of that would be solved.

And still, there are cisgender women who say they feel unsafe with transgender women in women’s restrooms or gender-neutral restrooms. But if we look at the statistics, transgender women are twice as likely to be sexually assaulted as cisgender women. So there’s no point in complaining about gender-neutral toilets in which everyone has a separate cubicle.

Transphobia is no joke. Between May 2024 and May 2025, there were 932 anti-transgender hate crimes in the United States. That’s 2.5 incidents per day. These included 84 injuries and 10 deaths. If there’s anything we can do to protect and support transgender or non-binary people, the time is now.

At the same time, it’s important to remember that women are abused by men. But the difficult truth that we also have to accept is that men can and will do this anywhere on earth. If we “give” them gender-neutral restrooms it won’t happen more often. Also difficult but true is the fact that if men really wanted to abuse women in restrooms, they could already do so: it’s not like there’s security guards stationed around every public restroom. So, logically, it would be safer for women in gender-neutral restrooms, because other men and women are there and can help them.

In some schools where gender-neutral restrooms already exist, girls are literally afraid to use the toilet. This isn’t due to safety concerns, but rather to boys trying to guess which girls have their periods based on how long they spent in the restroom. We can’t improve or worsen such issues with infrastructure.

That’s why I chose this wording: every public building must offer gender-neutral restrooms. In principle, we could give people the choice of using men’s restrooms, women’s restrooms, or this third option. This isn’t always structurally or financially feasible, of course, but it’s not necessary in most places, essentially only in schools.

On the plane, the toilet isn’t gendered. At home, the toilet isn’t gendered. Some restrooms have separate cubicles for men and women, but then there’s a shared area for washing hands. At the fashion museum in Antwerp, simply everything was gender neutral. We’re only at the beginning of solving this problem, but my conclusion is that this would be a step in the right direction.