I posted this on the mailing list, but I’d like your feedback too.
Let’s have a wee talk about how should one map gender neutral (and gender segregated) toilets. There is a unisex=yes for toilets which looks like it might be the number one tag to use. The bog standard meaning of “unisex toilet” is a gender neutral toilet, i.e. not segregated into separate male & female facilities.
Many smaller public toilets are single occupancy and hence unisex, many larger public toilets (e.g. in shopping centers) are segregated. Social conservatives are mostly losing the battle on same-sex marriage, so their new target is trans people, and they’re proposing “bathroom laws” to limit trans people’s access to public life. Some organizations are making their toilets “gender neutral” in response. So there are probably a lot of gender neutral public toilets, and it’s very useful for some people to know where they are.
But I don’t think that’s how “unisex=yes” been used in OSM. The wiki page says “unisex=yes” is a shorthand for “male=yes female=yes”. The JOSM validator used to suggest that replacement, until I filed a bug. iD’s preset has 3 mutually exclusive options, Male, Female and Unisex, it won’t let you add both male=yes female=yes.
If I see “amenity=toilets unisex=yes”, I would think this is a gender neutral toilet. If I see “amenity=toilets female=yes male=yes” I would think gender segregated. Big difference.
I propose that we start viewing “unisex=yes” on toilets as meaning “gender neutral toilet”, which is different from “male=yes female=yes”, which is “gender segregated”. “unisex=yes” is currently used for hairdressers, and this is in keeping with that. Most unisex hairdressers are not gender segregated.
Thoughts? Feedback? Anything I’m missing? Is unisex-yes tag being used by many projects? What do they interpret it as? It’s good not to force things.
A year ago Micah Cochran’s suggestion would be along these lines, but some changed to toilets:for:unisex=yes (etc.)
I am doing this as part of the “Diversity Quarterly Project”, which for the quarter is gendered toilets. Plenty of toilets have no male/female (and/or unisex) tag, and we should add those tags.