A tex-mex place near me has Damas and Caballeros. At Christmas, they put wreaths on the doors. The Damas wreath has flowers on it. The other wreath has Christmas balls.
While living and travelling through Europe, I remember coming across a bathrooms in Poland that had a triangle and a circle to mark genders. I looked at it confusingly. At first, I thought, clearly triangle is male because it’s pointy, and circle is female because it’s – a hole? Then I thought, but a triangle can also look like lady bits, and a circle could be a penis when looked at head-on [pun not intended, but left in.] Or maybe a testicle? I had completely convinced myself of the plausibility of either interpretation. So I headed back to my table, and conferred with my fellow travelers. They were, too, unsure. The server came back and I asked him, in Polish, “I need some help … which is the men’s and which is the women’s.” He said “the triangle is the men’s of course!” I turned to my friends and they said “ask him why.” Dlaczego? He answers matter-of-factly, “isn’t that the way it is everywhere?”
I guess it’s not unusual symbology around there, I just had never come across it before, and I don’t remember coming across it since. Maybe it had been updated in most places I visited to the more familiar skeumorphic icons.
I find this interesting, because I remember non-gendered single occupancy restrooms going back to at least the mid-90s. I don’t particularly remember it being controversial or anything. They were simply marked “restroom.” My primary memory was at a cafe I worked at in the Chicago area, but this was at a college town, so perhaps it was more progressive, but I didn’t see it as particularly so. It didn’t strike me as odd then, nor do I remember any customer every remarking on it, so I’m pretty sure I was familiar with at least some establishments not have male/female restrooms.
What was a bit odder was staying at a University of Chicago dorm during a prospective student night in 1994, and the multi-occupant bathrooms/showers in that particular dorm being unisex. That felt strange to me at the time.
I’ve seen the triangle used for the men’s room and the circle for the women’s room fairly often in the United States, as shown in this Wikipedia page.
It’s possible that I’ve seen it in that context a million times, but just never noticed it because it contains the more familiar symbols within, as well as the text. (To be fair, none of my American and New Zealander friends with me knew for certain which was which.)
One room for all the sexes / one room shared by all the sexes. Sure.
A few years back I was at a Tex-Mex restaurant in Georgetown for a friend’s birthday and the bathroom had two doors, just marked “Bano” with ambiguous accompanying art. I just picked one, and it turns out it was actually just one room. It was a mirror image of itself, with stalls along the back wall and a bank of sinks and mirrors in the center. Clearly it used to be separate restrooms and they just knocked down the wall on both ends of the sink wall. Men and women were in there at the same time, and it wasn’t an issue for anyone.
Especially when I’m in California. There must be a state law or set of standards there that require the circles and triangles in addition to the man and woman silhouettes.
California made some efforts to clearly distinguish restroom signage that predates ADA requirements.
Ah, the triangle’s pointing up. A triangle pointing down, I’m fairly sure, is a reference to female anatomy.
Thereby illustrating, as so many such things do, that what’s clear to some people is entirely confusing to others.
I doubt in those signs that I’d even have noticed the different backgrounds; only the more familiar symbols in the middle.
– the one I liked best was one that I now can’t remember whether I saw IRL (probably somewhere in Ithaca NY, if so) or only saw online in a picture: a restroom door sign that said We Don’t Care.
The different backgrounds aren’t for you, they’re for someone who can’t see the male/female figures well enough. They can see and/or feel the shapes.
I have never been entirely at a loss, but about a thousand times I had the thought "wow, they must really want to alienate their customers who don’t get puns, whether they’re non-English speakers, or low-literate, or whatever other reason people might not understand this tortured cutesy pun.
This shit ought to be illegal, frankly. Every business in America should have at least one restroom labeled “anyone”, and any additional toilets should be labeled men/women. (Could have said Canada or Australia but I believe America is the only country stupid enough to play games with people’s basic biological needs in this way).
They’d still need to know which shapes are which; though this may (I don’t know) be part of standard instruction for people who can’t see the figures.
Exactly. You(and me) don’t remember which shape goes with which gender because it doesn’t matter to us.
I’ll probably remember it now. I just never ran into it before.
However, you’re entirely right that provision needs to be made for people who can’t see the standard icons, and that as long as I can see them that isn’t about me.
Not only no, but hell no! The more obscure and tortured the better. If you are too stupid, too ignorant or too drunk to figure it out, then maybe you shouldn’t be allowed in public without a keeper. (Not You you, the general you.) 
One occupant at a time unisex seems to be the preferred way to go these days.
This whole thread–and exemplified by gotpassword’s post–brings up in my mind the question of standards. Do restaurants follow any, with regard to relative locations of the bathrooms? My general sense is that they do, that usually, the men’s room is “to the left” and women’s room is “to the right.”
So if all else fails, you could steer toward where the room “ought” to be…
Something tells me that in office buildings, cruise ships, public buildings, etc. there are likely codes about this very thing (but that’s not my area). In customized spaces such as one-off restaurants, I would expect things to be even more variable. However, at some level maybe people try to adhere to a standard regarding restroom placement…?
When birds are surgically (or DNA) sexed, a bleb of tattoo ink is placed in the left wing-web for females, the right wing-web for males. Traditionally this was done because the female bird usually has an active ovary on the left side. I’ve always remembered it as “males are always right”.
I had to visit my company’s business office in a nine-story office building where we had the eighth and ninth floor. On the eighth floor, the men’s room was on the left but on the ninth floor, it was on the right. I think they may have alternated from floor to floor.