Which I explicitly stipulated, to wit:
If you missed that, there’s no telling what else you missed, so you may want to do a little more thorough reading so you don’t accidentally take things out of context.
A universally understood graphic will work. Whatever else someone wants can be added. You don’t have to read in any particular language or be literate. If one is a new arrival to our shores, or a guest, someone need only explain to you once what that ubiquitous, universal symbol means and what to look for to identify the location you want.
These signs are cheap ($12.75 per) and easy to source. Much easier and cheaper than a cutesy-poo reference to hats or shoes or occupation.
And if the establishment chooses to do that, more power to them. It’s not (or shouldn’t be) required by law.
When I visited Paris all those years ago, how would I have found the exit? The sign said “sortie”. Should they have made a law also, to accommodate new arrivals and guests? I think not.
Unambiguous, decipherable, universal restroom (and exit) signage should absolutely be required by law/regulation.
Typical ISO signs do not (necessarily) have any words on them:
ETA they are not “required by law”, though…
I agree about exit signs. But one generally has enough time to inquire about the restrooms. And as a practical matter, there are very few restaurants that have visible signs for the restrooms until you have already found them. If i go to a new restaurant, or want to use the restroom at a mall or supermarket I’m not familiar with, i assume i will have to ask where they are. I’ve never found this a significant hardship, it and I’m surprised you think signage ought to be mandated.
I should have been more clear: I think the doors to the restroom(s) should have a mandated, universal signage, such as required by the ADA in the US.
How you get to within sight of those universally signed doors I am not suggesting a required system of signage. That’s a kindness to users in a building or structure, but if the owners choose not to, the market will out.
I think fire/disaster safety requires universal signage, even more so than restrooms. Suffocating in a fire would be much worse than a person of another gender/excretory physiology wandering into my bathroom of choice.
Actually, not always. Plus, doing so in another language, being of another culture may create a huge barrier.
Ah. Whereas i think most restrooms should be unisex, so if someone with the wrong parts wanders into the one I’m in, i don’t much care.
I have no story about funny restroom signs, only a recollection about my very first full-time job (and probably the very best, most idyllic job I’ve ever had) at a major university with a classically beautiful old-school style campus. I could hardly believe I was actually being paid just to have fun with computers in a beautiful environment with great funding and great people to work with. The first time I needed to go to the bathroom I went down the hall looking for one and popped into the first one I saw. It seemed a bit odd (no urinals, and some other oddities that I paid no attention to) and it was only after I left that I noticed I had used the women’s restroom. I was just too excited about my new job to notice.
Fortunately, I found where the nearest men’s restroom was, and had no further potential embarrassments for the nearly ten years of fun and experimentation that the university saw fit to pay me for. Mentored a number of graduate students in the process, too. I presume they all used the right bathrooms!
I agree completely. I’m just fine with using unisex bathroom. I’d like it if the urinals were screened by waist high partitions or something similar but I wouldn’t balk at less, I don’t mind pointing and smirking.
If they are ‘gendered’, that’s when the unambiguous universal signage needs to happen. A sign indicating ‘bathroom’ or ‘restroom’ would be nice but if I was in another country I would expect to study before the need arose what those labels would be.
And I don’t think there are any ‘wrong parts’. Perhaps maybe ‘parts I don’t want to see at the moment’.
Maybe if you see and compare the two. But if you just saw one door, Princes is close enough to Princess to confuse somebody in a hurry.
Or very confusing to a preliterate English speaker or any person not conversant in English as a second or subsequent language.
Much of universal signage is aimed at people with low vision. They are not blind, they are not illiterate, and in the USA the vast majority speak and read English just fine. Provided they can see it.
They need stuff drawn simply using large strokes and in high contrast to tell what it is from more than a few inches away. Even better if, as in the triangle and circle backgrounds we started with so many posts ago, the background color or shape of the whole sign carries additional information.
Fair enough. Any parts that aren’t making you sick are good and right. 
I’m not sure that universal pictograph signs are primarily intended for people with low vision. I think they are mainly for people with limited fluency in the local lingua franca – thus the similarity of signage whether you’re in America, France, Germany, or even Russia.
Still, as valuable as internationally standardized pictographic signage may be, I think it’s still important to have actual words on those signs too (in the local language at least, and possibly other languages). Pictographs alone can be misinterpreted.
My anecdatum: I went hiking on a trail one hot dry summer day. At the trailhead was a large sign with something like six pictographs, some of them surrounded with a red circle and a red slash over them. We all know what THAT means! One such was a silhouette of a person walking with a walking stick and a backpack on his back. I took that to mean “No Camping Here”, because of the backpack. A ways up the trail I encountered a park ranger on a horse, who told me the trail was closed due to fire danger and I didn’t belong there, and didn’t I see the sign at the trailhead?
One sign that seems to be quite internationally agreed upon is the red octagonal STOP sign, with the word STOP written in whatever the local language is. I’ve seen photos of Stop signs in Quebec or France with ARRÊTE on them, and a photo of a stop sign in Moscow with СТОП and it was clear what they meant.
How did you get that 
out of this: 
“Perhaps maybe ‘parts I don’t want to see at the moment’?” I even said just before that “there are no wrong parts”.
I think they may have meant that literally. Like a bad kidney.
I was agreeing with you about there being no bad parts.