I agree 100%. I think there should be a choice for most situations. However, I have to personally say that I do NOT favor mixed-sex public bathrooms. It has been my experience using the men's room that it is often dirty, and disgusting in cleanliness. Not to mention, far too many cisgendered men often take advantage of women in public restrooms (i.e. video cameras, peeping). I don't think we're there yet. As for dorms, I agree that it should be entirely one's choice, and housing for mixed, and separate should be available.

Unisex restrooms don't have to be a big change. Here in DC, we have a code that says single-stall restrooms MUST be unisex. I sincerely doubt that anyone who hasn't had to think about which restroom to use even notices the difference, but for those of us who do worry it's a lifesaver (when businesses follow the code, anyway...). There are even advantages for cis, gender-conforming people: you don't have a 15-person line in front of the single-stall women's room while the single-stall men's room stands empty. (Yes, this is something I've seen.) Win-win.

My <b>real</b> preference would be to have a multi-stall, unisex restroom as you describe, with a single-stall unisex restroom for anyone who isn't comfortable using it... "where possible," as you put it. :P It's not like cis and gender-conforming people will have to hold it; they have lots of other bathrooms to use. Maybe if, for once, they have to leave what they're doing and go to the Starbucks around the corner, they'll be a little more sympathetic.

I do feel differently about dorm rooms and prisons. There's a big difference between spending 3 minutes in the same room with a person while concealed behind a stall or having to wash your hands at a sink next to them, and living with/sleeping in the same room as someone for 6 months minimum. I do think that people ought to be able to opt in to mixed-sex housing, though. For one, even if their documents say differently, women shouldn't have to room with trans men and trans women shouldn't have to room with men.

What would we do with serial killers? Or people who kidnap and rape little kids? (I'm not being sarcastic, I'm really asking, I don't like prisons either but whats the alternative??)

Spaces separated based on sex are one of my biggest challenges. As a transmasculine person who is legally male but opting out of any kind of lower surgery, I feel unsafe in any situation where I have to spend a prolonged period of time (or shorter periods when it comes to bathrooms and locker rooms) in which I am expected to have a set of genitals that I do not. For me, mandatory sex separation is terrifying because my presentation and paperwork put me in those situations.

But I also understand that for many people gender neutral spaces without an option for sex separation could be just as terrifying as spaces separated by sex are to me.

I'm a big believer in gender neutral bathrooms, but I also know that some people are terrified (with valid reason in some cases) of mixing sexes. I think that the best way to deal with this would be single-stall gender neutral bathrooms. There would have to be more of them, but you could easily fit two or three of them in the same space that you use for a single-sex bathroom. These also tend to be handy for people who are handicapped to use because there's more likely to be adequate room without the only usable stall being snatched up by a mum waiting for her two-year old to pee.