[Tagging] Better term for unisex

[Adam Franco]

On Thu, Oct 6, 2022 at 2:12 PM Zeke Farwell <ezekielf at gmail.com> wrote:

> The proposal currently states:
>
>> Meaning of the unisex <https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:unisex>
>> =yes is currently unclear:
>>
>>    - gender neutral facility (as the "unisex" term in English); or
>>    - facility that accessible for men and women, either segregated or
>>    not.
>>
>> I do not understand what is unclear.  The term unisex is well understood
> among English speakers to mean "gender neutral".  Unisex never refers to a
> gender segregated facility.  A tag gender=unisex meaning "gender neutral"
> would be perfectly clear.  gender=mixed would probably be understood, but
> "mixed gender" is not a commonly used phrase so it would probably have more
> potential for mis-interpretation.  gender=neutral would probably be more
> widely understood, but again, I don't see the issue with gender=unisex.
>

My hunch is that non-native speakers trying to understand the word "unisex"
end up decoding its parts as "uni" ("one") "sex" ("sex"/"gender") and then
confuse it with "single-sex". Unfortunately, this isn't a correct
translation. While "uni" is a latin prefix for "one", the term "unisex" is
better understood as "universal for all sexes". See:
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/unisex

The term unisex aside, in my corner of the world (at an American university
and surrounding town) the modern multi-toilet restroom setup utilizes
individual stalls (with full-length-doors) that can be used by anyone with
an open and shared bank of sinks that are also used by anyone. Both this
multi-stall setup and single-person restrooms (which are not labeled for a
particular gender/sex) are both termed "all gender restrooms" by advocates
for the configuration and those maintaining the facilities.
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