Being told who to be attracted to, what clothes are acceptable to wear and which bathroom you are allowed to use based off of gender identity should not be a choice of the establishment.

Trying to figure out who you are is hard enough with people badgering you about what you “should” be doing or who you “should” be. Mind your own business.

Not everyone is supportive of people who identify as LGBTQ+, but why does that matter? Transgender people do not tell others where they can and cannot go to the bathroom, so why should transgender people be told where to go to the bathroom. You may be comfortable with the sex you were identified as at birth, but others are just now trying to figure out who they are.

A person who identifies as a female but was born with male genitalia and a male name, and vice versa, should be able to choose which bathroom and locker room they think fits them best — the sign with the dress or the sign with the pants. 

Roosevelt High School in Des Moines created a gender-neutral bathroom. The school purposefully did not call it a transgender bathroom because it is meant for anyone, according to the Des Moines Register.

I could see many different outcomes of a unisex bathroom, but students who identify with a different sex than what they were initially identified as at birth already face enough grief. The unisex bathroom is a stepping stone.

A supermarket in Athens, Georgia, put up a sign on its unisex bathroom door that it is not only for LGBTQ+ people but also for dads with daughters, moms with sons and people with disabilities, the Huffington Post reported.

The sign was meant to welcome people and make the environment less awkward. Unisex bathrooms were not meant to outcast anyone, and they didn’t. They have resulted in positive feedback.

Having unisex bathrooms could be challenging in schools, especially in upper-class schools. However, school serves as a time when people find out who they are and who they want to be — sexuality and gender included. It would be a lot easier if schools educated students not only through scholastic measures but as well as exposing the need for unisex bathrooms as a way to celebrate our differences.

A bill was passed by the South Dakota Legislature that requires students to use bathrooms and locker rooms that correspond with the sex they were born with, the New York Times reported.

As for transgender students, the schools would have to find something to accommodate their needs, but who knows if every school in South Dakota has the money to do so?

“I developed the bill because I don’t want my four daughters to shower with people with male anatomy,” Fred Deutsch, Republican state representative, told the New York Times.

If the issue is really his daughters seeing a penis in the locker room, then I understand that can be concerning for parents, but what about girls who see other girls’ vaginas and breasts in the shower? Is that classified as OK? In our society, yes.

It is a confusing subject for many, but a solution could be unisex bathrooms and/or locker rooms. Students could then begin to see LGBTQ+ students do exist, and identifying as transgender is not something to be ashamed of.