Public restrooms are the one area of American life where access to a basic universal necessity remains strictly controlled by anatomy.

This persistent version of “separate but equal” does more than express a sense of propriety or privacy. It imposes order and implies policing.

Bathroom segregation hasn’t always been only about gender. Jim Crow laws required the establishment of separate facilities for whites and blacks. In that era public restrooms doubly anatomized users, maintaining racial boundaries at a most elemental level of existence.