Japan’s LGBTI community has called for the removal of gender neutral signage on public restrooms.
The community called for their removal because of fear entering the designated bathrooms would ‘out them’.
‘Rainbow marks’ have been introduced on a number of bathrooms doors across Japan, to indicate they were gender neutral. The initiative started ahead of the 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games in Tokyo.
The ‘rainbow marks’ showed a pictograph of half man and half woman with a rainbow splashed across them.
At a Kyoto conference in February, a number of LGBTI people spoke out against the ‘rainbow marks’.
‘Entering restrooms with the marks is no different from coming out,’ one attendee said.
‘For everybody’
After the conference Osaka City government removed the stickers and replaced them with a sign that says ‘everybody can use this (bathroom)’.
‘This was outside the scope of our assumptions. What’s important is that they can use restrooms without concern, and we decided that we don’t need to stick to just using the marks,’ an Osaka City government official told the Straits Times.
The Hotel Granvia Kyoto, also removed the ‘rainbow marks’ it put up in 2015 after complaints from the LGBTI community.
‘We considered the opinions of LGBT people, who said they feel hesitant about entering restrooms that are just for either men or women,’ a hotel official said.
Japan is a socially conservative country where LGBTI people struggle to find acceptance and also face high levels of bullying and discrimination.
But things are slowly starting to change as more cities offer same-sex couples the opportunity to legally register their relationships.
