The article I posted was discussing removing gender signage from all restrooms and allowing all students to use all restrooms regardless of their gender, biological or expressed. In other words, no more men's and women's restrooms, simply "restrooms". This is being pushed by some student groups on some college campuses as a possible resolution to the transgender restroom issue.
In the example, a female passing out in the restroom has a 50/50 chance of being found by a male. The suggestion is that while a determined rapist won't care about signage, there are opportunist rapists who may take advantage of a situation that wouldn't otherwise be available since they generally conform to signage rules.
I don't know how likely this is. The article simply suggests that a drunk guy stumbling into a bathroom and finding a drunk girl might increase the odds of rape more than exist currently.
Are those odds greater than the odds of a transgender woman being beaten to death? They probably are, simply because the rape rate on campus is as high as 1 in five, while the transgender rate on campus isn't that high. But if the rape rate is already that high, is going to gender-less bathrooms going to increase it substantially? It might simply be noise compared to the already significant rate of campus rape.
This, however, is just a small portion of the gendered bathrooms in the US. Campus bathrooms might require different attitudes.
Personally, if a bathroom is intended of only one occupant (sink, toilet, no stalls), there's no need for any signage. If a bathroom has secure stalls (door that can be securely locked on each toilet/urinal/etc - not just the simple latches most bathrooms have) and the only open area would contain sinks, then it really doesn't matter there either. Most shared bathrooms have simple latches that are easily opened from the outside, and men's urinals have, at most, small privacy dividers. I wouldn't suggest merely changing the signage, the bathrooms need to change if we're going down this path.
And that doesn't even start to address the "safe space" and judgement issues. Some people often use the bathroom to retreat from others of the opposite gender, it's a small, almost always available way to protect themselves from others, or their anxiety of others.
Changing rooms and showers are a different situation altogether and I wouldn't lump them in with bathrooms when changing these laws.
