This guide is written to help familiarize Cartographers with the process of mapping specifically gender-neutral restrooms in their vicinity. The information presented here can also be easily adapted to map any other arbitrary data you wish, but this guide is intentionally written with a focus on cataloging toilet facilities suitable for people who are trans/non-binary/gender non-conforming. You are encouraged to copy any portion of this text that is useful to you and modify it in any way you choose for your own purposes; fuck copyright.

Background

TK-TODO: For now, just read “300 Million Random Assholes Voting on How You Die” for a chilling introduction to Why This Fucking Matters.

Adding your first gender-neutral restroom

Do this to add your first gender-neutral restroom:

  1. Register yourself for a new OpenStreetMap.org (“OSM”) account:
    1. Open OpenStreetMap.org in your laptop or desktop workstation computer’s Web browser.
    2. Click the Sign Up button. The “Sign Up” page will appear. Complete the form on this page and click the Sign Up button.
    3. Check your e-mail for a sign-up confirmation; click the confirmation link in the e-mail you received to activate your new account.
  2. Add a new Point to the map:
    1. Return to the OpenStreetMap.org homepage.
    2. Click on the Edit button. If this is your first time editing the OpenStreetMap, a tutorial walkthrough that describes how to use the in-browser editor may begin playing. Complete the walkthrough if you wish.
    3. Search or browse (pan) the map to the location of the gender-neutral restroom.
    4. Click on the Point button to add a new Point to the map.
    5. Click on the location in the map where the venue containing the gender-neutral restroom is positioned.
    6. Search for the type of venue (“feature”) that it is. For example, if you are adding a restaurant, search for restaurant. Then click on “Restaurant” in the search results list.
    7. Add the venue’s details, such as its human-readable address, along with any other details you have local knowledge about. Leave the fields that you are unsure about at their default values.
    8. Enter toilet facility details for this Point:
      1. Scroll down to the All tags heading.
      2. Click the Add tag (+) button to add a new key/value pair (a “tag”).
      3. Enter toilets:unisex as the tag name.
      4. Enter yes as the tag’s value.
      5. Press the ESC key on your keyboard, or click the Okay () button at the top of the feature editing pane.
    9. Click the Save button to save your changes.
    10. Enter a changeset summary.
    11. Click on the Upload changes button to send your edit to the OpenStreetMap database.

Searching for gender-neutral restrooms

See Maps§Gender-neutral restrooms.

See also

How to map
Our guide to general-purpose mapping with OpenStreetMap.
OpenStreetMap key: toilets
Details on the OpenStreetMap toilets key tag-space.