You won’t find one at the Saturn Cafe in Santa Cruz.

The Saturn — a gay-friendly vegan/vegetarian eatery that has been a Santa Cruz institution for a quarter-century — is not just the place to go for the quintessential Santa Cruz dining experience. The Laurel Street restaurant is at the heart of a small but growing movement aimed at making transgender and “intersex” people — those born with genitalia that aren’t typically male or female — feel more comfortable using public facilities.

“This is the new wave — to really look at bathrooms,” said Deborah Abbott, director of the Lionel Cantú Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, Intersex Resource Center at the University of California-Santa Cruz.

A “new wave” in bathrooms may seem like something that could happen only in Santa Cruz, but the issue is being taken seriously by the mainstream gay and lesbian community. At its huge annual conferences, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force now replaces the “men” and “women” signs with “gender-free” or “unisex” signs.

Many people who are transgender — an umbrella term that includes transsexuals, cross-dressers and people who consider themselves androgynous — say they often feel threatened in traditional restrooms. “People stare, and the message transgender people get is that they don’t belong there,” said Bryan Burgess, coordinator of the Safe Bathroom Access Campaign at the Transgender Law Center in San Francisco.