For a lot of people, using a public restroom — with its standard lack of privacy — is fraught with anxiety. For transgender teens, the anxiety can be worse.

Which is why the Maine Human Rights Commission will talk Monday about advising schools to allow transgender students to choose bathrooms based on the gender with which they identify, not their birth gender. That allowance could ease some of the bathroom anxiety in our schools.

The problem is, that allowance could heighten bathroom anxiety of a different kind for other students whose gender identity is also their birth gender.

A biological boy who identifies as a girl is bound to make biological girls who identify as girls uncomfortable in the girls’ bathroom. The same is true for biological girls who identify as boys and use the boys’ bathroom. It will make some boys very uncomfortable.

There is also the problem that a student who identifies with a gender other than the one of their birth will almost certainly get teased, or worse, in unmonitored bathrooms.

Schoolchildren can be very cruel, and there should be a basic expectation that a girl who identifies as a boy and uses the boy’s bathroom will get hassled. The true is same for opposite genders.

Imposing any kind of rule on schools that would force genders to share bathrooms is going to create conflict, not resolve it, and the Maine Human Rights Commission would be wrong to force the issue. There is a better way, following practices already in place in many of Maine’s schools: establishing a gender-neutral bathroom among the existing student or teacher bathrooms, where everyone who pushes through the door does so knowing it’s a shared space.

The Maine Human Rights Commission is taking up this controversial discussion because of its interpretation of the Maine Human Rights Act, an interpretation that caused the commission to rule that a transgender woman was discriminated against last year when she was not allowed to use the ladies room at a Denny’s restaurant in Auburn.

We think the Commission erred in that ruling, and the problem is more profound in schools where the school day lasts much longer than the time it takes to dine at a local restaurant, and using the bathroom is a daily necessity.

Comfort in that use must apply to all students, not just those students who identify with a gender other than their birth gender.

The Maine Human Rights Commission, which is meeting to discuss the issue Monday (although it will not take public comment), is also going to consider a move to advise schools to allow transgender students to participate in sports’ teams of their identified gender. That means transgender boys could be permitted to play on the girls’ tennis team, for example, and transgender girls could be permitted to play on the boys’ lacrosse team.

This should be a very quick discussion, since there is already existing case law in Maine disallowing a boy to play on a girls’ field hockey team because there is a fundamental difference in strength, size and speed between boys and girls, and great potential for injury for students — transgender or not — involved in cross-gender sports.

The discussion regarding bathrooms should be equally quick because any official advisement on who should be allowed to use what bathroom in school cannot be made to ease the discomfort of transgender teens alone, but must be based on the actual and potential discomfort of all students.

Girls use the girls’ room. Boys, the boys’ room. Someone who prefers not to follow their natural physiology could be given access to a gender-neutral option, but there must not be any mandate for schools to spend funds to make this happen. Every school has a bathroom that can be re-assigned. Let’s keep this simple and comfortable for all.

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