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What Science Says About the Bathroom Debate

Jeffrey Kluger @jeffreykluger

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May 19, 2016

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Peter DazeleyGetty Images

Everybody welcome. Evolution doesn't discriminate.

Jeffrey Kluger is Editor at Large for TIME.

Your genes don't care who you share a bathroom with, but your
politicians do
Want to see a living experiment in what happens when traditional gender lines
are truly blurred? Forget North Carolina or Mississippi or any of the places in the
U.S. where politicians have made the question of which person uses which
bathroom an unlikely cultural flash point.

Take a look instead at Samoa the tiny island nation that can teach the worlds
most powerful democracy a thing or two about the basic business of human
sexuality. Samoa, like the U.S. and every other country in the world, is home to
plenty of men and plenty of women, but unlike any other country in the world,
its also home to the faafafine.
The faafafine are, nominally, boys with a boys anatomy and a boys
chromosomes and, therefore, the boy box ticked on their birth certificate.

But the faafafine are something more too. Theyre typically gay, yes, but they
think and act and dress and feel almost entirely in the manner of a woman,
which is what faafafine means. They are thus considered even embraced as
a third sex.
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Typically, the faafafine assume traditional female roles in the Samoan culture
and, while they are less likely to have children of their own than heterosexual
males are, they compensate by being exceedingly dedicated alloparents the
broad category of family caregivers that also includes uncles and aunts and
grandparents. That makes the faafafine especially prized by evolution. Babies
with a greater number loving adults looking after them have a better chance of
surviving than those with fewer.

Oh, and as to which public bathrooms the faafafine use? Nobody flipping cares.

Thats worth keeping in mind as advocates of restrictive bathroom laws argue

that separate accommodations for men and women are more than merely
custom, theyre fundamental to human nature just the way nature wants
things to be. On its surface, a scientific argument like this does seem to track.
All evolution is in one way or the other built around the goal of reproducing
yourself and your genes, so it stands to reason that there should be no ambiguity
about the gender we present to the world, and typically there isnt. Indeed, we
work hard to advertise our maleness or femaleness in the most appealing ways
possible. Thats the purpose of sexual signaling like makeup for women or
muscle shirts for men.

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Ambiguity in this context should be unsettling, especially in public places that

require us to disrobe even partially. Things get more disturbing still when the
specter of male sexual predators masquerading as females to gain access to
womens bathrooms is thrown into the mix. But none of these arguments bear
close scrutiny.
The easiest part to dispense with is the least scientific part the dangerous man
in the girls bathroom. Transgender people are no more or less likely to be sexual
predators than any other people, and a biological male who wanted to crossdress to gain access to a bathroom not meant for him would have been doing it
already and presumably could continue to do it despite local laws.

As my colleague Michael Scherer reports in this weeks TIME cover story, The
FBI and local law enforcement do not keep consistent stats on the number of
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crimes committed in public restrooms, so there is no way to track every claim

But there is not yet any anecdotal evidence that trans-friendly rules have been
abused by predators, or that incidents of violence or sexual assault have
TIME Ideas hosts the world's leading voices, providing commentary on events
increased.

in news, society, and culture. We welcome outside contributions. Opinions

expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of TIME editors.

More nettlesome is the human-nature argument. Its undeniable that for most
people the idea of mixed-gender bathrooms may take some getting used to, but
AROUND
THE WEB
the question
is why, and the answer has less to do with evolution than
socialization. Even in cultures that have rigid bathroom-division norms, the
rules break down fast depending on context consider camping trips, co-ed
dorms, crowded stadiums or theaters where women waiting in long bathroom
lines are often waved into the mens room to help speed things up. And those
comparatively conservative cultures are by no means the only kind.

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