I’ve written before about using the social brain vs. survival brain framework to solve problems. Here, I want to give an example of how to use it to approach a current hot button topic, bathrooms.
Much of the anti-trans panic has stoked by whipping up fear that transgender women sharing a bathroom with cisgender women will lead to cisgender women being sexually assaulted. While this is not borne out by the data, it speaks to a deep-rooted assumption in American culture the best way to stay safe is to segregate the “dangerous” people from the “vulnerable” people. In the case of bathrooms, trans exclusion rests on the assumption that cisgender men are inherently dangerous, cisgender women are inherently vulnerable, and the best way to create safety is to segregate the two groups. Trans people are caught in the crossfire.
In reality, however, segregation does not create safety because instead of addressing unsafe behaviors in a space, it substitutes controlling who is allowed to exist in that space. This is a mistake. What creates safety in bathrooms is people consistently following a few straightforward behavioral norms: do not touch other people, do not ogle other people, do not make comments about other people’s bodies, respect privacy. There are some slight complexities in that people often make eye contact and nod in greeting, or friends may joke around, but anyone who struggles to know what appropriate boundaries are has a 100% effective fallback strategy: do not speak, look at, or touch anyone until you leave. Creating safety is extraordinarily simple.
What is not simple is how to respond when people violate these norms, whether accidentally or with the intent to cause harm. But a safe society puts mechanisms in place to address boundary violations early, nonviolently, and effectively. It creates a series of boundaries that serve as warning signals, providing escalating opportunities to test whether a boundary violation is inadvertent or malicious and to intervene before serious harm is done.
It is a useful thought experiment to sit down with a group of friends and talk through what would need to be in place for everyone to feel safe using a multi-stall, gender integrated restroom. Such a conversation might include agreeing on the following: norms and how to communicate them, how to tell someone that a boundary has been crossed, how a person is supposed to respond when informed that they have crossed a boundary, and expectations for bystanders. In such conversations, it can be particularly useful to include anyone whose neurodiversity involves finding it difficult to read social cues, since these community members often have very useful insights about what needs to be made more clear and explicit. In particular, absolute norms like “don’t touch other people” often don’t literally mean that. Friends help each other with their hair, jostle each other in fun, etc. Having more flexible norms such as “ask before touching” can make it easier to create norms that people can universally commit to following.
Clarity and universality are critical because those are what make it possible for bystanders to recognize boundary violations early and intervene. People, especially those who are lower in a social hierarchy than their assailant, are often uncomfortable responding directly to boundary violations for fear that angering their assailant will provoke worse harm. This silencing is pernicious in two ways. First, it means that people who inadvertently violate boundaries but would stop if they knew do not get the feedback needed to change their behavior. Second, deliberate assailants do test minor boundaries (such as standing too close or pressuring someone to drink) before crossing major ones. Defending minor boundaries can scare them off, and even if it doesn’t, it makes their intentions clear enough early enough that the target has more opportunities to escape. In contrast, when these minor boundaries are not defended, it creates ambiguity about whether the boundary is there at all or if the contact is welcome. This makes it harder for bystanders to know when help is needed versus when they will feel like a fool for jumping in to a situation they misread.
The key is to create easy and low stakes ways to test intention and identify whether intervention is needed. For example, if a community has a norm of “ask before touching,” then bystanders don’t need to figure out whether contact is wanted or unwanted before saying, “Hey, did you ask first?” If the touchee responds that yes, everything’s fine, or the toucher pauses and asks, then the bystander can relax. But if the person doing the touching doubles down, this is a violation of the much more serious norm that a person should draw back when told they have violated a boundary. Refusal to follow that norm makes it clear that intervention is needed before worse harm happens.
But this is not how the dominant American culture approaches bathroom safety. Instead, we teach that segregation is utterly vital because there is something horribly wrong with boys on the most basic biological level, that their hormones and aggressive urges are so powerful that the only thing that can stop them from assaulting girls is being unable to physically access them.
What nonsense. There is nothing inherently wrong with boys, and they are certainly not slavering monsters who are fundamentally incapable of self control. Quite to the contrary, a boy who is using the bathroom at all is demonstrating that he has, in fact, mastered the ability to handle overwhelming biological urges without causing problems for other people. He is, after all, potty trained.
Let’s talk for a moment about overwhelming physical urges. It is possible to go one’s entire life without assaulting someone. It is not possible to go a full week without finding some way to eliminate waste. Yet somehow we manage to consistently handle pooping and peeing in a socially acceptable manner. In fact, there is such high value placed on doing so that humans have created a variety of creative technological solutions, from diapers to catheters to portapotties, that allow us to continue to manage our waste discreetly even when it is physically impossible to keep it in. Certainly mistakes do occur, but they are corrected as quickly as possible and there is universal recognition that such a thing is unacceptable. To the extent that a child has difficult mastering potty training, we respond by coaching the child more until they can meet the standard. We would never dream of chuckling “well, boys will be boys” as a youngster takes a dump on the dining room table. If children are not yet ready to master the skill, adults keep them in diapers until they can. They do not let a child’s inability to control their bowels and bladder negatively impact the surrounding community.
Imagine, however, if boys received the same messages about potty training as they do about sex and violence. If they were told that their biology means that bladder control is harder for them, and they are therefore excused from needing to learn how to do so. If they were inundated with contradictory messages that sometimes condemned pooping in public and sometimes glorified it, that told them the people exclaiming in disgust actually liked it, that sometimes encouraged them to rack up their “score” and sometimes told them that pooping was an unforgivable sin, that created arbitrary and elaborate rules about the one true way to wipe, but never coached them explicitly through how to recognize when they need to go. Blaming the resulting mess on biology would completely miss the point.
Teaching people to behave in safe ways requires consistent messages about the importance of asking consent and respecting boundaries, clear instruction in how to do so, a belief that the skill can be learned, and constructive feedback. But the “segregation as safety” framework does the opposite. It argues that there is no point in insisting that a boy practice until he masters the skill of asking first and respecting the answer because the problem stems from his biological failings. And if a boy does gain physical access to girls? The logic of segregation creates a permission structure, telling him that doing harm is natural and normal, and that he is not expected to learn or use the skills actually needed to interact safely with other human beings.
This makes everyone less safe, including boys. While the segregation mythology focuses on harm done by boys to girls, the reality is that people routinely victimize others of their own gender, and girls also victimize boys. It is unquestionably true that anyone contemplating the idea of integrating bathrooms can think of a boy who absolutely should not be allowed in a restroom with girls. But why on earth would it be okay to allow such an individual free access to other boys? Part of the segregation mythology is that boys are not vulnerable and can never be victims, but that is not true. They are just as human as the rest of us. Abuse flows down the social hierarchy, and while girls may be more likely to occupy lower status positions and bear the brunt of it, this does not mean boys are exempt. As long as we do not have mechanisms in place to prevent predatory behavior, those who seek to engage in it will find someone they can safely abuse. Can anyone who has gone through an American middle school or high school claim with a straight face that cisgender children don’t victimize each other in gender segregated spaces? Please. Segregation does not create safety. What it does is lull people with a false sense of security while allowing abuse to continue unabated.
Now, there are valid reasons why a person might not be comfortable in a multi-stall, gender integrated restroom. These range from religious restrictions on modesty to past trauma to discomfort revealing their body or seeing other people’s bodies. It is absolutely critical that single stall, gender neutral restrooms be available for anyone who is uncomfortable for whatever reason in any multi-stall bathroom. But this is true even for facilities that are currently gender segregated. Especially in the era of cellphone cameras, no one should need to reveal their private parts in order to relieve themselves or participate in activities. Avoiding bathrooms (and locker rooms) for fear of bullying, assault, hazing or other inappropriate behavior is a current reality even when gender segregation is in place. All of us deserve better. We deserve real conversations about what truly creates safety, not knee jerk lashing out at scapegoats.
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