Several young women who have faced severe medical consequences due to gender-transition procedures or from injuries playing sports with transgender individuals stood outside North Carolina’s legislative building on Wednesday to advocate for more legal protections for women’s private spaces.
The NC Values Coalition press conference highlighted the Women’s Safety and Protection Act, a piece of legislation in both the House and Senate that would mandate public facilities be used only by individuals of the same biological sex at the same time, except for specific situations like family use or emergencies.
The bill defines key terms such as “biological sex,” “male,” and “female” in state law and applies the definitions to spaces like restrooms, locker rooms, and sleeping quarters in places such as schools, prisons, and domestic-violence shelters.
With protestors screaming from across the street, young women including Payton McNabb, Prisha Mosley, and Elle Palmer gave their first-hand testimonies on just how hurt they were by policies that affirm people as the gender they identify as, rather than their biological sex.
Mosely and Palmer detailed their experiences as young girls who thought they were boys, receiving hormone therapy and surgery that harmed their bodies. Both have detransitioned and are helping push the Women’s Safety and Protection Act forward.
“Five years later, I come to terms with the fact that I was just a girl going through puberty who ended up in the hands of doctors and therapists who forgot the first rule of medicine, do no harm,” said Palmer. “I was a child. As much as I cannot take the blame for adult men sexualizing me at 11 years old, I cannot take the blame for adults in my life who allowed me to transition when I was 16.”
McNabb, who was injured in a volleyball game on a spike by a transgender player on the other team, spoke in favor of the bill at the General Assembly, calling it common sense legislation focused on truth, privacy, and protection.
“No woman or girl should ever have to go through what what I did for telling the truth, and that’s why this moment and this legislation matters so much,” said McNabb. “This is common sense. There are only two sexes, male and female, and law should reflect that biological reality, not deny it.”
McNabb was also accused of harassment in violation of Title IX last year for confronting a biological male in a women’s bathroom at Western Carolina University, which she was ultimately found not responsible for earlier this year.
“This bill would do several critical things,” she added. “It repeals the provision that allows people to change their sex on birth certificates. It requires the sex listed on a driver’s license to reflect biological sex, and it protects the hundreds of laws that differentiate between men and women, laws that exist to protect women’s rights, safety, and opportunity. And even more importantly, it protects private spaces, spaces where women and girls are especially vulnerable, bathrooms, locker rooms, changing rooms, shelters, prisons, and dorms.”
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The post From trauma to triumph, NC women back biological sex-based safety law at NCGA first appeared on Carolina Journal.