My name is Lauren Bone, and I am the Legal Director of Women’s Liberation Front (WoLF), a national feminist non-profit organization whose mission is to advance, restore, and defend the rights of women and girls.
I am writing today to express our enthusiastic support for House Bill 396 (HB396), which would clarify that public entities are not prohibited from using biological sex to separate men and women in sports, jails, and prisons, bathrooms, and locker rooms. We particularly note with favor the inclusion of medical and mental health facilities where persons may be involuntarily committed since that is an extremely vulnerable population frequently overlooked by similar bills. We commend that and urge you to consider expanding it to any inpatient or outpatient program.
Men and women have specific innate physiological differences with social implications, including the unique ability of females (but not males) to become pregnant and birth children, including by rape; the increased vulnerability of females to numerous forms of sexual assault and other assault by males; and advantages associated with male physiology in athletics and other physical activities, including musculoskeletal advantages that cannot be equalized via pharmaceuticals or any other medical treatment.
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There are other differences between men and women, including a greatly increased rate of violent crime and sexual crime committed against females by males, significantly increased rate of sexual exploitation of females by males, and certain disparities in employment and education. These population-level sex differences are not modified by a person’s self-identity as something other than their actual sex. Women in New Jersey and California prisons have become pregnant from being housed with men, and there have been numerous reports of sexual assault, as well as countless anecdotes of physical violence and intimidation, voyeurism and exhibitionism, and sexual harassment.
Sex-specific facilities and services are often necessary for privacy, modesty, religious observance, safety, and redress of historical discrimination and exclusion. Lack of access to such facilities and services limits the ability of women and girls to participate in public life. As such, outright prohibition on legal recognition of biological sex fails to consider the unique needs of women and girls, which can serve to unduly disadvantage them.
Inconsistency in definitions and in court rulings applying these concepts have led to endangerment and in some cases legal prohibitions against single-sex spaces, which was never the intent of Congress or of the state of New Hampshire in elucidating protections for women and girls in sex discrimination laws. As such, explicit statutory provisions such as those provided in HB 396 are needed to clarify the terms of prohibitions against discrimination based on sex.
This is a good bill, and a step in the right direction for protecting women and girls in the state of New Hampshire. WoLF urges the Committee to give it a favorable vote. Thank you for this opportunity to testify.
WoLF works to restore, protect, and advance the rights of women and girls
