On June 6th, the Carolina Journal published the following op-ed by Ashley Vaughan, NC Values Press Director, entitled “Middle School Girl to Lawmakers: Please Don’t Make Me Room with a Boy”:
At a quiet, wooded summer camp in North Carolina, 13-year-old Chloe Button stepped hesitantly into a rustic cabin, duffel bag in hand. A lifelong Girl Scout, Chloe had always looked forward to camp — until now. She just found out that a boy claiming a female identity was assigned to sleep in her cabin.
Chloe asked to be moved to another cabin, but her request was denied. As the days passed, she struggled with growing anxiety. She changed clothes behind a towel and lay awake at night. Instead of being a retreat, the cabin seemed more like a cage. She felt trapped and alone.
Weeks later when she went back to her public school, Chloe moved through hallways lined with lockers and crowded with students. She pushed open the door to the girls’ restroom and was shocked to see a boy exiting the stall. Her stomach dropped, and she remembered the helplessness and loss of privacy she experienced at camp.
Last month, Chloe traveled to Raleigh to share her story with lawmakers in order to urge them to pass the Women’s Safety and Protection Act, Senate Bill 516 and House Bill 791, filed earlier this year.
The bill defines male, female, and sex in NC law based on biology, not identity. It also designates private spaces by biology in K-12 public schools, community colleges, UNC System colleges and universities, rape crisis centers, domestic violence shelters, and correctional facilities that receive state funds. And it repeals the provision allowing people to change their sex on their birth certificate, and requires the “sex” listed on an individual’s driver’s license and their birth certificate reflect their biological sex.
The Women’s Safety and Protection Act would not prevent Chloe’s camp experience from happening because the Girl Scouts are a private organization, but it would ensure that she does not have a similar experience on a school trip. Currently, three NC School Systems — Buncombe County Schools, where Chloe attends, Asheville City Schools, and Orange County Schools — allow boys to use girls’ restrooms. Four NC school systems — Buncombe County Schools, Asheville City Schools, Orange County Schools, and Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools — allow boys to room with girls on overnight trips.
Critics of the Women’s Safety and Protection Act have attempted to tie it to HB2 because of the controversy that bill caused in the state about a decade ago. But the reality is that the Women’s Safety and Protection Act has key differences from HB2, including that it does not affect private entities or businesses and it does not affect employment policies. It is a targeted attempt to protect girls and women in especially vulnerable spaces and situations such as school bathrooms, overnight field trips, dorm rooms, prisons, and crisis centers.
But more important is the fact that, since HB2, public opinion has swung dramatically on the issue of ensuring that women and girls have their own sports and private spaces. People have heard stories from girls and women like Chloe they understand the problem now — men and boys who adopt a female identity invade women’s private spaces and their opportunities, depriving them the right to privacy and to a fair and level playing field. Recent polls show that a growing number of Republicans and Democrats believe that our society has gone too far with transgender accommodations.
States have responded to this shift by passing legislation similar to the Women’s Safety and Protection Act in order to protect women from the harmful effects of gender ideology. Fourteen states have passed laws to segregate private spaces by biology, and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals just unanimously upheld a similar law passed by Idaho. Eight states do not allow sex to be changed on birth certificates, and at least eight states define “sex” by biology. North Carolina’s passage of the Women’s Safety and Privacy Act would be in line with a growing trend among states to protect women.
Payton McNabb is another North Carolinian whose life has been dramatically impacted by the infusion of gender ideology into society. In September 2022, Payton suffered a traumatic brain injury when a boy, competing as a transgender girl, spiked a volleyball in her face in a high school volleyball game. Then in May 2024, when she was a student at Western Carolina University, Payton encountered a man in a dress and heels in the women’s bathroom on campus. She asked him what he was doing in the women’s bathroom, and was subsequently harassed online, threatened with expulsion, charged with sexual harassment and discrimination by the school, and kicked out of her sorority.
Just last week the US Department of Education announced a Title IX investigation into Western Carolina University for refusing to ensure sex-separated intimate spaces in federally funded institutions of higher education. The announcement cited credible reports that administrators refused to update their discrimination policy to comply with President Trump’s executive order mandating sex-segregated private spaces. It also described the specific problems occurring at the school including Payton’s incident, and another female student who left a university dorm because she was assigned to room with a male claiming a female identity.
Back in 2021, the nation was shocked when a boy wearing a skirt sexually assaulted a girl in the girls’ bathroom at a Northern Virginia high school. The parents sued the school system for $30 million. Will NC lawmakers wait until a horror story happens like this in North Carolina before they act? Or will they step in now and protect the safety, privacy, and dignity of young girls like Chloe Button?
North Carolina was the first state to raise awareness to the problems caused by boys and men in girls and women’s private spaces almost a decade ago – and now it’s time to finish the job and protect women and girls by passing the Women’s Safety and Protection Act.
Ashley Vaughan is the press and political director for NC Values.
