Montana Bill Defines Sex Under Strict Reproductive Terms

A bill quickly progressing through the Montana statehouse would redefine male and female based on strict reproductive criteria. The new definitions would be applied to 40 different legislative codes, including employment protections, school sports teams, and marriage licenses.

Senate Bill No. 458 defines “female” as “a member of the human species that, under normal development, produces a relatively large, relatively immobile gamete, or egg, during her life cycle and has a reproductive and endocrine system oriented around the production of that gamete.” Similarly it defines male as “a member of the human species that, under normal development, produces small, mobile gametes, or sperm, during his life cycle and has a reproductive and endocrine system oriented around the production of that gamete.”

The bill goes on to say that in humans, there are exactly two sexes. The bill reads: “The sexes are determined by the biological indication of male or female, including sex chromosomes, gonads, and nonambiguous internal and external genitalia present at birth, without regard to an individual’s psychological, chosen, or subjective experience of gender.”

Shawn Reagor, the director of equality at the Montana Human Rights Network, said in an interview with Them that the bill would affect “everything from identifying documents, and how incoming students might need to register for classes, and how they might need to identify themselves in a school program, to really changing the court’s interpretation of nondiscrimination law.”

Unfortunately, this bill is not the first of its kind. According to Movement Advancement Project’s legislation tracker, at least 15 bills that aim to redefine sex have been introduced across 11 states in this year alone. Senate Bill 458 has passed the state’s House of Representatives and is set to be voted on by Montana’s Senate which has a Republican supermajority.

Advocates in the state are concerned, and rightly so, about the draconian law and the invasiveness of enforcing it. Quinn Leighton, the director of external affairs at Planned Parenthood Advocates of Montana asked lawmakers; “Are you going to do pelvic exams or genetic testing? How do you foresee making sure that people are using the identifications that match their gender, or in their own words, sex?”

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A hearing was held last week where over 40 Montana residents spoke out against Senate Bill 458, and just four spoke in favor of it. Among those opponents was Dr. Lauren Wilson, president of the state chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics and a practicing physician in Missoula, who explained that biological sex is not as easily identifiable at birth as the bill makes it out to be.

“There are also all sorts of people whose reproductive and endocrine systems are not organized around the production of the gamete that would typically correlate with them. These state definitions make no, zero provision for intersex people, so there are a whole bunch of people you suddenly cannot categorize. It’s not clear what their legal status would be,” Dr. Wilson says.

Other opponents argued that the bill will put transgender Montanans in danger when using identifying documents that do not coincide with their outward expression. One such voice was that of Anna Louise Peterson, a licensed clinical professional counselor in Montana, who said at its core, “SB 458 appears intended “to deny transgender Montanans the right to a coherent and public existence.”

“It won’t work.” Peterson continues. “We will continue to exist. We will continue to be your neighbors. We will continue to move through the world beside you,” Peterson says. “SB 458 will not erase us, but it will render us unsafe in myriad ways that, if you are not transgender yourself, you cannot begin to imagine.”