I am sorry to hear that transgender athletes harmed the three petitioners by opposing them in their sports and winning. But is this really about harm or is it about fear and misunderstanding? I do not see where transgender people physically or sexually attacked the petitioners. If that did happen, we have laws against assault and rape. So, I do not see where we need a new law.

In sports we cannot always win – we cannot always medal – we cannot always make the team. Life is the same and children need to learn these lessons to prepare themselves for adulthood where there will be losses and disappointments.

I spent twenty-three years as a firefighter. Did I always make the team? No. I lost out to men, but also women, too. Firefighters need to be physically strong like athletes and there are both men and women, males and females who are stronger than others. This is not because of chromosomes, which can be XX, XY, XXX, XXY, etc. This is because of height, weight, and muscle composition that is in our DNA. Some families or individuals have fast-twitch muscles. Some have muscles built more for endurance. But the simple fact of male or female does not make us athletically superior to one another.

What are these petitioners afraid of? I can only guess, but I am sure that they do not understand transgender. Transgender is not an ideology or agenda. It is not political. It is biological. We are born the way we are born. Most people are born with both brains and genitalia that are either male or female. However, some of us are born with gender mismatch. Some of us are born with female brains and male genitalia or vice versa. This is a fact of nature, a scientific fact. We do not choose to be this way, but we may choose to match gender for our own mental wellbeing. Many of us cannot continue to live with this mismatch because societal pressure forces us to conform to a norm, matching brain, and genitalia – transitioning. Those who misunderstand us en mass can stress us to the point of suicide and once we have gone to the edge, we need to take steps to prevent us from going there again. We must conform our bodies and genitalia to our minds and brains.

All this locker-room and bathroom talk is about fear of genitalia and rape, specifically the penis as a weapon. There is fear of male to female transgender people in transition, who have yet to conform their genitalia to their brains. This rhetoric comes from rape culture. Rape culture says that it is not the man’s fault that they rape, because they have a penis, which is a weapon. It is the weapon’s fault, the penis’s fault. All this rhetoric makes girls and women fear male to female transgender people who may possess this weapon – a penis.

The problem with rape culture is that it places the blame on the victim for enticing the attacker in some way from behavior or dress or both. We have laws against rape and assault already on the books and they work. Are all the rape kits getting processed? No, but that is a separate issue from locker-room and bathroom safety.

Once again, I am sorry that these petitioners feel harmed by transgender athletes, because they did not win, or medal, or make the team. Why punish all transgender people because the petitioners lost, did not metal, or make the cut? Life is full of winning-losing. Not all of the fire departments that I applied to hire me. I was beat out by both men and women who made the cut and I did not. I moved on, applying for other jobs. We do not always get jobs we apply for in life. There will be rejection and loss. It is a part of life. Children need to learn how to lose, as well as win. They need to learn this to prepare them for adult life.

Let us talk about harm to transgender people, which is a real thing – not just hurt feelings. Society mistreats transgender people to the extent that they are much more likely to commit suicide than the general population. They are also more likely to have haters beat them up or murder them than the general population, because of fear which becomes hatred.

Male to female transgender people are rightfully concerned about laws forcing them into a men’s locker-room or bathroom. Because most of the violence against transgender people is from men – eighty percent. This is why male to female transgender people prefer the women’s locker-room or bathroom – they feel safer there. They are less likely to have haters gang up on them there than in a men’s facility. No, I am not using rape culture here, saying that transgender people are afraid of rape or penises. I am saying that they fear physical attack and murder, because the statistics are there that they have a higher likelihood of male haters beating or murdering them than the general population. Statistics and science are there on this topic.

Where the statistics or science is not is that all transgender athletes have an advantage over non-transgender athletes. Some transgender athletes have an advantage, but not because they are transgender. It is because of their DNA. They have the height, weight, or muscle composition advantage with which they were born. If all transgender athletes had an advantage, then all of them would be winning, but they are not. Not everyone wins.

These petitioners need to understand that not everyone wins. They may feel that the transgender athletes opposing them had an advantage because they were transgender. I submit that they were simply better athletes. When men and women firefighters made the cut and I did not it was not because they were transgender or were not transgender, they were simply better athletes than I was. You cannot win them all and we need to teach this to our children.