Dear Virginia Board of Health,

I write to you to express that I oppose Petition 432.

The concerned constituents, Réka György, Lily Mullens, and Carter Satterfield, allege they are concerned with preventing “both physical and psychological” harm experienced by female students.  Particularly “from males claiming or pretending to be females and gaining access to female-only athletic competitions and private spaces.”  I believe this may be better worded as “preventing transgender students from participating in girls’ sports and from using bathrooms and locker rooms that align with their gender identity.” This is not about protection, it is very obviously about prevention.

First, I applaud these individuals for taking the time to engage with their government about an issue that they care about.  I am here because I am doing the same- and I wholly disagree with what the petitioners suggest.

The petitioners claim they support Petition 432 in order to protect Virginian girls from “both physical and psychological” harm.  They claim this harm comes as a result of transgender students engaging in sports alongside other students or using the same bathroom or locker room.  If this is, in fact, the true issue at hand then I suggest it is best addressed in another manner. The solution is not exclusion, rather education.

Transgender people have always existed and they are not going anywhere. They are Virginians too. If some students experience psychological discomfort at the presence of a transgender peer on a sports team or in a locker room, then the problem is not with the transgender student’s existence- the problem is with the negative perception of that trans student’s existence.  

Thankfully this is a problem that we can solve and with a solution that we know works! Through inclusive education, exposure to trans people, and policies that reaffirm human-to-human compassion, we can foster understanding and empathy amongst our students. This is the solution to reducing stigma, fear, and “psychological harm.”  Banning transgender students from sports teams or locker rooms (both wonderful spaces for young students to make friends and grow together), as proposed in Petition 432, will not alleviate this “psychological harm.” On the contrary, it will send the message that some students are less deserving of dignity and inclusion. This alleged problem of “psychological harm” will not be solved through the banning of trans students from sports engagement  or locker room use, as suggested by Petition 432. If seeing a trans student on your field hockey team causes you “psychological harm,” then seeing a trans person in the school lunch cafeteria will send you into cardiac arrest.

Next, these concerns are farce.

I will now analyze Petition 432 by demonstrating that it is overinclusive, underinclusive, and quite frankly animus targeting trans students.

If the concern is that transgender students pose a physical threat in locker rooms, then that issue relates to specific instances of misconduct, not to a person’s gender identity. By that logic, any student who engages in inappropriate physical behavior should be subject to consequences, regardless of their gender. Targeting trans students solely on the basis of gender identity is unjust and unfounded.

If the concern is that trans students are present in these spaces with some kind of inappropriate sexual intent, then the issue becomes one of presumed sexuality, not gender. Following that reasoning, any student attracted to females would need to be excluded from girls’ locker rooms, this is a clearly unworkable and discriminatory standard. How would such a policy be implemented without gross invasions of privacy?

If the concern is that the presence of transgender students causes psychological discomfort because of their physical bodies, then that points to a problematic desire to police the bodies of all students. Would students with certain body types or physical features be excluded? Where would the line be drawn? How do intersex students fit into this model? How would such a school policy be implemented without gross invasions of the privacy of each person’s body? 

I create these examples to reveal that the alleged goal of protecting students’ well-being is pretextual. The obvious true purpose of Petition 432 is to exclude transgender students from locker rooms and athletic participation altogether. This exclusion is discriminatory and deeply harmful and would likely violate constitutional protections.

I next wish to address the petitioners’ use of the statements “males claiming or pretending to be females.”

This statement made by the petitioners suggests to me that they do not understand what a transgender person is, nor do they have a transgender friend or family member in their lives.  As someone with trans friends, coworkers, and classmates, I am here to report that they are, quite simply, people living their lives.

Judith Butler, a renowned American philosopher and academic, has spent their career studying the concept of gender. One of Butler’s most well-known ideas is that “gender is a performance.” That might sound confusing at first especially if you haven’t taken time to sit with that idea and really think about what that means.  But just like a biologist might study a plant species from every angle, there are scholars who devote their entire lives to examining gender and sex: how these concepts operate, how they evolve throughout our lives, and how they’re understood in different cultures and time periods. Think about it! Gender in the U.S. today doesn’t look the same as it did in the 1950s, and it looks entirely different from how it was understood in Asia thousands of years ago. So what is gender, then? Is it not concrete? Is it not some objective fact?  These are questions I'm not going to tackle here. But I say all of this to point out to you all that there is more to gender and sex than what you or I have personally experienced.  It’s different for everyone and that is a fact- a fact supported by the existence of our trans students.  Therefore, the Petition 432 language that refers to our students as “males claiming or pretending to be females” evidences a complete misunderstanding of the experiences of our trans students.  It is a shallow reduction of the lives they live, the way they interact with gender/sex, and the way they wish to interact with the world.  Because all of this boils down to whether a trans girl should be allowed to play tennis after school, or get ready with her friends in the locker room. And the answer is yes, of course she should. She deserves that freedom. It would be wholly un-American to support Petition 432, given that its language clearly excludes the experiences of girls like her- who are Virginians all the same.