I live in Fairfax County, VA and I oppose Petition 432.

This petition is not about locker rooms. The Board of Health has no business labeling groups of people harmful based on who they are. 

There are real public health issues facing women and girls in Virginia, like domestic violence, sexual assault, maternal health, and poverty. Don’t let this hateful petition distract from your important mission to protect the health and promote the well-being of ALL people in Virginia.

Across our races, backgrounds, and genders, we all deserve to be treated fairly. There is a nationwide effort by some politicians and interest groups to force transgender people and LGBTQ+ people out of public life. These political attacks harm us all, whether we’re gay or straight, transgender or not, because they foster discrimination and distract us from the real problems we face. 

As a cisgender female clinical psychologist working with the transgender and gender expansive community in Virginia, I am here to tell you that the trans population is SCARED - for their safety, for their lives, for their livelihoods, and for their freedoms. Transgender women, especially transgender women of color, face a disproportionately high risk of being victims of violence, including homicide, compared with cisgender women. A transgender woman in a women's locker room is much more likely to be attacked than to pose a danger to the cisgender women. We do not need to be protected from the trans community - we need to do a better job protecting THEM so that all Virginian's can be safe and free in their places of work and play.