I live in Falls Church, Virginia and I oppose Action 4905.

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 violence, economic hardship, and reproductive health access.  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. Bathroom laws often target cisgender women who don’t conform to outdated ideas of femininity. In fact, trans masculine people have been assaulted and murdered in women’s rest rooms. These political attacks harm us all, whether we’re LGBTQIA+ or not. These are assaults on women's rights as the same forces who seek to restrict trans feminine people from public life have a goal of taking away all rights women have fought for over centuries.

As a trans feminine individual who used men's restrooms until very late in her transition I have had women accidentally follow me into the men's restroom under the assumption that it was the women's restroom.  I have had men see me washing my hands as they walked in to the men's restroom who then walked out of the restroom to check the sign and confirm that they hadn't just walked into the women's restroom on accident.  All of this happened because of harmful laws and policies across the country that restrict where I am "allowed" to go to the restroom.  These sort of policies are the reason that I am now too anxious to use the restroom in public except in emergencies or if there is a gender neutral option available.  Policies like these are threatening transgender people across the country by actively stripping us of our right to exist and making it unsafe to be part of the communities that we live in.

This proposed regulation has nothing to do with the health of Virginians and everything to do with discrimination. No one should face discrimination because of who they are. Trans people have always been here, and always will be. Trans people cannot and will not be erased.  We refuse to let a vocal minority dictate whether we are allowed to exist in public.