Transgender students deserve the same rights and freedoms as everyone else – the ability to be recognized for who they are and how they perceive themselves. Thee Model Policies will hurt transgender students’ rights to present their true selves to the world. Youngkin claims he is protecting parents’ rights, but he is only promoting the interests of parents who oppose their children’s identities. He is limiting the rights of parents who support those identities, as these parents would for the first time have to present legal documentation to ensure that their children’s gender identity and choice of name would be recognized at school. And Youngkin is eviscerating the rights of transgender students themselves.
Adoption of anti-transgender laws and regulations can inflict significant, measurable, and immediate harm to the health and mental well-being of transgender youth; it is not a minor adjustment to obscure rules. A Washington Post survey shows that Youngkin’s proposals have already struck fear and distress in transgender students throughout the state. Other studies show that anti-transgender laws and regulations increase already high rates of depression and suicide among transgender youth, rates which have already been increasing along with the recent wave of anti-transgender legislation nationally. One report found that in 2021, 42% of transgender youth aged 13-24 years old seriously considered suicide. The proposed Model Policies reflect a cold indifference to the well-being of transgender students and a willingness to inflict cruelty on them for political gain in the culture wars Governor Youngkin so energetically pursues.
Three of the changes to be imposed by Governor Youngkin’s Model Policies have been directly correlated with rates of attempted suicide among transgender youth. Respect for a youth’s pronouns, the ability to change name and gender on legal documents, and access to spaces that affirm their sexual orientation have all been shown to lower rates of attempted suicide among transgender youth. The Governor’s Model Policies would reverse current Virginia regulations protecting all of those rights in school settings.