I live in Loudoun County VA and strongly oppose Petition 432.  Restricting transgender individuals to access the restroom or locker room that matches their biological sex puts those transgender individuals at risk for harm, not the cisgender individuals that the petitioners say will be harmed.

The NCAA president said that there are fewer than 10 transgender women playing in college sports, out of 510,000 athletes (https://thehill.com/homenews/lgbtq/5046662-ncaa-president-transgender-athletes-college-sports/).  The number is likely much smaller in primary and secondary schools.  The CDC says that only 2% of high school students in this country identify as transgender and of that percentage, less than 1% are trans girls, of which an even smaller percentage play sports. 

According to Human Rights Campaign, people make the assumption that "transgender girls will have an inherent physical advantage in sports, but actually that [assumption] is linked to two fundamentally incorrect assumptions that bear closer examination. First, that transgender girls are, for relevant purposes, boys; and second, that boys are inherently more inclined to succeed at athletics (because they are taller, stronger, more mentally tough, or naturally more competitive) than are girls... Natural variations in physical characteristics are an inherent part of sports, and this is especially true in school when young people are growing so rapidly.  Many of the bans preventing transgender students from participating in school sports govern play at elementary and middle school as well as high school when all youths’ bodies are undergoing tremendous change at significantly varying speeds.  Just as a cisgender (non-transgender) young person may reach their full height in middle school, and therefore be physically better suited to basketball and less well suited to gymnastics, a transgender youth may experience a temporary physical advantage while in various phases of their growth.   And, like all other youth, trans youth are short and tall, strong and not, fast and slow."

There are two other factors at play here:  some cisgender girls have naturally high testosterone levels, which would give them an advantage over girls with lower testosterone level.  And a boy who is transitioning might have naturally lower testosterone levels than his cisgender peers or be taking puberty blockers that will mitigate the effects of higher testosterone levels.

According to Human Rights Campaign, "Transgender youth experience all kinds of mistreatment because of their gender identity, including bullying in schools, family rejection, threats of physical violence, and other discrimination.  Sports participation can help overcome some of this vulnerability. For instance, HRC’s analysis of the HRC Foundation/University of Connecticut 2022 LGBTQ+ Youth Study found that high school-aged transgender and non-binary student-athletes reported higher grades, lower levels of depression, and were less likely to feel unsafe at school than those who did not play sports. 

While some of the state bans that have passed in recent years regulate college athletics, all of them regulate educational athletic programs for younger students.  That means that transgender and non-binary youth are being denied access to programs their schools offer to enhance the learning and well-being of the students - except the transgender students."

Forcing transgender students to use bathrooms and locker rooms that align with their biological sex will do irreparable mental and even physical harm to them.  Imagine being a boy dressed as a girl and using the boys bathroom.  The child would be bullied and perhaps even physically attacked, as happened in Oklahoma to a gender-divergent person IN the school restroom that matched the sex assigned on their birth certificate.  The person sustained a traumatic brain injury and died by suicide the next day. 

Transgender girls and women are not sex offenders.  To treat them with suspicion is to risk increasing violence against them.  Our girls are more at risk from sexual assault by cisgender men and boys than they are from transgender girls.  

Note also that in 2021, the Supreme Court of the United States rejected a Virginia school board’s appeal to reinstate its transgender bathroom ban, finding that the ban was unconstitutional.

We must do all we can to protect all athletes in Virginia, regardless of their gender identity.  Blocking transgender people from participating in sports and using the bathrooms and locker rooms that match their gender identity effectively blocks them from participating fairly in life.  Therefore I strongly oppose Petition 432 which restricts transgender individuals access to locker rooms and restrooms which prevents them from living openly and authentically as they are.