The State Legislature and Department of Education (DoE) should have worked to produce policy guidance that supports and protects children experiencing gender dysphoria within our public school system without throwing out scientific reality and common sense.  In myriad dimensions, it is an empirical fact that the physiological and psychological imprints of human binary sexual nature play a significant determinative role in our individual identities.  The physical realities of being male or female are not interchangeable.  Setting forth policies that encourage and insist that our children believe otherwise (or at least force them to outwardly acquiesce to such notions),as done in this document, does them no service, but will do great damage.  

Most directly, encouraging children experiencing gender dysphoria down a path of transitioning to their supposed gender identity exposes them to significant health risks, especially as drastic medical and surgical interventions are being more regularly employed for these individuals during early puberty in an attempt to conform biological appearance to supposed gender identity.   The long-term health side-effects of these interventions are not well known (to the point that the British Court system recently ruled these treatments were both experimental in nature and lacked evidence that they provide intended benefits) but appear include increased risks for developing cancer, irreversible changes to bone health, removal of healthy body parts, and loss of fertility.  In addition, the individual is set up to require a life time of medical intervention to maintain the fight against their own biology.  Given the weight of the implications related to a decision to transition---and given the fact that the vast majority of gender dysphoria cases tend to self-resolve by late adolescence/early adulthood---DoE school policies that truly serve gender dysphoric students would be oriented towards helping these students navigate childhood and adolescence towards integrating their biological and emotional realities to the greatest extent possible while protecting these individuals from true forms of bullying.

The policies and language set forth in this document further do a disservice to the entire student population of our schools. Scientific and technical literacy are of central importance for our student's futures, and yet anti-scientific claims and language form the basis of this policy document.  For example, sex is a measurable, biological scientific fact.  It is not something that is "assigned at birth".  The above mentioned clinical fact that most gender dysphoria cases self-resolve raises significant objections to the implied claim that gender identity should be the determinant factor for all external understanding of and interactions with an individual because it (one's gender identity) is an "innate part of a person's identity".  We cannot expect that our children will take seriously our efforts to form their logical and technical faculties (or develop an accurate valuation of the scientific enterprise) if we insist on contradicting the scientific corpus and their own observations of reality in other portions of the curriculum or within administrative policies.

This policies in this document do not serve the best interests of Virginia's public school students and should be tabled.