I live in Herndon/Fairfax County VA and I strongly oppose Petition 432.  Restricting transgender individuals' access to the restroom or locker room the matches their gender identity is a terrible idea--Tested and proven to cause harm.  

In 2022, a bathroom ban was passed in Oklahoma which led to the violent attack of a gender-divergent person IN the school restroom that matched the sex assigned on their birth certificate.  This person sustained a traumatic brain injury and died by suicide the next day.  Not good for their health.  Can you imagine just going to pee and then being physically or verbally attacked?  Or contracting a series of urinary tract infections after straining to stay out of public restrooms altogether for one's personal safety?  I have loved ones who have had that particularly painful experience.  Maybe you do as well.

There is a mismatch between the title of the proposed changes (protecting the physical and mental health of female athletes?) and the lack of physical and mental health services in the proposed changes --Certainly, if there's a female athlete who is suffering, she should seek mental healthcare rather than seeking to force trans athletes out of public life.  It is also certain that if an athlete is a pretty good swimmer, but not quite a good enough swimmer to win her race, then a more rational strategy to cope would be to meet with her coach and develop a new training strategy to reach her best potential in her sport, rather than trying to force her opponents out by threatening their safety in the locker rooms through legislation.  Another good reason for those pretty good athletes to seek mental health support is so that they can work past what is holding them back from achieving greatness in their sport. 

Bathroom and locker room bans increase violence toward trans folks in all environments by creating an culture of suspicion.  They do this by conflating gender divergent individuals with sex offenders.  Two very different populations.  So much so that the former is often the victim of the latter, and with terrible outcomes.  

Forcing transgender individuals to use a restroom or changing room that aligns with their assign sex at birth in fact increases their chance for harm.  Mary Lightbody, a Democratic State Senator from Ohio, explains that at the college level transgender students are victims of sexual assault at approximately the same rate as cisgender students, and the perpetrators of 100% of those attacks are cisgender men.  The logical solution for both is to address the violence of rape culture in the raising of men as well as holding perpetrators of sexual violence accountable for their actions. Any victim of sexual violence would agree.  

Bathroom bans are bad for business.  That's right.  Business.  When North Carolina implemented bathroom bans, concert tours canceled shows in North Carolina.  Consumers stopped buying chicken raised in North Carolina.  The NCAA and NBA moved championship events and the All-Star game respectively out of North Carolina.  The NCAA ended its boycott of North Carolina after N.C. repealed its "Bathroom Bill."  This is an excellent example of how we can avoid repeating history by learning it in the first place.  Virginia should not shoot itself in the foot. 

One final point:  The Petition makes no allowance for the needs of people who are intersex.  That is, people who are born intersex, having both male and female sex traits, would have no restroom or locker rooms at all that they would be allowed to use if these changes are made.  Intersex individuals comprise 1.7-2% of the population.  That's about the same percentage of the population that is born with red hair.  If we're not prepared to also block restroom and locker room use to those who were born with this genetic difference of hair color, then we it's probably better not do this to people with differences of sexual traits either. 

Virginia is better than this.  Let's do right for ALL athletes in Virginia.  Policies that allow all people, including transgender people, to use the bathroom or locker room that best matches their gender identity, allow all athletes and indeed all people to participate fairly in life.  For all of these reasons, I strongly oppose Petition 432 which restricts transgender individuals access to locker rooms and restrooms and thereby restricts them from living openly and authentically as they are.