I live in Albermare County and I oppose petition 432.

This petition is not about locker rooms. 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 domestic violence, maternal health, and poverty. 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. These political attacks harm us all, whether we’re gay or straight, transgender or not, because they foster discrimination and distract us from the real problems we face. 

As a trans person who frequently is forced to use unnecessarily gendered bathrooms that do not align with my gender, I also feel pain and dysphoria that other trans people experience under the same circumstances. Avoiding public bathrooms is not an option for those of us with health issues. 

I ask you - do you segregate the bathrooms in your home by gender or sex? Why or why not? How is that different from public restrooms? Why do most places not offer single-stall bathrooms open to all genders and sexes, which would be more efficient and cost effective than forcing pseudoscientific-sex-based segregation? Everyone uses the bathroom. Making arbitrary distinctions is pointless and only serves to reinforce imagined hierarchies in the spectrums of human sex and gender. 

This narrative around “safety” in public bathrooms stems from society’s refusal to acknowledge that women are most likely to be victimized by people they know and trust, like family or friends or even acquaintances - it’s an effort to divide us and make us mistrustful and aggressive toward each other, especially strangers. Most victims of abuse, not just women, are abused by people they know and trust.

This petition 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. 

I urge you to stand on the right side of history and reject Petition 432.