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FRI.| 4-12-24 | ENTERTAINMENT
Transphobic bills are attacking America
TUES. | 02-22-22 | OPINION
Despite 2022 just starting out, the United States has already begun their spree of oppressive laws and regulations for LGBTQ+ citizens as a continuation of 2021’s record of 25 homophobic laws, according to NBC News writer Matt Lavietes.
Lavietes wrote in a more recent NBC News article that nine anti-transgender laws have already been passed in states, such as Arizona, Alabama, Indiana, Kentucky, Oklahoma, New Hampshire and South Dakota. These laws have limited the rights of many transgender and non-binary youth in different aspects. Arizona was the first to meet on behalf of preventing transgender youth from fully being themselves.
According to Washington Blade writer Brody Levesque, on Jan. 6, 2022, a law was passed that prevented minors from getting testosterone or estrogen. Supporters of this law use the argument that if children are not allowed to smoke, drink or drive, then they shouldn’t be allowed to be put on puberty blockers. Accounts on Facebook have made this into a comic and titled it, “The Family Circus,” which is pretty transphobic on its own.
Monique Curet of Politifact tried to emphasize how letting your child go on puberty blockers causes severe permanent damage and is irreversible. However, according to St. Louis Children’s Hospital, these blockers delay changes to a young person’s masculine or feminine body, and they cause no “permanent” damage. They also don’t cause any harm with the worst side effects being a headache, fluctuating weight, and irregular menstrual cycles.
If a child decides that they want to stay the gender they were assigned at birth, they simply just stop taking blockers, and their puberty hormones will go back to normal. If they decide to transition, they can go on estrogen or testosterone, and it causes no physical trauma or confusion to the body.
Other physical rights have been taken, such as transgender youth not being able to participate in sports teams of their gender identity.
This is a topic that has been debated for quite some time with some transgender celebrities agreeing with Arizona’s argument of it being “unfair.” Transgender former-Olympian Caitlyn Jenner agrees that someone who is biologically male cannot participate in “female” sports because they have a step up over women athletes.
The argument seems fair, but it’s not often when you see a transgender athlete win over their cisgendered
Graphic by Liv Carpenter
teammates. Dr. Timothy Roberts at the University of Missouri-Kansas found that after two years of hormone therapy and taking testosterone or estrogen, transgender athletes only outperformed their cisgender teammates when it came to running by 12%, but they didn’t outperform them in any other way.
Gender Justice made a good point when they mentioned how there are some cisgendered women who are stronger than cisgendered men and vice versa. Your athletic ability is not determined by your biological sex because not just any man can, for example, lift weights and not just any woman can play volleyball.
Honestly, the idea that transgender athletes have an advantage because of their biological sex implies that all cisgender men have the same athletic abilities and all cisgender women have theirs. Everyone is built differently, and though it’s true that the biological build of a man is stronger than most cisgender women, its not stronger than all.
It truly does surprise me the amount of steps these politicians take just to not use different pronouns for people. At least for me — and for a lot of people — changing a few words is a lot easier than completely shunning someone’s identity.
In fact, I have known people who have gone as far as to call a transgender person an “it” instead of their preferred gender. They would rather call them a derogatory term and refer to them as an object than say “they, he, she” or any other word. To me, it actually sounds harder.
The amount of oppressive laws that take away rights from minority groups is starting to skyrocket. The amount of work put in to make us unequal is honestly so shocking, considering how "equal" we're supposed to be. People are furious about these laws because they want to be seen the same as everyone else. It really isn’t as hard as it’s put out to be. I’m hoping the amount of laws passed this year doesn’t surpass 2021’s record or even the 15 that 2015 brought us. Transgender youth should be able to express themselves freely.
