First of yes, I’ll make my veiws very clear. Transgender people are people too (woah discovery of the century right?), and anyone who says otherwise are probably dealing with their own feelings of negativity towards themselves. Transgender people, particularly Transgender Women (women who are biologically male), face a lot of discrimitation from society at large. So instead of making multiple debate articles, I’m combining multiple into one article.
Transgender Women in Sports
Before I started researching Jazz Jennings (look her up, she’s pretty cool) for a project, I was barely aware of this debate. I feel like through this reasearch my veiws have kind of changed, and I’ll explain why.
So basically, as you may know, in sports, men generally have the advantage after puberty because of the higher amounts of testosterone. Because of this, for a very long time, transgender women were not allowed to compete in womens sports. Even now, they cannot compete in competitive sports without taking hormone replacements. (I am torn about this last part, as not all athletes can afford hormone replacement therapy, but also I can see why it is seen as a competitive advantage.) As a young kid, I wasn’t super educated about the LGBTQ+ community until… well intermediate/middle school really, so if someone was to ask me if Transgender Women should be allowed to compete in competive sports, I probably would have had a very black and white veiw. Now that I see the bigger picture though, I say yes yes yes. Multiple studies show that transgender women don’t even have a competitive advantage after hormone replacement therapy!
The Bathroom Problem (Should Transgender Women be able to use Female bathrooms?)
Ah yes. The bathroom problem. If you know much about New Zealand politics, you may have heard about Winston Peters, the deputy Prime Minister at the time of writing. I am using his proposed legistlation (from 2023) as the opposition to my argument, so I can prove that Trans Women should be allowed to use the Female Bathrooms.
You may know he has become a “champion of cisgender women” by banning Transgender Women from Womens bathrooms (yet he voted to ban medical abortions, which is a real and significant problem for cisgender women, selective hearing much?). He has “announced a party policy to pass legislation prohibiting transgender women from accessing women’s public toilets and bathrooms.” (NZ Hearald, 25th of August, 2023).
This policy is frankly ridiculous, and is hidden behind the guise of so called “feminisim”. How are you supposed to prove you are a biological female? Produce ID? That would not work, and as a transgender woman you can change your gender to female on any form ID. The only way to uphold it, is to have camera’s in the bathrooms, which is a direct breach of someones human right to privacy.
Anyway, the only reason why Winston Peters wants to ban non-cis women from Womens Bathrooms, is because he perceives them as a threat to “real women” (biological women). There is no evidence to suggest this! If anything, cisgender people are a threat to transgender people, as transgender people aren’t going to verbally, sexually, or physically abuse eachother for being trans.
Transgender women should be allowed to use womens bathrooms because they are women, end of story.
… in conclusion
And finally in conclusion, yes, transgender women should have the right to use the bathroom and compete in sporting teams of their gender. What’s so hard to grasp about that?