To the editor: When will progressives be taught to defuse the GOP’s final wedge subject of transphobia? Does anybody suppose that Franklin D. Roosevelt would have secured the presidency for Democrats by advocating for racial integration in skilled sports activities? Not an opportunity. (“Tensions brew over trans athletes at Riverside high school, as conservative protests grow,” Dec. 20)
After FDR died, President Truman issued the landmark 1948 government order that desegregated the armed forces. That auspicious transfer served to combine the bigger society, together with skilled sports activities, inside just a few years.
Had Democrats advocated for 3 separate sports activities competitors classes — for males, girls and transgender folks — they probably would have regained management of Congress and retained the presidency within the 2024 election. They’d have been ideally positioned to enact legal guidelines to guard transgender People.
Advocating for transgender folks is the proper factor to do. However within the sports activities world, the time is just not but ripe.
Edgar M. Martinez, Orcutt, Calif.
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To the editor: I’m a post-surgery trans particular person. Please entertain this opinion primarily based on expertise, if not logic alone.
The World Skilled Assn. for Transgender Well being, or WPATH, supplies a rigorous course of in its requirements for take care of transitioning by way of medical means. WPATH intends to guard trans folks from the potential hazard of starting their transition too quickly or when doing so is probably not of their finest pursuits.
Maybe the WPATH requirements could possibly be utilized (in California) to, as an illustration, boys who want to be a part of ladies’ sports activities groups or use girls’s altering amenities.
Hormone alternative remedy will nullify many male power benefits. It’s ludicrous {that a} boy would undergo hormone alternative remedy for the proper to make use of a girls’s restroom.
Whereas I don’t help further obstacles to folks dealing with an already troublesome course of, maybe kids needs to be checked out in a special mild.
Trish Kelly, Corona
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To the editor: We might guarantee equity by following boxing’s mannequin. Boxers compete inside their weight lessons. Sure, boxers are additionally sorted by intercourse, however that’s a special matter. Most of us don’t need to see males punching girls, no matter weight.
Let’s do the equal in different sports activities the place gender identification has turn out to be a problem. In swimming and working, for instance, athletes could possibly be categorised by muscle mass or no matter different traits are deemed related. An athlete’s gender identification wouldn’t matter.
In athletics, gender is only a proxy for the traits that really make a distinction. Let’s cast off the proxy and kind by the related traits.
Robert Silberg, Los Angeles
