To the editor: In a time when transgender persons are seeing basic rights comparable to documentation, entry to public life and healthcare, freedom from discrimination and bodily autonomy being viciously rolled again, each in varied states and on the federal degree, it’s merely jarring to learn Gov. Gavin Newsom being indignant about justified criticism as soon as once more (“Newsom says sharing his beliefs on trans athletes wasn’t ‘some grand design,’” April 1).
Quite a few households have needed to flee to states like ours to maintain their youngsters secure and are justifiably terrified now that there could be nowhere left to run. So it’s no marvel that they might be aghast on the governor of California having chummy conversations with among the architects of their persecution.
Rachel Wild, Oakland
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To the editor: The kerfuffle over transgender athletes in women’ or girls’s sports activities is absurd for a minimum of three causes. First, it’s a microscopically small downside nationwide. Second, it’s solely sports activities: Virtually by definition, there may be nothing actual at stake. And third, the principle argument in opposition to letting transgender athletes compete in women’ or girls’s sports activities is that they could in some instances have a bodily benefit. However that’s already the case in each sport: some contributors at all times have bodily benefits — larger, stronger, faster, extra naturally coordinated — over others.
The one distinction right here appears to be the rationale. Nobody is complaining that taller, stronger girls shouldn’t be allowed to play basketball as a result of it’s unfair to shorter, smaller girls — until they’re taller and stronger as a result of they’re transgender. So let’s be clear that the one cause this is a matter is prejudice in opposition to non-cisgendered folks — and the cynical political attraction to that prejudice.
Jeff Miller, Irvine
