Policies that make room for transgender people in traditionally female or male spaces sow deep divisions among lawmakers and the voters they represent.
For those who support more inclusion, normalizing transgender people into the fabric of civil rights should come without question.
For those against, that same inclusion erases protections adopted for women – like separate locker rooms, bathrooms and sports leagues – based on scientifically acknowledged differences between the two sexes.
On Monday, March 31, Trans Day of Visibility was observed globally, aimed at raising awareness that non-binary and transgender people exist, and because they exist, advocates say, they deserve the same rights, privileges and protections as any other group.
“We need to be clear, there is no executive action that can change the law or the constitution,” said Sen. Amanda Cappelletti, D-Norristown, who is supporting a package of bills aimed at improving the legal process for name changes in the state. “There is no order and no law that will erase trans people from existence.”
The senator referred to a slew of presidential orders targeting trans people. On his first day in office, President Donald Trump signed an executive order that declared only two genders exist, “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.” He followed it up with another aimed at removing trans participants from athletics, “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports”.
Outside Sen. Katie Muth’s office stand a Progress Pride flag and a transgender flag flanking signs that say “Bans off our bodies” and “Democracy dies in dark money” along with an image of Pennsylvania overlaid by the Progress Pride flag. Muth represents a district that spans parts of three counties in southeastern Pennsylvania, and is among a bevy of Democrats prioritizing the issue amid intensifying public debate.
On X, right-wing media personality and former collegiate athlete Paula Scanlan posts an image of the office, captioned “I’m grateful for flags and posters so I know which office I should avoid.”
Scanlan was invited to the state capitol to support Senate Bill 9, an effort by Sen. Judy Ward, R-Altoona, to double down on the president’s executive order banning trans women from participating in women’s sports. The Senate chose to vote on the bill on Trans Day of Visibility to make a point to their political opponents.
Scanlan graduated from the University of Pennsylvania after studying engineering and swimming alongside Lia Thomas, a transgender woman who competed on the men’s team for three years before transitioning.
Scanlan left a promising career in technology to advocate for women’s sports and against transgenderism, which she does not believe is valid.
“I feel like I’m just doing what I’m meant to be doing and helping to protect women,” she said in an interview with The Center Square.
Scanlan said that her initial reservations around swimming with Thomas were about the physiological differences, like size and muscle mass that, in many cases, contribute to men having faster swim times than most women are able to achieve.
It is this particular element of the debate around trans athletes that has made an impact on sports governing bodies like the NCAA and received support from many Americans on both sides of the aisle concerned about men’s physical advantages.
However, the conversation rarely stops there. What Scanlan said quickly became more troubling to her was sharing a locker room and having to undress around someone with male genitalia. She noted that her experience as a sexual assault survivor made the situation especially difficult on an emotional level.
When asked if Thomas ever behaved in a way that was threatening to Scanlan and her teammates beyond the discomfort they felt sharing a vulnerable space, the answer was no. All affronts seemed to be in Thomas’s disregard for Scanlan and other swimmers’ feelings about the matter.
“In general, he took no respect to the fact that we were uncomfortable,” said Scanlan. “When we tried to raise these concerns, it was very much ‘You are the problem.’ We were the hateful people. We were the ones who were problematic.”
The exchange highlighted two crucial facets of the conversation around transgender identities. The first is the association of transgenderism with sexual deviance. Transgender women, specifically, are frequently the target of laws prohibiting them from entering women’s spaces under the concern that they are, in fact, men who could be using the identity to take advantage of women.
Asked about whether there should be a stronger focus, then, on male behavior, Scanlan said, “We have separate locker rooms for a reason, and that’s what this is about. This is not about men in total or society.”
For trans advocates like Lex Horwitz, LGBTQ+ educator, consultant, and public speaker, this way of thinking does a disservice to both trans women and cisgender boys. Cisgender describes people who identify as the sex they were assigned at birth.
“We can’t be using cis men as a proxy for trans women,” said Horwitz. “If we want all our kids to be strong, independent, and compassionate, why are we socializing boys differently from girls?”
By the numbers, men are responsible for 99% of sexual assaults, including most of the pervasive sexual abuse of youth athletes by coaches, trainers, and even doctors. Transgender people, on the other hand, are over four times more likely than cisgender people to experience violence, including rape and sexual assault, according to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law.
The second facet of the conversation worth illuminating is that many who argue against trans inclusion cite being bullied, chastised, or otherwise ostracized by the left. Weariness of political correctness and the exhausting cycle of cancel culture has been one major factor in the popularity of political firebrands like the president, known for “telling it like it is” and riling up his opponents.
Scanlan says she’s “received more hostile comments than you can possibly imagine.” She’s been called ugly, disgusting, told to commit suicide, and lost friends due to the stance she’s taken on women’s sports.
“I think that’s just part of being human,” she said.
To that end, Scanlan certainly takes her shots as well as receiving them. A brief Internet search reveals her speaking in interviews about the size of Thomas’s genitalia and mocking the transgender former Pennsylvania Secretary of Health, Rachel Levine as “the most beautiful woman alive” followed up by a “Happy April Fool’s Day!”
Young America’s Foundation, for whom Scanlan works, boasts that they’ve found “the most pathetic leftists” and features her reacting to videos in which she suggests that the children of LGBTQ people should be “rehomed.”
For transgender people, however, there’s a strong distinction to be made between Scanlan receiving retaliation for her political stances and transgender people being bullied for their existence.
“There’s a difference between an identity that makes you who you are and a belief that you hold,” said Lex Horwitz, “My identity is not up for debate.”
That’s not how everyone sees it. In February, Trump signed another executive order entitled “Eradicating Anti-Christian Bias” in direct opposition to Trans Day of Visibility, which fell on Easter Sunday last year. The move reflected a sizable chorus of Americans who believe that diversity, equity and inclusion represent both discrimination and a threat to Christian religious beliefs.
Pastor Angie Chelton of Pilgrims Mennonite Church in the town of Akron outside Lancaster insists that just the opposite is true. She spoke lovingly of her own trans children at the Capitol on Monday, “made in God’s image.”
“God doesn’t make mistakes,” said Chelton to roars of applause. The phrase, like so many, is one frequently wielded on both sides of the gender divide.
