Dear editor:
The fact that your columnists and guest-columnists spew a firehose of anti-trans rhetoric, but no transperson has been allowed to rebut any of it, goes against the idea of Wyoming being the equality-state.
In her most recent column, published on December 22, 2024, Cassie Craven espouses "common-sense" in praising the Freedom Caucus' third attempt to pass the What Is A Woman Act. Coming from a practicing-attorney, Craven's column is ludicrously disingenuous and propagandistic.
It is beyond imagination to think that attorney Craven would go in front of a judge or jury, and attempt to dispute expert medical-testimony backed by hard scientific-evidence, with common-sense arguments. But that is exactly what she appears to be attempting in her column. Craven says, "My freedom of speech and constitutional rights do not end where your game of imagination begins."
There is no "game of imagination". Every transgender-person, who has gone through the gates and jumped through the hoops to get hormones-prescribed, and get their ID changed, has been evaluated by numerous medical-professionals who know more about the issue than Craven does, or politicians who push anti-trans legislation do.
Every major medical-association has filed amicus-briefs in support of gender-affirming care, in numerous court-cases, starting with Brandt v Rutledge.
There is a massive amount of evidence that gender is entirely distinct from birth-sex, most conclusively functional-MRI studies that show that gender-expression and sexual-expression occur in entirely different parts of the brain. This is also backed by the most-current neuroscience on brain-plasticity.
I have learned to fight fire with fire, and to fight shmoo with shmoo. So I am not going to try to use science to rebut Craven's shmoo. Here's two common-sense arguments to rebut her.
1) An earthworm is genetically-programmed to be an earthworm. It's not going to spout limbs and claim to be a crocodile. A crocodile is going to lay eggs or fertilize them, and eat anything it can swallow. Craven's argument wants to reduce human-beings to the same level as earthworms and crocodiles. But human-development is considerably more complicated. Virtually identical DNA produced Amadeus Mozart and Charles Manson, because of brain-plasticity. A human-being is comprised of what their brain learns, not what is programmed into their DNA.
2) The claim that the goal is to "protect" women and girls has no basis in fact. It has been black-letter law in Colorado since 2007, that access to gender-segregated facilities is determined by "innate sense of gender-identity". Across 15 years, in a state with ten-times Wyoming's population, there has never been so much as an accusation that a trans-person has assaulted anyone in such a facility.
This is no more about restrooms, than Jim Crow was about water-fountains.
Sincerely,
Gina Mae Douglas, Casper
