Argument Against Transgender Rights

After my first published staff editorial last issue, I was excited to write a column again. Transgender rights, my assignment, is an issue I take personally because it affects many people, including my loved ones. At first, I was intimidated to approach this topic after seeing the responses to Mark my Words. Of course, I understood that people may not be completely accepting of transgenderism, but I had not anticipated some of the rather disgusting remarks made by students at our own school. So, keeping in mind that these transphobic students could be reading my article, I made the primary goal to educate the audience about transgenderism while also explaining why transgender people deserve the rights they are asking for. Although I was irked

Credible statistics on transgender people, let alone teenagers, are hard to find as many are closeted, or in the case of hate crime/bullying, choose not to report incidents. However, personal testimonies, lawsuits and legal information were pretty easy to find. During the first conference with Julianne, we devised a clearer structure and discussed what points to turn into separate blurbs. Because I had a coherent outline, writing the first draft was not very difficult. One problem I found hard to fix was narrowing down the points to make in the article. Transgenderism, being a foreign concept to many, had many aspects, such as gender dysphoria, that needed defining. Julianne and I moved the bulk of explanation into the “Busting Myths” blurbs to simultaneously dispel common misconceptions and clarify the meaning of things that people may not know

Though there are many myths about transgender people, I narrowed it down to “Preferred pronouns are not important,” “Transgenderism is a recent trend,” and “All trans people physically transition.” The issue I faced with slashing these misconceptions was keeping the blurbs concise because if I was allowed to, I could write forever about them. Eventually, with strategic cutting, I was able to shorten my blurbs from their original 150 word average to fit the 60 word count by the fourth