About a week ago, one of my friends texted me to ask if I wanted to go protest HB-11 with her. I had heard about how controversial this bill was, and as the friendly neighborhood POC political science major, I agreed to go. I had been reading a lot about similar bills, so to be a part of the change in Utah was really exciting for me.
House Bill 11 basically bans transgender women from playing sports. Governor Cox originally vetoed the bill, voicing concern for the trans kids of Utah. On the 25th of March (the day I am writing this), Congress met up to override the veto putting the bill in place. Other states have been putting transphobic bills into place too. In Idaho, a bill that criminalized gender-affirming healthcare was put forward. This basically means that if a doctor provided a trans person with gender-affirming care, they could be charged with a felony. Why was something as extreme as this put into place? Is this not discrimination?
I’m very fascinated with identity and what it means to people. If you take away a person’s identity and who they truly are, isn’t that discrimination? Isn’t it discouraging, unjust, unacceptable? These are our children that are being treated this way and it drives me insane. I realized that this is just the start of my journey to finding why identity is important to people.
I personally thought that this protest was enlightening. I cannot wait to experience and find out more about myself and other people around me. I feel the pain of the people that HB-11 directly affects. It created new thoughts and perspectives in my mind and brought up more research topics. This protest encouraged me to broaden my knowledge and I’m excited to find out more.