“Have you had your period yet?” This is a question commonly asked on physical evaluation forms that can be opted out of if the female athlete chooses not to answer. This section is not mandatory due to the 4th Amendment of the US Constitution and the right to withhold said information due to personal reasons. Even with this right, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is under fire after recent talks of him wanting to make the section mandatory began to circulate. As a female myself, and as a human, I believe that this proposition is unjust and an abuse of power. No one, especially a male governor, should enforce athletes giving up personal information like when they had their period simply to justify the underlying transphobia that is taking place.

   This isn’t solely a matter of knowing about a woman’s menstruation schedule; this is about trans people and their right to participate in sports as the gender they identify as. DeSantis is no quiet person when it comes to the talk of the trans community. Recently, he has been asking colleges to complete a survey to assess the health of any students that have had “gender dysphoria.” He does this with the intent to examine and eliminate funding that may not be academically beneficial.

   This is only one of the ways that he is gradually attempting to put his beliefs, that aren’t necessarily unbiased and good for the people, into effect. Women shouldn’t have to clarify themselves on the basis of identifying themselves as a binary female or not. We do not ask men to do this; the government couldn’t care less about when men started thinking of women more as producers than humans or anything along those lines. This is unfair and unconstitutional. 

  Women everyday are on the brink of losing their basic rights. We saw it in the overturning of Roe v. Wade months ago, and now with DeSantis thinking of implementing such an absurd law, many other copycat states will soon follow. This is just the beginning of something more. Rather than evolving as a society that respects other human beings, we are starting to regress, and it is causing a rift of trust between the government and the people. No singular person should decide what information should be shared or not. Women aren’t experiments waiting to be constantly tested and exploited, and this whole situation proves that whether binary or non binary, women are not treated with equal respect.