Transmissions: The safety ruse

Things are a bit of a mess right now. President Donald Trump, apparently attempting to distance himself from Jeffrey Epstein’s underaged sex trafficking ring, has sent nuclear submarines toward Russia. He's also decided to avoid a disastrous jobs report that, in addition to his exorbitant tariff program, is certain to be ruinous to our economy.

His solution? Fire the person in charge of the jobs report, rather than actually improve the economy. Oh, and all of this is while Immigration and Customs Enforcement disappears citizens and others to foreign gulags and U.S.-built concentration camps. Wars and genocides reign, and about a dozen more disasters rage.

So, you can certainly be forgiven for perhaps missing a memorandum for all federal agencies issued by U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi at the end of July regarding matters of discrimination. While its primary goal seems to be once again attacking diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, it could not help itself but to also deeply erode trans rights along with it.

In section C, subsection 1 of this document, titled "What Constitutes Unlawful Segregation," we find this gem: https://www.justice.gov/ag/media/1409486/dl?inline

"While compelled segregation is generally impermissible," the memo reads, "failing to maintain sex-separated athletic competitions and intimate spaces can also violate federal law. Federally funded institutions that allow males, including those self-identifying as ‘women,’ to access single-sex spaces designed for females – such as bathrooms, showers, locker rooms, or dormitories – undermine the privacy, safety, and equal opportunity of women and girls. Likewise, permitting males to compete in women's athletic events almost invariably denies women equal opportunity by eroding competitive fairness. These policies risk creating a hostile environment under Title VII, particularly where they compromise women's privacy, safety, or professional standing, and can violate Title IX by denying women access to the full scope of sex-based protections in education."

This section concludes, "To ensure compliance with federal law and to safeguard the rights of women and girls, organizations should affirm sex-based boundaries rooted in biological differences."

This is, of course, the furthest that anti-trans sports and restroom bans have gotten thus far, effectively denying transgender people from participation in both.

I feel I need to give a little history. The right, smarting from its loss in the fight for marriage equality, decided that aiming at transgender people would be its best bet. Even as trans people had gained a lot of ground, they were still largely misunderstood and lagged behind the larger fight for gay and lesbian rights. In short, conservatives smelled blood in the water.

A victory in Texas in 2015, forcing the dismantling of the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance (HERO), succeeded in large part due to anti-trans bathroom panic. This spread to other states. Meanwhile, fights about "fairness in sports" largely played out against a singular win by Lia Thomas at the University of Pennsylvania, as well as non-trans athletes like Caster Semenya and Olympic gold medal boxer Imane Khelif.

These fights have been used to fuel hundreds of bills in states across the country, hatred and violence against trans and non-trans people alike, and, now, a blanket ban from the United States attorney general that could effectively prevent transgender people from a full public life.

 
You would think, after the years of battles over these issues, that there is a legitimate concern to be had. Clearly there is a large issue when it comes to trans women in women's sports, or even just accessing women's restrooms. Here's the thing, though, this is all built on unfounded and unproved fears.

As an aside, I also have to note that the issue is rarely, if ever, about trans men in men's sports or in men's restrooms. That should be a big clue that this has nothing to do with fairness and is not about protecting anyone's rights. It is a targeted campaign that, while it does affect transgender and nonbinary people of all stripes, is squarely aimed at transgender women most of all.

It should raise red flags that, when it comes to sports, there are so few names that can be brought up. Two of the three I named above, Semenya and Khelif, are not transgender women and both have rejected the label of intersex. Nevertheless, the right-wing media is perfectly happy to conflate their cases with transgender women.

No, most of the time this is simply preventing young trans kids from participating with their peers on the playing field, in games that don't offer any prizes. Even the case of a volleyball player at San Jose State University who happened to be a trans woman became the cause célèbre for a hot minute, if only for the very novelty of her presence. (The player, Blaire Fleming, came out as trans in a New York Times magazine article in April, after the college volleyball season had ended.) https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/20/magazine/trans-athletes-women-college-sports.html

There's a misdirect that is used in both sports and restroom cases, and which appears in the attorney general's memo, which I feel sums this up well. Men – or to use Bondi’s language, males – are equated with trans women, with an assumption that we are only in women’s spaces to prevent some from experiencing safety and equal opportunity.

Let me make this as clear as I can: trans women are not participating in women's sports to take anything from other women. Trans women are not using women's restrooms to make other women unsafe. We are women.

The goal of these bans is to deny the womanhood of trans women as well as, by extension, harming the rights of all trans and nonbinary people, as well as anyone – trans or not – who does not conform to gender expectations.

Like everything else going on, this, too, needs to be stood up against.

Gwen Smith just wants safety and equality. You'll find her at www.gwensmith.com