If any American thought Republicans enforced single-sex spaces to protect women, let me end that misconception here. The Department of Education (DOE) opened a Title IX investigation into Smith College for admitting trans women and allowing them to use women’s dorms, bathrooms, and locker rooms. (This investigation persists despite the fact that Title IX does not regulate the admissions of private colleges nor require colleges to build sex-segregated facilities). A ruling against Smith would force the college to change its admissions criteria or lose federal funding. Democrats must wake up to the reality that the Trump administration’s so-called protection is a guise to regulate transgender identity into extinction.
The DOE claims that allowing transgender women entry into single-sex facilities and sports teams endangers women and challenges the fairness of their athletics. But at Smith, that “scary” future where “biological men” may enter women’s spaces arrived a decade ago and without incident. I should know — I am a student there. We use the restroom, shower, and brush our teeth next to trans women every day without thinking twice. Before Trump barred transgender athletes from playing as women in the NCAA, they changed, cheered and competed as equal members of their athletic teams. Smith is living proof that all women, regardless of sex at birth, can live and learn alongside each other.
Transgender women expand rather than undermine the “particular form of sorority and camaraderie” found at a women’s college. One trans woman hugged me on the anniversary of my brother’s death. Another inspired me to volunteer in my hometown. Another restored my soul with her music. I have braided their hair, borrowed their heels, and asked them for help with my homework. How could the Department of Education reasonably argue that chromosomes dictate camaraderie?
But a sex-based gender binary is exactly what Republicans are attempting to enforce at Smith. They never intended to settle for restricting trans women from single-sex facilities or sports teams. They want to dismantle the “legal and cultural belief that transgender people exist” and the concept of gender as a whole.
Attacking transgender women for their participation in sports first was not unintentional. Athletic performance is the only arena where physical differences from puberty could meaningfully persist after transition. The anti-trans activist and swimmer Riley Gaines proclaimed the “gender ideology movement is a house of cards, and… that sports issue… will be the card that makes all of it crumble.” Republicans fearmongered over trans-inclusive athletics to eke out public support for a society where individuals are defined by their sex assigned at birth.
But attending college is not a feat of peak athletic performance. In fact, nothing in daily life is. Trans women want to attend lectures. They want to trade makeup and gossip in a bathroom with the girls after a party. They want to live in the same dorms as their friends. (And yes, some trans women would like to be athletes but many reluctantly accept that graver questions about their identity are at stake right now). Such participation in student life does not rely on one’s biology at birth, but one’s identification with womanhood —which Smith’s admissions policy reflects. The sex binary this investigation enforces pointlessly rips trans women away from their communities and proves conservatives will not be satisfied until all Americans conform to their regressive sex and gender roles.
I know well-meaning individuals in my own family and town who might not want trans girls on their kid’s sports team or trans women in a women’s shelter. But the fight is not about these select settings anymore. Republicans already require some government identification documents to align with birth sex regardless of one’s gender in day to day life. This is the final showdown. This investigation and our response will determine whether transgender women can legally access any women’s spaces at all — their classrooms, dorms, scholarships. Essentially, the Trump administration is asking Smith whether trans women are women. My classmates and I wholeheartedly say yes. We need you to stand with us. The entire foundation of transgender rights is at stake.
Zoe Neil is a rising senior attending Smith College in Massachusetts.