Last week a group called 2025 Defending Education filed a complaint with the Office of Civil Rights in the Department of Education causing the DOE to launch an investigation into Smith College’s policy of admitting transgender women. Like most, but not all, of the other 32 women’s colleges in the U.S., Smith considers for admission any applicant who identifies as a woman. Smith’s 10-year-old policy explicitly includes transgender and nonbinary women. The DOE is suggesting that Smith’s policies violate Title IX of the Civil Rights Act. Title IX, passed in 1972, prohibits “discrimination based on sex” in any education program or activity that receives federal financial assistance. However, there are certain exemptions that allow same-sex colleges to exist. Admitting transgender women, according to the DOE, jeopardizes Smith’s exemptions under Title IX.

In 2024, the Biden administration overhauled the Title IX regulations to explicitly expand the definition of “discrimination based on sex” to include sexual orientation and gender identity. However, in January 2025, the month that Trump took office, a federal judge vacated that rule concluding that the DOE had lacked the authority to expand the definition of sex.

Once in office, Trump immediately signed an executive order stating that the U.S. recognizes “two sexes, male and female,” and in February, he issued an executive order entitled “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government” which banned transgender women from participating in women’s sports. This was hardly a burning issue: In December 2024, the president of the NCAA testified before Congress that of the more than 500,000 NCAA athletes, he knew of fewer than 10 transgender student-athletes participating nationwide.

The court’s return to previous Title IX regulations together with Trump’s executive orders not only affect transgender athletes, but the prohibitions against sexual harassment included in Title IX no longer protect sexual orientation and gender identity. Moreover, in a further attack on transgender people, on April 6, 2026, the Trump administration terminated six civil rights resolution agreements with educational institutions that had been settled to protect transgender students from discrimination. Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Kimberly Richey stated that the action was intended to remove “unlawful burdens” imposed by previous administrations’ “radical transgender agenda.”

One wonders if the administration understands the people they affect. Clarification of LGBTQ categories is perhaps in order.

Cis-gender means to identify with the gender you were assigned to at birth.

Lesbian, woman who finds sexual and emotional satisfaction from a woman.

Gay, a man who finds sexual and emotional satisfaction from a man.

Bi-sexual, a person who can find sexual and emotional satisfaction from either sex.

These are sexual orientation categories, not gender identify categories. These are somewhat different.

Non-binary, e.g., is a gender definition and refers to someone who feels neither male nor female

Trans-gender woman is a woman who, assigned a male gender at birth, feels more comfortable in a female identity.

Trans-gender man is a man who, assigned a female gender at birth, feels more comfortable in a male identity. These are not to be confused with transvestites who are cisgender men who like to dress in women’s clothing like J. Edgar Hoover famously did. Nor are they drag queens, men who dress up in dramatic and overstated women’s clothing and makeup usually for the sake of entertainment.

Queer is an umbrella term encompassing those whose sexual orientation or gender identification fall outside societal norms.

The LGBTQ community separates into many other categories — genderqueer, genderfluid, etc. — each with its own flag. But that gets pretty confusing.

Our own child is a transgender man, and without going into his full story, some of which was posted here (“Feed the Monster,” 10/21/2022;  “Toy Retreat, 10/8/2021; “Dinner with Mom and Dad, 12/20/2021; “Clothes Make the Man-Child, 1/14/2022; and “Non-Binary Tennis, 8/31/2022), I can tell you that becoming transgender is not a matter of waking up one day and deciding to change one’s gender. The son knew from the time he was a toddler that he didn’t somehow belong in his “assigned” female gender, but it was not until he was in his 30’s did he know enough about his own feelings and his options to act on them. It was then and only then that he had surgery to remove his breasts, ovaries, and uterus and begin taking testosterone.

Not everyone takes this seemingly drastic step. Some people, say girls, who feel as though their assigned birth gender doesn’t fit them, simply start wearing men’s clothes, change their name and start calling themselves “he” instead of “she.” Some take puberty blockers like Lupron or add testosterone later in life. That seems to be enough for them, and they live as men for the remainder of their lives.

But what about their sexual orientation? This starts to get complicated. Transgender women may date cisgender men, transgender men, cisgender women and transgender women. It all depends on them and their sexual preferences. Transgender men, like the son, are more likely to choose a woman as a partner, either a cisgender or a transgender woman. Whomever they choose, they want to stay together, start families together, and love each other.

All of this scares a lot of us. It’s unusual. It’s not the norm. In fact, it is unusual. Fewer than 3 million people over the age of 13 identify as transgender in the U.S. This is less than 1% of the population. Adults over 18 account for slightly over 2 million. This is not very many people.

Things become somewhat silly when people talk about transgender women in women’s bathrooms. The question arises: should people be allowed to use the bathroom that comports with their gender identity? Fifteen states say no, they must use the bathroom of the gender that was assigned to them at birth. Three states, Florida, Kansas and Utah, carry misdemeanor trespass penalties for using the “wrong” bathroom, but no state has penalties as harsh as those of Idaho which carries a felony conviction of a 5-year prison sentence for a second violation. These prohibitions become unreasonable when a transgender man, say, who looks all the world like a man, is required to use a woman’s bathroom.  Should he have to endure the embarrassment of walking into a woman’s bathroom? Should the son be required to go into a woman’s bathroom? Should Sarah McBride, a transgender Congresswoman from Delaware, be required to go into a man’s bathroom? Her colleagues in Congress have said that she is not allowed in women’s bathrooms in the Capitol building. Whose civil rights are violated here? 

In closing, we will await what happens in the Smith College case. Will Smith stick to their guns and continue to allow transgender women admission? Will it then lose all of its considerable federal funding? What will this mean for other women’s colleges? We’ll just have to wait and see.