Women are constantly getting the unfair end of the deal when it comes to so-called “trans rights” in America and around the world. They are forced to deal with biological men invading their locker rooms, sports teams, prisons, and sororities. And if they protest, they are called transphobic and hateful. 

In January, President Donald Trump took an important step back towards reality, reaffirming in an executive order that the federal government will only recognize two sexes – male and female – as defined at birth. This order overruled several Biden-era policies, including a 2021 Transportation Security Administration (TSA) policy allowing officers to operate in accordance with their preferred “gender identity.” As a result of this Biden policy, biological men who identify as women were given the ability to perform physical security checks on women. 

The Trump administration has changed that. 

In response, Virginia TSA officer Danielle Mittereder, a trans-identified male, is suing the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees the TSA, for what he claims is an all-out ban on him performing security checks due to his transgender identity. 

But as a TSA spokesperson has pointed out, the Trump administration has not banned transgender individuals from performing security checks. It does, however, require that security checks be performed by individuals of the same sex as the passenger being patted down. 

Mittereder seems to think that if he cannot pat down women, no security check is worth performing at all. In fact, he believes this so strongly that he is prepared to sue the government, claiming an absolute “right” to pat down women. 

As any woman who’s had to undergo a security check knows, this is absurd. I’ve only been patted down once by airport security. A piece of jewelry in my pocket had set off the alarms. The process required intimate body parts to be touched over clothing. It was an embarrassing experience. Yet if the officer who touched me had been a man, even one pretending to be a woman, the situation would have gone from embarrassing to humiliating. 

I can’t help but think of the women who have suffered sexual trauma, who, under the Biden-era policies, could have been searched by a man on what should have been a regular travel day, forcing them to relive their trauma all over again. 

Indeed, Danielle Laurenti, a Massachusetts correctional officer, experienced just that thanks to a state law that allows transgender inmates to be treated in accordance with their “gender identity.” Laurenti, a survivor of sexual trauma, told IW Features she was forced to perform strip searches on trans-identified male inmates. 

“Every time I do one [a strip search on a male inmate], I pinch the inside of my arm just to stop myself from crying,” Laurenti said. “It’s the only way I can get through it.”

When Laurenti requested that she be exempted from this policy due to the “psychological distress” it was causing her, she said prison officials demoted her.

This picture is becoming far too common: a biological male who identifies as a woman and yet is not simply content to do that, claiming he must also be treated like a woman in every single respect—even if that would place women in danger, traumatize them, or violate their privacy. And the women who object end up paying the price.

When Mittereder claims it is his “civil right” to pat down other women, he isn’t thinking about the psychological distress he may be inflicting on the women he touches. Women’s rights are at best just an afterthought to the transgender lobby. 

Women like Laurenti, however, aren’t giving in. And thank goodness for it.