It's tempting to see Ivanka as the "reasonable" voice of the current administration. Poised, pretty, and successful, she's devoted much of her time to assuring women that her father is a "feminist" and that she will use her influence to fight for women and children. Which is perhaps why one New York City mother wrote an open letter to her about her trans daughter.
Isabel Rose took to Medium to ask Ivanka Trump about her father's removing of an Obama-era Title IX guidance, which explicitly protected trans students from discrimination. Rose writes that she and Trump come from similar backgrounds: "we are both from prominent New York real estate families, we both attended private all-girls schools and went on to earn degrees from Ivy League colleges, and we both married smart Jewish men and now have young children."
Rose explains how from a young age, her child experienced distress due to her sex assigned at birth, and they discovered she was transgender. And she implores Ivanka, mother to mother, to think about what she would do if this was her child and the president had just made this call. "Like me, you would look at your ultra-feminine 8-year-old, standing on the street corner waiting for the school bus, her already-elegant head held high, pink bow quivering in the wind, and you would say to yourself, 'What on earth will my little princess do if someone forces her to go to the bathroom with the boys? She'll be mortified! She'll be bullied! She'll be scared.'"
The rescinding of the Title IX protection puts many trans students in immediate danger. Aside from the risk of violence, trans students have reported refusing to go to the bathroom at school because of fear and stress, which takes a toll on the body. As Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, told ELLE.com, "If a student can't use the right restroom at school, they can't go to school."
The problem is Ivanka Trump has time and again shown she's more concerned with aligning herself with power than actually advocating for women and children as she's claimed. Her child care plan gives the most benefit to wealthy, dual-income families, and she famously became flustered after Cosmopolitan.com asked her to clarify her father's maternity leave plan. Perhaps she could influence her father into protecting trans rights. But if her time in the White House is anything to go by, she'll protect herself first.
