Faefyx Collington is a British American author who writes for LGBTQ Nation about LGBTQ+ issues, politics, popular culture, and their intersection. They are also writing a book about incidental trans representation in media throughout history. They joined John and Jim on The Gaily Show to share their recent reporting on the EEOC abandoning discrimination cases against transgender people, the so-called “My Gender Dolls” controversy, and how anti-transgender policies and quickly become anti-women policies.
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EEOC Walks Away From Trans Discrimination Cases
According to Collington’s reporting, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has made a definitive decision to stop pursuing discrimination cases involving transgender workers — and the real-world consequences are already being felt by people like Flint Del Sol, a Southern California teacher who spent a decade building a reputation as a fierce advocate for queer students.
Del Sol taught in Southern California for about 10 years, building an extensive queer library in his classroom and documenting his work on TikTok. He was part of a student club focused on inclusivity and eventually authored Teach Like an Ally, a guide for educators looking to support LGBTQ+ students. He transitioned while teaching — in Southern California, as journalist Faefyx Collington noted, not exactly a conservative stronghold — but that didn’t stop Fox News from turning its sights on him.
“They complained about his TikToks. They claimed that his library was full of books about orgies and BDSM and sex parties,” Collington said. Among the books repeatedly targeted was This Book is Gay, which Collington noted “dares to talk about sex.” One of Del Sol’s TikToks drew a parallel between teaching kids about drag and teaching Shakespeare, pointing out that Romeo and Juliet opens with references to “taking maiden heads.”
The Fox News coverage led to a cascade of harassment. Angry letters poured into the school. There were threats of violence. A bomb threat was discovered when Del Sol arrived at his classroom to find people already scanning for explosives. The school’s response, Collington said, was to simply move him to a different classroom, “as if this isn’t a traumatic event that they’ve come across.” A district employee was later found going through Del Sol’s queer library and removing pro-LGBTQ+ books.
Del Sol eventually left the school district and filed a complaint with the EEOC. During the Biden administration, his case was assigned an investigator. Then Trump returned to office, and EEOC Chair Andrea Lucas — appointed during Trump’s first term and now operating under his executive orders — issued a directive that the agency would no longer pursue trans discrimination cases.
“Flint fully got a phone call from his investigator and said that we are not pursuing discrimination cases against trans people and that that move is coming from the top,” Collington said. “They’re not shuffling these cases to the bottom of the pile. They were not saying, ‘We’ll come to this later. It’s not a priority for us,’ or, ‘We’re not doing it under this administration.’ It’s just we’re wiping them off the books. There aren’t going to be the records to go back to this in any sort of efficient way even after Trump does leave office.”
There was one small silver lining: Del Sol asked the investigator to follow up in writing, which the investigator did, documenting that the decision was policy-driven and came from the top. Collington speculated that the investigator’s willingness to put it in writing may have been “that person’s way of fighting back against the system that they are stuck at being a part of now.”
The implications extend beyond Del Sol’s case. Under normal circumstances, the EEOC investigates complaints and, if it finds discrimination, issues a report that employees can use in court. Attorneys routinely ask whether a complainant has engaged with the EEOC before filing suit. Without that step, trans employees lose a critical tool for holding employers accountable. The Legal Accountability Center has filed a lawsuit seeking to have Lucas disbarred, Collington noted, though it “hasn’t really gone too far so far.”
“My Gender Dolls” Spark Right-Wing Outrage Over Minnesota Research Project
While trans workers face diminishing federal protections, a research project at the University of Minnesota has become the latest flashpoint in right-wing media’s campaign against transgender visibility — even though the project has nothing to do with classroom mandates and isn’t funded by state dollars.
Researchers at the university, including professor Diane Berg, have spent years developing “My Gender Dolls” — a set of highly diverse paper doll-style figures designed to help clinicians and educators talk with young children about gender identity. The dolls feature a wide range of skin tones, hairstyles, clothing, and cosmetics, and also include interchangeable internal reproductive systems and external genitalia to help children articulate feelings they may not have the language to express.
“When you’re talking to very young kids, sometimes they struggle to tell you they’re hungry,” Collington explained. “How are they going to tell you that their body isn’t right or they want to play with the other toys or this, that, and the other?”
The project is the product of years of collaboration between psychologists and artists, with prototypes tested in clinical settings. The team is now exploring commercialization, which Collington noted is “in the early days” and expected to launch this year.
Right-wing media outlets, however, have framed the project as an imminent classroom invasion. “Your kids are going to be forced to play with trans dolls, and it’s all funded by Tim Walz,” Collington said, summarizing the conservative narrative. “Which is not exactly the truth.”
The reality is far more mundane. The University of Minnesota, like all public universities, receives public funding. The Sexual and Gender Health Institute at the university operates on a research budget of approximately $1.4 million, largely funded through grants and donations. No state money is going toward commercialization, and clinicians and educators will have to purchase the dolls independently. Collington was blunt: “This isn’t being funded into classrooms.”
The outrage has spread internationally, reaching a council member from Australia’s Family First Party. Closer to home, Michelle Tafoya — who has raised the most money of all Republican primary candidates for a U.S. Senate seat in Minnesota this year — has been among the most vocal critics.
Collington pushed back on the idea that the dolls represent anything radical. Children learn about bodies and gender differences at early ages through sex education and literature. Many trans children, given the language to express themselves, know they are trans from a very young age. Collington referenced American Teenager by Nico Lang, which documents the stories of trans youth across America, noting that parents frequently recount their children expressing a consistent gender identity from age three onward.
From Trans Sports Bans to Rolling Back Women’s Rights
Perhaps the most disturbing trend in Collington’s reporting is the way attacks on trans rights are serving as a pipeline to broader assaults on women’s autonomy — a pattern now playing out through the work of Scott Yenor at the Heritage Foundation.
Yenor, who recently resigned from a position in Florida amid concerns about his views on women, is now affiliated with the Heritage Foundation — the think tank behind Project 2025. In late June, the Supreme Court ruled in West Virginia v. BPJ, upholding bans on trans youth participation in school sports. Within a week, Yenor published a piece arguing that if Title IX doesn’t protect trans kids, it shouldn’t protect women either.
“He wants to do away with the sex discrimination protections that are in there and say women don’t need equal access to sports,” Collington said. Yenor has argued that women don’t need access to competitive sports like soccer, suggesting instead that they should pursue activities he considers more naturally feminine — “like yoga and hiking.”
In his piece, Yenor cited Girl Scouts as the ideal model, praising what he described as “distinctly feminine virtues of service, grace, and character.” He wrote that moderate exercise supports fertility and mental well-being “far more reliably than does the high-intensity elite models of sport” — language that Collington identified as part of a broader Republican push toward traditional gender roles.
“That fertility line is the key point there really,” Collington said. “We’re seeing it more and more from Republicans. They think women should just be having babies all the time. There’s this trad wife push coming in. That’s what it’s all about.”
Collington situated Yenor’s arguments within a longer trajectory. “We’ve always said that the anti-trans movement isn’t about trans people. We’re the ones that get hurt by it, but it’s going to come for everyone else. It’s about bodily autonomy. It’s about the right to do various things. It’s the right to have some expression.” The pattern is already visible, Collington noted: whenever trans people are targeted in bathroom policy debates, cisgender women with short hair inevitably get caught in the crossfire, pulled out of restrooms by security.
Yenor’s piece leans heavily on the work of Simone de Beauvoir — but gets it wrong, according to Collington. LGBTQ Nation recently published a rebuttal from Meghan Burke, a Beauvoir scholar who “really sets the record straight in a very succinct way.”
The thread connecting these stories — from the EEOC abandoning trans workers, to manufactured panic over research dolls, to a Heritage Foundation fellow arguing women don’t deserve sports equality — is one Collington laid out plainly: “This isn’t about trans people. This is about how can we control women? How can we control people?”
Read more of Collington’s reporting at LGBTQ Nation, and connect with them at faefyxcollington.com.
