Former Vice President Kamala Harris’s upcoming memoir, 107 Days, out Tuesday, arrives at a moment when transgender rights have become a central battleground in U.S. electoral politics. In it, Harris confronts not just her own record but the broader cultural storm swirling around trans athletes and the politics of fear.

According to Politico, Harris writes that she understands concerns from some parents and players about fairness in girls’ athletics, especially in contact sports where “biological factors such as muscle mass” may produce what some consider unfair advantages. She insists that these challenges “can be resolved with goodwill and common sense … without vilifying and demonizing children.”

Research shows transgender athletes make up an exceedingly small share of competition; NCAA President Charlie Baker testified in 2024 that there were fewer than 10 transgender student-athletes among more than half a million nationwide. Medical experts note that puberty blockers, often prescribed to transgender youth, suppress sex hormones and delay physical changes like voice deepening, body hair growth, or breast development, which can reduce or prevent physiological differences that critics cite as unfair. A 2022 review in the Journal of the Endocrine Society found that when transition-related care, including puberty suppression and hormone therapy, begins around puberty, measurable athletic advantages over cisgender peers largely diminish, while testosterone suppression in trans women has been shown to decrease muscle mass and strength over time.

Harris’s reflections extend beyond sports. According to Politico, she characterizes President Donald Trump’s rhetoric toward transgender people not simply as adversarial, but dangerous: “He was painting a bull’s-eye on their backs and putting them in peril.” She defends having told the American Civil Liberties Union during her 2019 presidential campaign that gender-affirming care should be provided to incarcerated and detained people if medically necessary, arguing that U.S. law requires that kind of care.

Harris grounds her commitment in identity and values. “This is a community with which I have a deep connection,” she writes, adding, “There was no way I was going to go against my very nature and turn on transgender people.”

Harris insisted in an interview with The Advocate in 2023 that attacks on abortion access, on trans rights, and on free speech in schools are not separate skirmishes but interconnected threats to bodily autonomy and dignity. She described her role in politics as one requiring empathy and courage, especially toward people forced by policy or prejudice to uproot their lives, or who are silenced under laws that erase or misrepresent them.

In 107 Days, she also opens up about internal campaign deliberations. Harris reveals that her first choice for running mate in 2024 was Pete Buttigieg. She writes, “I love Pete. I love working with Pete. He and his husband, Chasten, are friends,” but adds that combining a Black woman and an out gay man on the same ticket felt “too big of a risk,” even though she confesses “part of me wanted to say, Screw it, let’s just do it.” Ultimately, she selected Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a decision she describes as done “to our mutual sadness.”

The climate Harris writes in is one shaped by a torrent of transphobic ads unleashed by Trump’s campaign, especially in the final stretch of the 2024 election. These ads misrepresented Harris’s positions on trans rights, claiming she supports “biological men competing against our girls in sports,” and twisting her support for gender-affirming care, particularly for incarcerated people, into exaggerated or false claims.

Despite acknowledging that Trump’s messaging had political impact, the ad declaring “Kamala is for they/them. I am for you” was, in her words, a “winning message,” Harris insists it was no “knockout punch.”