Donald Trump Erases Transgender Identity
Executive order demands federal agencies only recognize a person's assigned sex at birth and pulls federal funding for pro-trans orgs.
On day one of his second term in office, President Donald Trump issued an executive order erasing all transgender identity from law.
Under the language of the executive order, the U.S. government will no longer recognize transgender identity as valid.
Instead, it will recognize only two sexes, male and female, which Trump has declared “not changeable” and “grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality.”
The order defines “male” and “female” according to biological characteristics and a person’s ability to reproduce.
Females are defined as those who, “at conception,” are biologically capable of producing “the large reproductive cell,” or eggs. Males defined as those who, “at conception,” are biologically capable of producing “the small reproductive cell,” or sperm.
The order also declares that the government will only recognize biological females as “women” and “girls,” and biological males as “men” and “boys.”
The order has a number of real-life ramifications for transgender individuals and federal agencies:
- All federal agencies must enforce laws recognizing only biological sex and preserving single-sex spaces.
- Transgender people will no longer be housed in prisons or single-sex shelters based on their gender identity, and will no longer be allowed to enter single-sex spaces that don’t match their assigned sex at birth.
- All new or renewed government-issued documents, including passports and visas, must bear the gender marker for a person’s assigned sex at birth.
- Federal employees’ personnel records will be changed to reflect their assigned sex at birth.
- Going forward, all government-issued forms will only ask about a person’s sex, not their gender identity.
- Entities receiving federal funds are prohibited from “promot[ing] gender ideology,” meaning they cannot recognize gender identity as valid or promote pro-transgender programs or initiatives.
- People who are skeptical of gender identity or committed to preserving sex-segregated spaces will be allowed to express those views, without retribution.
- The Bureau of Prisons will be forced to revise its policy regarding medical care for inmates to prohibit incarcerated transgender people from receiving hormones or surgical care that would assist them in a gender transition.
All federal agencies are expected to submit proof within the next 120 days showing that they have rescinded Biden-era policies and guidance, and have replaced them with guidance or policies that no longer recognize gender identity as legitimate.
LGBTQ groups balked at Trump’s order, which effectively erases transgender people from law by deadnaming them or forcing them to identify by their assigned sex at birth.
Outright International, a pro-LGBTQ advocacy group, condemned the order as a “blatant attack on transgender, nonbinary, and intersex individuals,” warning that the new restrictions would compromise trans individuals’ safety and place them at risk of violence or discrimination.
“People outside of the binary genders have existed in cultures around the world for thousands of years, including among many Indigenous American communities,” Maria Sjödin, the executive director of Outright International, said in a statement. “No Presidential order can erase them — it will just make their lives more precarious.”
Human Rights Campaign President Kelley Robinson also slammed the anti-transgender executive order.
“Our community has fought for decades to ensure that our relationships are respected at work, that our identities are accepted at school, and that our service is honored in the military,” Robinson said in a statement. “Any attack on our rights threatens the rights of any person who doesn’t fit into the narrow view of how they should look and act.”
The Gender Research Advisory Council + Education (GRACE), a transgender-led national advocacy organization, noted that transgender identity is not a recent fad, but something that has been documented for centuries, while also pointing out that the executive order makes no allowances for individuals born intersex, whose bodies don’t naturally conform to societal expectations of “biological sex.”
“The President mistakenly believes that transgender issues are what carried him to victory,” Alaina Kupec, the founder and president of GRACE and a Catholic, said in a statement. “In fact, transgender issues served as a distraction from the public’s focus on abortion and women’s right to choose, issues they feared due to the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
“Republicans worried about losing suburban women on the issue of abortion, so the creation of the transgender ‘bogeyman’ served to focus attention on issues for which they fabricated their own narrative, knowing the public would respond and the transgender community was too small and invisible to defend.”
Lambda Legal vowed to challenge the Trump administration’s executive orders in court.
“The impact of these executive actions will be devastating,” Lambda Legal CEO Kevin Jennings said in a statement, “stripping away health care access, weakening workplace protections from abuse, inviting exclusion and harassment of vulnerable school children, and giving a green light to discrimination throughout public life.”
“Donald Trump spent his first day back in the Oval Office seeking to both erase the existence of transgender people and curb government efforts to protect and support transgender people, as well as the wider LGBTQI+ community,” U.S. Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif.), chair of the Congressional Equality Caucus, said in a statement. “Make no mistake: these attacks on our community are part of a larger strategy by Republicans to use anti-LGBTQI+ attacks to distract Americans from the massive tax cuts they want to give to their billionaire buddies — cuts they are going to pay for by cutting Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.”
Keep up with the latest news important to you. Subscribe to Metro Weekly magazine for free.
Support Metro Weekly’s Journalism
These are challenging times for news organizations. And yet it’s crucial we stay active and provide vital resources and information to both our local readers and the world. So won’t you please take a moment and consider supporting Metro Weekly with a membership? For as little as $5 a month, you can help ensure Metro Weekly magazine and MetroWeekly.com remain free, viable resources as we provide the best, most diverse, culturally-resonant LGBTQ coverage in both the D.C. region and around the world. Memberships come with exclusive perks and discounts, your own personal digital delivery of each week’s magazine (and an archive), access to our Member's Lounge when it launches this fall, and exclusive members-only items like Metro Weekly Membership Mugs and Tote Bags! Check out all our membership levels here and please join us today!
You must be logged in to post a comment.