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President Donald Trump The wave of executive orders he signed on his first day in the White House is filled with illegal and unconstitutional demands. The order to exterminate trans and gender non-conforming people is no exception, and has the added distinction of being unscientific nonsense.
This is one A strange documentBinary gender classification is based on a pseudo-scientific definition that would be impossible to apply to characters in everyday life. This order will not withstand scientific scrutiny or legal challenge, but it is not designed to. This, like most of Trump’s illegal executive orders, is a political speech act intended to instill fear, license discrimination, and make life materially difficult for disadvantaged communities.
The text is worth investigating, however, insofar as it demonstrates the Trump administration’s brute-force approach to pushing trans people out of public life, including vaguely pro-natalist rhetoric and claims that That it is “women’s defense”.
In the present Preferred dictionary Of Anti-trans Campaigners, long eager to point to something in the science that grounds their delusional denial of trans existence, said in the executive order, “It is the policy of the United States to Recognize the two sexes, male and female. and that “‘gender’ is not synonymous with and does not include the concept of ‘gender identity’.”
The commandment then defines “woman” and “man” as follows:
“‘Female’ means, at conception, belonging to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell. . . . ‘Male’ means a person who, at the time of conception, belongs to the sex that produces the small reproductive cell.” produces
Commentators were quick to note that by including “the time of conception” the order adds to the concept of fetal personhood – a nod to the fact that attacks on gender non-conformity are part and parcel of a pro-natalist agenda. which requires attacks on all reproductive organs. Independence It is no accident that the definitions of “woman” and “man” focus only on the reproductive function. The definition is also meaningless. At the time of conception, embryos are not sexually differentiated. And at the time of conception, the embryo is not producing reproductive cells, or gametes, either large or small.
But the definition doesn’t need to make scientific or practical sense to satisfy gender conformity fanatics. As this language has now found its way into Trump’s executive order, it is important to emphasize the profound intellectual weakness of such a definition.
Anti-trans ideologues gloss over the language of gametes because their previous reliance on chromosomes—XX and XY—didn’t serve the anti-trans rhetoric they wanted. There were many examples outside the chromosomal binary, such as intersex mutations, to contend with. Gametes seem to do the trick for transphobes who demand that gender be treated as immutable—something of the body that cannot be changed—and more strictly binary. Secondary sex characteristics such as breasts, body hair, hormone levels, and genitalia are not as clearly divided between male and female as assigned at birth. Importantly, these are also sexual traits that trans people can actually acquire.
Transphobes thus treat gametes, or reproductive cells, as some kind of definitional gotcha. It is not.
First, not everyone produces reproductive cells. There are many cis women who do not produce large reproductive cells, or ova. When this is pointed out, the typical transphobic response is that these women are abnormal, and that these women will do If it weren’t for some kind of glitch.
This makes it clear that the anti-biological realist trans claim must appeal to an imaginary biological world, in which all bodies evolve in precisely predetermined ways – and those ways are designed to reproduce. This is an inherently conservative, indeed religious, view of physical function and predestination. In the real world, though, this gamete definition would discount a good number of people who transphobes themselves would classify as “feminine” or “feminine.” Anti-trans bigots have always had a clear view of who they would like to exclude from the category of woman, but the distinction has never been based on an observation of which bodies do or do not produce large reproductive cells.
It’s telling that anti-trans campaigners must continue to find new language to push an exclusionary binary, when science fails to draw the clean line between men and women they so desire.
It gets worse still, philosophically, for transphobes. When they reduce the meaning of the word “female” to “woman”—defined by gametes—they must admit that in the real world, they cannot be sure that they get it right. are used properly. Under their terms, whenever they use the word “woman,” they can incorrectly apply it to someone who doesn’t produce ova—which they claim, if we’re to define them. , then it should be excluded from the woman.
This definition of “woman” became available only after Carl Ernst von Baer discovered the mammalian ovary in 1827. Since we cannot tell whether someone’s body produces large gametes, except in medical situations, identifying someone as a “large reproductive cell maker” cannot be a definition of a “woman.” That’s just not how science or language works. And for those of us not caught up in the silly game of finding an ideally trans-exclusionary, cis-inclusionary definition of “woman,” none of this is a problem. We can continue to use our words collectively as it makes sense to do so — such as referring to trans women as women.
When it comes to government, we can be sure that federal agencies, upon receiving Trump’s executive order, will not launch a full system of gamete checks. If implemented, this order would work like all discriminatory policies: people would be targeted if they fell outside a norm, defined by white, cis heteronormativity. The definition in the executive order, however, may further license the Republican drive toward surveillance, harassment, and, in some cases, aggressive sexual testing of individuals deemed to fall outside the norms of the gender binary — an idea heavily informed by is From racist notions of femininity, as we’ve seen in the field of professional athletics, and cynical attempts to exclude (almost always black) cis women are considered too masculine.
In recent years, laws proposed by Republicans Ohio, Kansas, New Jersey, Banning trans girls from sports, among other US states, opened the door to genital screening requirements for girls whose gender assigned at birth is questioned. Although such vetting policies have so far been halted, their mere suggestion speaks volumes for the lengths — compulsory sexualization — to which these fanatical sex-fascists are willing to go.
Trump’s executive order does not specifically call for sex testing. Rather, it treats its nonsensical, gamete-based definition as if it were an observation of common sense reality—which, again, it is not.
What the order expressly calls for is that federal agencies commit to trans-exclusion work wherever possible. The order directs the secretaries of State and Homeland Security to prevent trans people from choosing their gender on official government documents such as visas and passports — the page on the State Department’s website where people apply for these changes. Can already be removed. From 2021 onwards, individuals have also been able to select an “X” on their passport as a non-gender designation. It’s unclear what Trump’s order will mean for those passport holders. The intent, though, is clear: to scare trans people from moving freely in the world.
The order also tasked the incoming attorney general and secretary of homeland security with barring trans people from government-funded single-sex facilities that match their gender — so trans. Women would be moved to men’s prisons and asylums, for example. This would put trans people in immediate and grave physical danger. Trump also directed the Federal Bureau of Prisons to end funding for gender-affirming care for trans people in federal prisons, which could force trans people to medically transition. The order also states that federal funds will be removed from institutions found to “promote sexist ideology” — a direct threat to schools and universities that rely on federal funds.
In a sign of the order’s unconstitutionality, Trump also ordered the incoming attorney general to “issue directives to agencies to correct the agency’s abuse of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County (2020).” Correct gender-based discrimination in activities.” In Bostock, the Supreme Court rightly ruled that federal laws prohibiting discrimination based on sex apply to prohibitions against LGBTQ+ discrimination. Bostock clarified that discrimination based on gender identity counts as discrimination based on sex. The executive order appears to recognize that its demands are against Bostock, as court challenges will no doubt raise. Unfortunately, the far-right Supreme Court has already shown itself potentially willing to skirt around or even contradict its Bostock decision, for example, when it came to trans healthcare. When it comes to supporting Republican attacks.
It takes a lot of work, violence and coercion to enforce gender conformity.
We can point out the inherent lies and nonsense at the core of the executive order — and it’s important to do so, as anti-trans voices perpetuate the establishment’s liberal discourse. The American Civil Liberties Union, Lambda Legal, and other LGBTQ+ advocacy groups have pledged to challenge the executive order in the courts. But LGBTQ+ and reproductive freedoms — which, as he rightly believes, are inextricably linked — won’t be defended by disproving transphobes. The right-wing’s widespread attacks on trans existence aim to make trans people’s access to public life as unpleasant and difficult as possible. Our task, then, is to demonstrate unwavering solidarity and material support with nonconforming and gender nonconforming adults and children. As the Republican Party’s massive effort to legislate against people and police transfers makes clear, enforcing gender conformity requires a lot of work, violence, and coercion—it’s our job to make that effort happen. Tighten at every turn.
“There is no clear way to prepare for a world where those in power want you dead.” wrote Chase Strangio of the ACLU, the first trans attorney to argue the case before the Supreme Court. “But we have no choice but to be ready to fight and we will — in court, in the legislature, in our local communities.”
