American President Donald Trump wasted no time in trying to fulfill a campaign promise of ending “gender ideology,” (i.e. the dehumanization of queer and trans people). Less than 12 hours after his inauguration, Trump signed an executive order titled “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.”
The missive directs federal agencies to apply a sex/gender binary as defined in its text. This directive will alter the way the federal government applies sex-based rights (such as Title IX protections), issues passports and other government IDs, and houses incarcerated people. This last change is particularly heinous as it explicitly directs the prison-industrial complex to move every trans woman in federal detention to a men’s carceral setting.
This brings us to the framing of the executive order to a protect “women’s rights.” Ultimately, it is a distraction tactic for a reactionary movement that knows its full-throated endorsement of abortion restrictions is unpopular. This Schlafly-esque reframing is just a way to rally right-leaning women around a pseudo-feminism.
Regardless, this executive order will have affect everyone who identifies as trans or as outside of the gender binary. The male/female binary literally is in the text, meaning that some right-wing ideologue actually tried to define the two alleged genders. The line they drew is incredibly sloppy:
Trump’s executive order defines someone’s sex/gender based on the production of a “reproductive cell,” i.e an egg or sperm (although those words are curiously absent). However, not everyone produces “reproductive cells,” known as gametes. Some normal physiological differences such as Klinefelter syndrome or primary ovarian insufficiency, result in infertility due to absent production of gametes.
Additionally, some trans people, especially transfemmes receiving hormone replacement therapy, don’t produce gametes. If someone (for any reason) does not produce gametes then they fall outside of the defined binary which destabilizes the entire idea of a dictated binary. As a result, Trump’s so-called binary gender schema is biologically and therefore legally meaningless — including its creepy focus on fertility/virility.
However, it is still (somehow) the law, so how will this false binary be enforced? According to the executive mandate, the only definitive test would be an intrusive procedure to survey “reproductive cells.” Will these procedures be required for all people when applying for a passport? Or at the start of a period of incarceration? Trump’s order does not address these possible futures. So, it will be up to Trump’s cabinet secretaries to decide on such remedies which will surely burden both cis and trans people.
Further, Trump’s order contains two additional definitions which have a propagandizing effect:
Here, gender identity is cast as a psychological delusion. According to Trump, gender identity is just something that queer people made up out of thin air — instead insight from our personal experiences. This definition signals that gender identities are not connected to “reality,” a glaringly false assertion. Queer people are sane regardless of their sexual and/or gender expression.
Second, Trump reduces expansive expressions of gender to an “ideology” which further denies their legitimacy and reframes the existence of trans people as a topic worthy of debate. If queerness is merely an ideology, then it can be debated out of existence through political triumph.
This is his critical error. Trans people can never be fully erased. We cannot simply disappear just because a suit told us to do so. His power over us is weak because our truth doesn’t need government verification (even though it certainly makes our lives easier) to be true.
Starting today, my hope for you is that you continue to feel joy and to emanate love for yourself and for others. It will not always be easy, but we deserve it. And with our luminous examples, we can together forge ahead into these dark times with unmistakable solidarity.