It is simply impossible to keep up with the barrage of anti LGBTQ+ news coming out of the Trump Administration. Upon taking office, Trump wasted no time signing executive orders to hurt as many marginalized people as possible.
On Inauguration Day, Trump signed an executive order called “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism And Restoring Biological Truth To The Federal Government,” the purpose of which was to declare that there are only two genders and therefore transgender people cannot and do not exist.
A couple of things: Trump is not a wizard. He cannot Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo trans and nonbinary people out of existence with the stroke of his giant Sharpie marker. Trans and nonbinary people exist, have always existed, and will continue to exist.
Also, let’s talk about the word “extremism” in this order’s title. The mere existence of trans people and the recognition that they are human is not extremist. But using your first day as the president to sign an order with the specific intent to demonize a very specific and relatively small group of people? Using the same kind of logic that a toddler uses when he covers his eyes while playing hide-and-seek and thinks that no one can see him? That’s extremism.
Also, if you read the order, it is clear how incredibly stupid the people who wrote it are (because let’s face it, Trump doesn’t write stuff himself). The order declares that sex, which is “not a synonym for and does not include the concept of ‘gender identity,’” is determined “at conception.”
Except it’s not. “We refer to conception as fertilization and nobody is male or female at fertilization,” Dr. Eve Feinberg of the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine told NBC News.
In other words, NBC explains, “all fertilized eggs or embryos are filled with both male Y and female X chromosomes, and the gender doesn’t reveal itself until weeks later.”
Not that a complete lack of scientific or medical knowledge has ever stopped Trump — or any Republican, really — before. Republicans are proudly wrong about so many things besides transgender people. Climate change, abortion, public health, education, economics. The list goes on and on.
Then there’s the whole infantilization of women thing going on. This order is based on the assumption that women are helpless creatures who not only cannot recognize danger, but also cannot protect themselves from it. I, for one, do not need a big strong daddy to protect me from transgender people. Transgender people are not a danger to me. Statistically, the biggest danger to women is cisgender men, especially cisgender men with guns.
According to the Violence Policy Center, “More than 2,400 females were killed by males in 2022 and of these, 87.5 percent knew their killer. Guns were used in 66 percent of the attacks.”
Are Republicans doing anything about that? No. Of course not. They want women to be at the mercy of men and for guns to be even more readily available. That’s how you can tell that they don’t actually give a fuck about women.
The cruelty is, of course, the point.
“Executive orders and laws not only are about the practical implementation and mechanics of implementing what those laws and orders are seeking to do — they also are about a broader signal to the country about what and who is acceptable and what and who are not acceptable,” Imara Jones, CEO of TransLash Media, tells Time. “I think that the thing that these executive orders are doing is they are saying that in this country, trans people are personae non gratae. And so, consequently, it empowers individuals in authority to be able to exercise their discretion against trans people, if that’s what they want to do.”
Oh, they want to, all right. Republicans are obsessed with hurting trans people. And Black people. And women. And immigrants. And poor people. And Muslims. Anyone who isn’t a cisgender white man shouldn’t expect anything but grief from the Trump Administration. And that’s at best.
They are exceptionally scary times. I know that’s not helpful to say, because duh. But we are going to witness things we’d never thought we’d see in our lifetimes. Not in the United States, anyway. As I write this Secretary of Defense Pete “Sex Crimer” Hegseth is working to overhaul the military to “revive the warrior ethos” with “a focus on lethality,” he wrote in a message to the Pentagon in which he refers to service members as “warfighters.”
It is not at all comforting to know that Trump and the people who work for him see so many people in this country as enemies.