By Marcelina Horrillo Husillos, Journalist and Correspondent at The European Business Review
On his first day back in office, President Donald Trump signed more than 200 of executive actions, of which, one was an executive order proclaiming that the U.S. government will recognize only two sexes, for ending “radical and wasteful” diversity, equity and inclusion programs inside federal agencies.
In 2020, the Supreme Court issued a 6-3 ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County affirming that discrimination against someone because they are LGBTQ is sex discrimination under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Justice Neil Gorsuch. With the “two sexes” new order, Trump’s moves to scrap many diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies inside the federal government”, cutting funding to DEI programmes across all agencies and including a review of offices renamed because of DEI initiatives.
Several large US companies have ended or scaled back their DEI programmes since Trump was elected, including McDonald’s, Walmart and Facebook parent company Meta. Others, like Apple and retailers Target and Costco, publicly defended their existing programmes.
The controversial order asserts a new legal definition of sex that strips federal recognition of the gender identity of some 1.6 million trans and nonbinary Americans, and directly contradicts a number of existing laws and recent court rulings.
The “two sexes” order impact
Sex and gender are not always the same thing. Sex generally refers to a person’s anatomy, whereas gender has to do with a person’s social and personal identity and may differ from their assigned sex at birth.
Trump’s ‘two sexes’ executive order requires that the federal government use the term “sex” instead of “gender,” and directs the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security to “require that government-issued identification documents, including passports, visas, and Global Entry cards, accurately reflect the holder’s sex. “Americans have been able to select “X” on their passports since April 2022 under former President Joe Biden. The new gender order states that it will “defend women’s rights and protect freedom of conscience by using clear and accurate language and policies that recognize women are biologically female, and men are biologically male.”
For decades, feminist legal scholars and women’s rights advocates have opposed efforts to define gender based strictly on biology. Recent state laws that use these definitions to discriminate against transgender people have resulted in invasive and traumatizing efforts to determine who “counts” as a man or as a woman, targeting youth who are even suspected of being transgender because they do not conform to sex stereotypes. The ‘two sexes’ order likewise ignores the existence of intersex people and others with variations in sex characteristics beyond the overly-simplistic definitions endorsed.
Under the Biden Administration, citizens could update their gender markers to reflect their gender identity in a process. In 2022, the Biden Administration rolled out an “X” gender marker for nonbinary, intersex, or gender nonconforming people. Trump’s executive order denies the legal recognition of transgender and nonbinary people, barring them from updating their gender on federal documents, such as passports, visas, and Global Entry cards. The executive order does not impact state policies or most state identification documents, but it could generate issues when it comes to applications where two forms of IDs are necessary, such as applying to loans, employment, or housing.
A peer-reviewed study found that when states pass anti-transgender laws—with policies like bathroom bans, which bar trans students from using the bathroom that matches their gender identity, or challenges to gender marker updates, which make it more difficult for trans people to have their accurate gender on state IDs—suicide attempts among trans and nonbinary youth ages 13 to 17 increased from 7% to 72%.
Some immediate impacts of the gender order will likely be felt by the more than 2,000 transgender people currently held in federal custody. The order specifically calls on the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to ignore the guidelines of the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) and enforce a blanket policy forcing transgender women into men’s prisons and detention centers against their will. This puts them at a severely heightened risk of sexual assault and abuse by other incarcerated persons and prison staff. The order also mandates that BOP withdraw critical health care from trans people in federal prison.
The Transgender Scapegoat
Although transgender people make up less than 1% of the adult U.S. population, anti-transgender politicians spent more than $215 million on ads scapegoating trans people and promoting a Project 2025 agenda that threatens to rollback reproductive freedom and punish people for departing from traditional gender roles.
A recent ABC News report found that nearly a third of recent campaign funds — or $21 million, according to the report — for television advertising has been spent on anti-trans messaging from the Trump campaign and various conservative political groups. The independent journalist collective the Bulwark pushed the total even higher — to $40 million poured into anti-trans advertising within the last five weeks. The ads, paid for by the Trump campaign, use a litany of anti-trans coding. Ground Media found that while the negative messaging didn’t change viewers’ minds, it did significantly increase viewers’ negativity about trans and nonbinary people across all demographics. In other words, these ads help to reinforce the idea of maintaining the stigma which reinforces the ongoing culture war against queer and trans people. In this case, even if Harris had won the election, marginalized communities in red states will still be under threat from Trump supporters and from growing legal restrictions on those regions.
Transphobia promotes the idea that trans is a thread to the nuclear family and traditional values, while often hides a broader ideology of exclusion, scarcity and deprivation. Trans people are by far more victims of violence and hate crime than no trans (cisgender) people, yet half of these aggressions are not reported to police.
Gender’s dysphoria controversy
A recent analysis of GP records in the UK has found that the number of children presenting with gender dysphoria in the country has risen 50-fold in a decade. This analysis found that more than 10,000 people under the age of 18 identified as transgender or struggling with their gender identity in the UK. Also, a survey from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that 3.3% of U.S. high school students identified as transgender in 2023, with another 2.2% identified as questioning.
Gender-affirming care (GAC) is a model of care which includes a spectrum of “medical, surgical, mental health, and non-medical services for transgender and nonbinary people” aimed at affirming and supporting an individual’s gender identity. Gender affirmation is highly individualized, not all trans people seek the same types of gender affirming care or services and some people choose not to use medical services as a part of their transition. An analysis by the Reuters news agency and health technology company Komodo Health found that 282 minors with a prior diagnosis of gender dysphoria underwent mastectomies in 2021. About 4,230 minors received cross-sex hormones and fewer than 1,400 received puberty blockers that year.
In a Gallup poll last year, 61 percent of Americans said they opposed laws banning psychological support, hormonal treatments, and medical surgeries for minors, compared with 36 percent in favour. The Trump administration’s executive order directs agencies to end their reliance on guidance from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), announcing that the US, as a matter of federal policy, will not “fund, sponsor, promote, assist, or support” what are commonly known as gender-affirming care procedures (Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation). Under the President’s order, the Department of Health and Human Services must take “all appropriate actions” to halt gender-affirming care under Medicare, Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act, and publish a review of best practices for promoting the health of youth with gender dysphoria and “other identity-based confusion” within 90 days.
At least 26 US states have passed laws or policies limiting minors’ access to gender-affirming care; 17 states are facing lawsuits challenging their laws/policies limiting youth access to GAC, and 24 states impose professional or legal penalties on health care practitioners providing minors with GAC.
A study published in psychiatrist.com has shown that a significantly higher proportion of patients with gender dysphoria had a primary diagnosis of depressive disorders (82% vs 75.2% in those without gender dysphoria), included anxiety disorders (63.6%), PTSD (28.2%), and neurodevelopmental disorders (27.4%), and there existed a statistically significant difference when compared with non–gender dysphoria patients.
Among hospitalized young people in the United States, 66% of those with a gender dysphoria diagnosis were admitted for suicide attempts or self-harm in 2019, compared to 5% without gender dysphoria, according to a study published in The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health. The study looked at over 2 million instances of young people (6 to 20 years old) hospitalized for any reason and determined how many of those hospitalizations were related to suicide or self-harm attempts, for those with and those without a gender dysphoria diagnosis. Hospitalized young people with gender dysphoria had a higher prevalence of suicide attempts compared to those without gender dysphoria in both 2016 (36% versus 5%) and 2019 (55% versus 4%). Similarly, prevalence of self-harm was higher in hospitalized young people with gender dysphoria in both years (13% versus 1% in 2016 and 15% versus 1% in 2019). This study is the first to use a large nationally representative inpatient database to understand the relationship between gender dysphoria and attempted suicide and self-harm, but talks about the connection between suicide and gender dysphoria are being strongly intensely argued.
Conclusion
Scapegoating LGBTI minorities and Gender roles has become a tactic applied by politicians posing as defenders of so-called “traditional values” to strengthen their base and gain or stay in power. In addition to mobilising certain categories of voters, the exploitation of societal homo/transphobia has proven a convenient way to divert public attention away from government failure to address pressing social issues and rising inequalities and broader attacks under way on human rights and democracy.
Moralist public debate promoted by politicians and opinion-makers is assured to take a prominent role within the public opinion landscape, as it ensures controversy and drags artificially inflicted pressure on people, who feel as if they have to take strong views in a side or in another. Its aim is to create controversy that leads to polarization, to confronted views, and to living under ongoing fear. The influence of the anti-gender movements in politics is increasing. Some politicians are not hiding their affiliation and others may seek convenient alliances because the issues raised are known to attract votes and distract attention from real problems.
For some years now, there have been reports about the expansion of these increasingly organised, transnational and well-funded movements, made-up of religious extremists and ultra-conservative organisations. The anti-gender movements call into question the concept of gender, and whether it is a protected category in the human rights framework, promoting an ultra-conservative – no longer realistic at present – view of the family, sexuality and women’s role in society.
Toxic anti-gender rhetoric is a costly strategy which seeks to maintain stigmatisation and undermines inclusion and social cohesion in general.
The President of the European Commission, when announcing the LGBTIQ Equality Strategy 2020-2025, sent a powerful message in favour of inclusion and diversity by stating that “being yourself is not your ideology. It’s your identity”.
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