Blog 146: Trump Rejects Gender Ideology

Posted on 2025-02-28 by

David Rand

Publication Date: 2025-02-28

Immediately after taking power on January 20^th 2025, USA President Donald Trump issued numerous Executive Orders (EO), several of which deal with Gender Ideology.

EXECUTIVE ORDER: Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government, White House, USA, 2025-01-20.
EXECUTIVE ORDER: Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation, White House, USA, 2025-01-28.
EXECUTIVE ORDER: Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports, White House, USA, 2025-02-05.

Gender ideology (sometimes referred to as gender pseudoscience or Butlerian pseudoscience, in reference to philosopher Judith Butler) is strongly inspired by postmodernist philosophy. It maintains that biological sex is, well, not really biological at all, rather that it is fluid, changeable and even a social construct. Gender ideology also maintains that each individual has a gender identity, a purely subjective attribute, which may be different from his or her sex. Ideologues who support this theory often conflate sex (an objective biological attribute) and gender (which is indeed fluid because it is subjective), further confusing the situation.

Of course, the biological reality is that sex is strictly binary. The denial of the binarity of sex undermines the rights of women and homosexuals, both lesbians and gay men, and it does nothing to protect the rights of trans persons, despite what some activists claim. In fact, if sex were just a social construct, then what would be the point of transitioning from male to female or from female to male? What the denial of sex binarity does do, is facilitate the extremely damaging policy of self-identification, by which a person may “change” his/her sex (or gender) by a simple declaration. This policy is particularly harmful for women’s sports.

The first Trump EO above rejects gender ideology and affirms that sex as strictly binary. This is both correct and necessary. It also gives reasonable definitions of basic terms (which are often misused or confused by gender ideologues) such as “sex,” “woman,” “man,” and “gender identity.” For example, “woman” is correctly defined as an adult human female.

The second EO above restricts the provision of so-called “gender affirming care” (with the EO calls “chemical and surgical mutilation”) when the patient is a child (under 19 years of age). This is in line with similar decisions taken by several European countries in recent years. Until this EO, the USA was exceptional in allowing such controversial treatment for vulnerable minors. The EO also severely criticizes guidance from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) which, according to the EO, “lacks scientific integrity.” This is in agreement with the consensus among critics of gender ideology.

The third EO above bans men (including those who identify as trans women) from women’s sports, declaring that:

it is the policy of the United States to rescind all funds from educational programs that deprive women and girls of fair athletic opportunities, which results in the endangerment, humiliation, and silencing of women and girls and deprives them of privacy. It shall also be the policy of the United States to oppose male competitive participation in women’s sports more broadly, as a matter of safety, fairness, dignity, and truth.

Although these executive orders are basically good news, Trump issues his policies with all the subtlety of using a jackhammer to break a toothpick. The frequent use of EOs is in itself controversial. Furthermore, Trump began his term by rescinding some 80 executive orders and presidential memoranda issued by previous president Biden, such as EO 14075, “Advancing Equality for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and Intersex Individuals.” There is reason to rescind this order because it tends to conflate sexual orientation with other issues (and the mention of “Queer” individuals should be removed). But if rescinded, this order should be replaced by three new orders, dealing appropriately with (1) homosexuals (lesbians, gay men and bisexuals), (2) trans persons (with gender dysphoria) and (3) intersex persons (very rare and distinct from trans persons) in order to deal with each category appropriately. For example, trans rights must not be allowed to encroach upon women’s rights. By simply rescinding numerous EOs en bloc, Trump’s actions may very well leave some human rights insufficiently protected.

Both gender ideology and neoracism (subject of our next blog) are regressive, harmful ideologies and must be opposed. It is to the shame of Trump’s opponents that most of them not only failed to do so, but in fact actively promoted such nonsense, even demonizing anyone who dared to question their dogma. If they had done the right thing before the November 2024 US election, if they had distanced themselves from gender ideology and neoracism, the Trump victory might very well have been averted. Will they learn from their mistakes, or will they continue to support irrational, fashionable ideologies which make Trump look sane in comparison?