We All Lose in Trump’s War Against Trans Americans
His cynical executive orders targeting trans people will harm important American institutions by taking away talent, energy, and the plain competence our country needs.
WE’RE SHOCKED. THE PRICE OF EGGS is going up, not down. The Russo-Ukraine War has not ended, nor is it likely to end anytime soon. Deporting every undocumented immigrant isn’t happening anytime soon.
On the other hand, in his first week back in office, Donald Trump has made good on a number of the campaign promises that resonate the most with the cultural grievances of his broad MAGA base. He has permitted immigration officers to start making arrests at schools and churches. He has “liberated” the January 6th “hostages,” who have been going home to buy guns (a newly legal option for some of the violent offenders whose felonies were wiped away by pardons) and get ready for a future call-up. And, having expended hundreds of millions in campaign advertisements, Trump has rolled out a program, beginning with executive orders, to legally erase the existence of transgender Americans.
“Erasure” is no longer the preserve of the politically hysterical. Trump’s ludicrously named “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government” executive order directs that “every agency and all Federal employees acting in an official capacity . . . shall use the term ‘sex’ and not ‘gender’ in all applicable Federal policies and documents.” Henceforth, “government-issued identification documents, including passports, visas, and Global Entry cards” must “reflect the holder’s sex,” meaning sex at “conception” (more about this below). It appears that current documents will remain valid through their expiration dates, but in states where anti-trans laws or executive orders have been enacted, like Florida, this maneuver has led to the cancellation of driver’s licenses and warnings that changed gender markers could be taken as legal fraud.
Perhaps the most pernicious, if predictable, part of Trump’s order covers “Privacy in Intimate Spaces.” This section leads with separating out trans inmates in prisons and detention facilities and prohibiting funding for gender-affirming care in these facilities, even for those who may have already transitioned and are receiving hormone therapy. Again, Florida has been a leader in this sort of cruel treatment; inmates have had their hair shorn, possessions confiscated, humiliatingly had their breasts measured to determine whether they could keep their bras, and been compelled to undergo a form of the discredited “conversion therapy.”
But the punch line in this section is that “agencies shall effectuate this policy by taking appropriate action to ensure that intimate spaces designated for women, girls, or females (or for men, boys, or males) are designated by sex and not [gender] identity.” Bathroom bills are back, and they’re now likely to be extended to all federal facilities, including museums, parks, airports, and perhaps even Veterans Affairs clinics and hospitals.
IT WOULD BE WRONG TO DISMISS these directives as simply performative. The enforcement mechanisms and procedures are unclear, but the potential for transphobic excess is apparent. Under Trump’s order, the attorney general “shall issue guidance to ensure the freedom to express the binary nature of sex and the right to single-sex spaces in workplaces and federally funded entities,” and in accordance with other departments and agencies, “shall prioritize investigations and litigation to enforce the rights and freedoms identified.” It may seem fantastic to conjure a Corps of Federal Bathroom Police, a Bureau of Locker Room Investigations, and federal district binary-sex prosecutors, but woe betide those who do not take Trump and his minions literally.
The “Erasure Order” was not the only anti-trans executive order of Day One. Trump rescinded one of the Biden administration’s own first-day orders—one allowing open transgender military service. While Trump’s order in itself does not discharge currently serving trans military members, it will serve as the basis for repealing the Biden policies that enabled the substantial growth in the numbers of transgender people in uniform. The Williams Institute at UCLA, the gold standard in such research, estimates that there are roughly 15,500 transgender members of the active and reserve components of the U.S. military. That may seem like a small fraction in a force of 2.1 million, but not only does that figure represent a larger proportion of the military population than would be consistent with the number of trans people in relation to the overall adult population of the United States—it also equals more than half of the annual recruiting goal of the Marine Corps. At a time when the armed forces struggle to bring in enough qualified recruits, issuing that many medical discharges—the path of least resistance for Trump—would exacerbate a persistent problem. The effect is further multiplied by the fact that trans service members tend to be mid-grade officers and NCOs, the front-line leaders who provide the professionalism that distinguishes the U.S. military.
BEYOND THE LEGAL AND POLICY PARTICULARS of the assault on transgender rights and ability to serve the country stands the far larger issue of the MAGA assault on America as an assimilationist society that contains multitudes. We do not encourage bullies; we face them down. Despite the supposed “social contagion” of trans-identifying youth, the estimates of the overall trans population remain small, at about 0.6 percent of Americans age 13 or older, and the anti-trans claims about “rapid onset gender dysphoria” among young girls and the supposed prevalence of “detransitioners” have been debunked.
Thus it is particularly dispiriting to watch Democrats truckle to Trump on trans issues. As on immigration, spinelessness is becoming congenital. Massachusetts Rep. Seth Moulton received attaboys for his independence when, in the week after the election, he declared, “I have two little girls, I don’t want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete,” as though Mean Joe Greene was about to lower the boom on Snow White.
Moulton did have a point in saying that Trump and MAGA had sacked the Democrats on trans issues. But this has been an entirely self-administered failure, the result of a surrender to soi-disant “trans advocates” from the faculty lounge and other dens of leftism—few of whom are themselves transgender. These radicals view trans rights as a means for dismantling all traditional structures—the patriarchy, capitalism, you name it—rather than an end in itself: an expression of the pursuit of individual happiness.
But piling on is no way to win. Far better to fight the MAGA narrative, and to avoid metaphysical and ontological vagaries about who is a “woman” and who is a “man.” These sorts of questions are not really subject to political resolution. But personal safety, public accommodations, health care, housing, employment—the things that really matter to transpeople, can make their lives better, and ease their assimilation into mainstream American life—are among the reasons governments are instituted.
Opposition to MAGA transphobia has at least two things going for it. First, the idea that a misogynistic Republican party can pose as the defenders of women’s rights—as the naming of the executive order and dozens of state legislative proposals claim—is just laughable. This is obvious when it comes to the marquee anti-trans issues of Title IX and women’s sports; not that long ago, university presidents and college coaches were complaining that they had to reduce the size of their football squads and jettison sports like wrestling to comply with the law’s “proportionality” mandates. Tommy Tuberville is not about to champion Megan Rapinoe.
Second, Democrats can stand with very appealing trans politicians like Rep. Sarah McBride, whose aura of sanity and normalcy stands in stark contrast to the looniness of a Nancy Mace or Marjorie Taylor Greene. McBride’s composure in the face of the indignities visited upon her by House Speaker Mike Johnson can be a narrative-changer; the House Democrats wisely named the freshman congresswoman as deputy whip for policy. She’ll be a voice for trans rights, but more than a one-trick pony. Mace is right to consider McBride a threat, though not as Mace supposes; the threat is to the cartoonish view of transgender people that gets Mace the attention she craves.
MAGA comedy and McBride’s cleverness came together in her witty takedown of Trump’s trans order. Noting that the order defined conception as the measure of sex differentiation, McBride reminded the president of something well known to high-school biology students: that from conception through the first weeks of gestation, all human embryos have “phenotypically female” genitalia. As McBride put it, Trump “just declared everyone a woman.” While such jests alone cannot contravene the flood of transphobia now spewing from the White House, it can be a spirit-lifting spark of resistance; laughing in the face of evil can have a powerful effect. And it’s surely much better than supine silence or trying to out-hate the haters.
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