Trump’s new sex and gender policy

If you want to see a compilation of all of Trump’s executive orders, you can find links here that will take you to the contents of the official orders. I’ve talked about the new rules on sex and gender before, but wanted to discuss them again, briefly. Click the screenshot below to see Trump’s EO … Continue reading Trump’s new sex and gender policy

Jan 23, 2025 - 18:14
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Trump’s new sex and gender policy

If you want to see a compilation of all of Trump’s executive orders, you can find links here that will take you to the contents of the official orders.

I’ve talked about the new rules on sex and gender before, but wanted to discuss them again, briefly. Click the screenshot below to see Trump’s EO on those issues:

It’s a long document (four pages when printed out single-space in 9-point Times type, but the upshot is an official recognition of two sexes (male and female, of course), which are seen as immutable. Coupled with that is a refusal to use, on government documents or in government work, any concept of gender.

One excerpt:

It is the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female.  These sexes are not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality.  Under my direction, the Executive Branch will enforce all sex-protective laws to promote this reality, and the following definitions shall govern all Executive interpretation of and application of Federal law and administration policy:

(a)  “Sex” shall refer to an individual’s immutable biological classification as either male or female.  “Sex” is not a synonym for and does not include the concept of “gender identity.”

(b)  “Women” or “woman” and “girls” or “girl” shall mean adult and juvenile human females, respectively.

(c)  “Men” or “man” and “boys” or “boy” shall mean adult and juvenile human males, respectively.

(d)  “Female” means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell.

(e)  “Male” means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the small reproductive cell.

(f)  “Gender ideology” replaces the biological category of sex with an ever-shifting concept of self-assessed gender identity, permitting the false claim that males can identify as and thus become women and vice versa, and requiring all institutions of society to regard this false claim as true.  Gender ideology includes the idea that there is a vast spectrum of genders that are disconnected from one’s sex.  Gender ideology is internally inconsistent, in that it diminishes sex as an identifiable or useful category but nevertheless maintains that it is possible for a person to be born in the wrong sexed body.

(g)  “Gender identity” reflects a fully internal and subjective sense of self, disconnected from biological reality and sex and existing on an infinite continuum, that does not provide a meaningful basis for identification and cannot be recognized as a replacement for sex.

While most of this seems okay to me, I’d make two changes. First, sex is not recognizable, at least via the apparatus to produce gametes, at conception, when we have only a single cell. With high probability you could identify its sex via DNA testing, but the reproductive apparatus develops only later. Ergo I would substitute “at birth” for “at conception”.

Second, it makes no provision for true intersex people, who cannot be identified as either male or female (hermaphrodites are one example). Though such people are vanishingly rare, so that sex is about as close to binary as you can get, they are not nonexistent, and constitute somewhere between 1 person in 5600 to 1 in 20,000.  There has to be some provision for identifying the sex of these people, perhaps with an “I” for intersex.

It also deals with women’s spaces:

Sec. 4.  Privacy in Intimate Spaces.  (a)  The Attorney General and Secretary of Homeland Security shall ensure that males are not detained in women’s prisons or housed in women’s detention centers, including through amendment, as necessary, of Part 115.41 of title 28, Code of Federal Regulations and interpretation guidance regarding the Americans with Disabilities Act.

(b)  The Secretary of Housing and Urban Development shall prepare and submit for notice and comment rulemaking a policy to rescind the final rule entitled “Equal Access in Accordance with an Individual’s Gender Identity in Community Planning and Development Programs” of September 21, 2016, 81 FR 64763, and shall submit for public comment a policy protecting women seeking single-sex rape shelters.

Sec. 5.  Protecting Rights.  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 covered by the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  In accordance with that guidance, the Attorney General, the Secretary of Labor, the General Counsel and Chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and each other agency head with enforcement responsibilities under the Civil Rights Act shall prioritize investigations and litigation to enforce the rights and freedoms identified.

In general I agree, but there may be specific cases, for example a trans woman in jail for embezzlement and not sexual aggression, might be placed in a woman’s prison. Even so, a trans woman is a biological male and on average men are more aggressive than women, but on the other hand a trans women in a male prison may be at risk of becoming sexually assaulted.

Also, re rape counseling and running women’s shelters, I do not think that there should be legal prohibitions against hiring trans women to do the job, I can’t imagine, in a private organization, of favoring their hiring. I said as much in two previous posts (one of which is here) in which I agreed with Ed Buckner. Buckner’s words are indented, mine doubly indented (bolding is his):

Coyne does offer some opinions that are related to ethics, of course.

For example,

Transgender women, for example, should not compete athletically against biological women; should not serve as rape counselors and workers in battered women’s shelters; or, if convicted of a crime, should not be placed in a women’s prison.

My own “ethical” opinion is close to Coyne’s. I would probably—but only after I studied the matter more carefully, including discussions with rape counselors and probably even with women who’ve been victims of rape or of women-batterers, modify some of what Coyne wrote slightly to say:

Neither men or women, cis- or trans-gendered, should serve as rape counselors and as workers in battered women’s shelters, unless the counselors or others working there pass a background check; even then, no one should so serve unless the clients are aware of and accept the status of the counselors/workers.

I can imagine circumstances where there might be an advantage to victims of having a man or a trans woman on hand, but the rights, needs, and wants of the victims, even if sometimes irrational, should be paramount.

In response, I agreed:

I think the second version, expressing Buckner’s views, is better than what I wrote, and it does summarize views I already held (but failed to express). While I still think that at present tranwomen should not compete against biological women in sports, and shouldn’t really be running battered women’s shelters, they should not be completely barred from that job nor from acting as rape counselors—so long as (as Buckner writes), they undergo a background check and the women residents of shelters or women being counseled for rape or sexual assault are made aware that the counselor is a trans woman (a biological man) and are okay with that. This view will, of course still be seen as “transphobic” by some extremists, but there’s a very good case for holding this view in light of the rights of biological women. This involves a conflict between two groups’ “rights”, and in the interests of fairness and the needs of biological women, I come down against sports participation of transwomen and cast a very cold eye on the other two issues.

In other words, I’d make the rule: “Any woman seeking counseling for rape or sexual assault, or seeking entry into a woman’s shelter, should have the right to have a woman counseling and dealing with her psycho9logical or medical needs.”

In that sense I’d modify Trump’s rules.

h/t: Jay

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