Did we win yet?
On the first day of his second presidency, Donald Trump issued a very strong executive order that removes ‘gender identity’ ideology from federal agencies and policies, root and branch.
“As of today,” Trump announced, it will henceforth be the official policy of the United States government that there are only two genders: male and female.” He simultaneously rescinded several Biden executive orders. (You can read a full synopsis here.)
To condense: in the executive order, the word “woman” is defined as “adult human female.” No one is ‘nonbinary’ anymore. The federal government will understand every American as male or female according to their birth sex rather than some nebulous self-defined ‘gender identity.’ There will be no more ‘X’ option on passports, and there will no longer be “preferred pronouns” in federal workforces.
Presidents do not write executive orders (EOs) themselves. The text of “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to Federal Government” has been credited to May Mailman of the Independent Women’s Forum, who is clearly well-informed on the topic. No TERF (trans-exclusionary radical feminist) could have written a better EO.
“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.
“Guidance, communications, policies, and forms” for implementing gender identity in regulation and policy are now withdrawn from publication. Federal agencies “will cease pretending that men can be women and women can be men when enforcing laws against sex discrimination.” Males will be removed from women’s sports, spaces, and prisons.
It is a good start, perhaps the beginning of the end. However, Trump cannot direct every state and locality and school board across America to follow the same program. Alphabetical organizations and ideological judges and Democratic legislative champions will continue to uphold the shaking pillars of ‘gender identity’ as long as possible.
The activists call this EO “literal genocide.” Media gaslighting continues: the New York Times whines that Trump is “removing transgender protections.” Resistance under the rubric of novel ‘trans rights’ for males that are supposed to trump (heh) all the existing civil rights of women and girls will continue until we, the opponents to ‘gender identity,’ win. We will eventually win.
So no, this is not over. All we have won, so far, is a chance to keep fighting until we win. We must never tire of winning until we have won. We will win everything, as long as we continue to fight. But we must fight.
Before Trump took the oath and issued this order, House Republicans passed legislation to protect women’s sports categories in federally-funded programming. Only two Texas Democrats, Reps. Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez, joined Republicans in advancing a bill to protect sports for American women and girls.
Rep. Seth Moulton, who had expressed wrongthink about his daughters being run over by men on the sports field right after the election, was cowed by the alphabetical activists into voting no, saying that the legislation went “too far.” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez fearmongered that the bill will require “genital examinations” and hyperventilated that girls will be forced to perform “a certain kind of femininity.” The Washington Post duly reported that the House had voted “to ban transgender students in girls’ sports” and that very few males are actually being allowed to cheat at sports.
Between the vote and the inauguration ceremony, on a slow Saturday news cycle, the New York Times released Ipsos poll results showing that 79 percent of 2,128 respondents oppose ‘trans’-identified males in female sports. Furthermore, 67 percent of the Democrats surveyed also opposed ‘trans’-identified males in female sports.
These numbers are actually higher now than they were in 2023, when a Gallup oll found that “a larger majority of Americans now (69%) than in 2021 (62%) say transgender athletes should only be allowed to compete on sports teams that conform with their birth gender. Likewise, fewer endorse transgender athletes being able to play on teams that match their current gender identity, 26%, down from 34%.” Democrats back then were about evenly divided.
Put simply, the more Americans see males in sports for women and girls, the more they oppose it. In 2023 I called this “the Lia Thomas effect.” Elected Democrats are waging a psychological war against a majority of their own voters — and they are losing ground with them all the time.
That does not mean we have already won. It means will win as long as we continue to fight. We who oppose the substitution of ‘gender identity’ for the biological reality of sex in policy and law: we are off to a good start this year, but there is a lot left to do.
First, Lisa Selin Davis advises, we must stop being afraid to sound like Donald Trump. “If it feels weird to have your own ideas falling from Trump’s mouth, don’t shut up. Speak up. Speak louder. Speak more often. If you haven’t spoken up yet, do so now. Show America that these ideas are standard liberal feminist fare.”
Second, we must relish the fight like Trump does. Courage calls to courage. “Both officials said the executive order has the potential to broaden the president’s support,” Emily Yoffe reports.
“Just take a look at the polling,” the senior official said. “The public is broadly in favor of the president’s and of the Republican Party’s stance on gender. That there are two biological sexes is something that the public is supportive of.”
That means we must not be concerned whether people find our words offensive of naughty or mean. Everything we say or do will be received and recast as the literal Death Star literally blowing up transgender Alderaan, anyway. So if your every utterance is going to be framed as ‘hate speech’ no matter what you say, then just speak your mind. Speak plain. Speak truth. Continue to speak.
We have not won yet. But if we are relentless, and unafraid to be mean, we will prevail.