Three takeaways from new executive order on ‘gender ideology’

Just hours into his first day in the Oval Office, President Trump signed an executive order recognizing male and female as the only two sexes.

Framed as a move to protect women from “gender ideology extremism,” the order states that “‘Female’ means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell,” and “‘Male’ means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the small reproductive cell.”

Its directives aim to reverse several protections for transgender and gender non-conforming people, including how they can identify on federal forms and their ability to access government-funded facilities that best align with their gender identity, such as prisons and domestic violence shelters.

Three Northwestern experts weighed in with their perspectives on the order.

Legally, the document is ‘largely unworkable’

“The new Presidential Administration’s Executive Order of January 20 regarding gender and sex seeks to weaken long-standing protections for transgender, intersex and nonbinary people — through encouraging discrimination against people and communities in spaces like access to government-identity documents, health care, prisons, schools, public accommodations, workplaces and more — and does so through harmful and misinforming language,” said Northwestern Professor of Law Kara N. Ingelhart, who also directs the LGBTQI+ Rights Clinic at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law. 

“However, it is a largely unworkable document and, on its own, does not change the existing protections under Title VII, Title IX or other regulations and guidance previously promulgated through legal procedures.”

Trump’s decision to recognize only two genders is biologically incorrect

“President Trump’s executive order on there only being two genders is basically like saying the government has announced that there are two types of cancer: breast and lung. Just because you deny the existence of the others doesn’t mean they don’t exist,” said Dr. Eve Feinberg, professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, who specializes in reproductive endocrinology and infertility. 

“We refer to conception as fertilization and nobody is male or female at fertilization. Everybody has some combination of X and Y chromosomes, but it’s not until between nine to 13 weeks of gestation that formation of the internal reproductive organs begins, and this is not a binary ‘male’ or ‘female’ pathway.”

Even without legal standing, the order exacerbates violence and discrimination against the trans community

“The Trump administration’s recent executive orders regarding gender and ‘gender ideology’ are patriarchal and transphobic rollbacks of progressive policy changes that have been hard-fought wins over recent years,” said Northwestern trans health and implementation scientist alithia zamantakis. 

“These executive orders will cause increased violence against transgender people — particularly transgender women — who will now be housed in ‘men’s’ wings of prisons, migrant housing and homeless shelters, putting them at greater risk of sexual and physical victimization. These attacks on transgender people are meant to frame cisgender women as victims of transgender women, but the reality is that these attacks will only exacerbate the already disproportionate rate of violence, discrimination and harassment transgender women face in comparison to cisgender women.”