Three takeaways from new executive order on ‘gender ideology’

• Link to: Northwestern Now Story

CHICAGO --- Though Northwestern University experts across fields fear that President Trump’s executive order regarding gender could exacerbate violence, discrimination and harassment of transgender people, legally, the document is “largely unworkable,” according to Northwestern Professor of Law Kara N. Ingelhart.

“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 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.”

Ingelhart is a clinical assistant professor of law at Pritzker. Her substantive areas of interest include low-income advocacy, criminal legal system reform and public health law and policy issues that impact the LGBTQI+ community. Professor Ingelhart is available to speak to media. 

Contact Shanice Harris at shanice.harris@northwestern.edu to arrange an interview.

Legal protections for trans individuals have not ended, and Trump’s decision to recognize only two genders is based on misinformation and is biologically incorrect, experts say.

“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.”

Media interested in interviewing Dr. Feinberg should email Kristin Samuelson at ksamuelson@northwestern.edu.

Even without legal standing, Northwestern trans health and implementation scientist alithia zamantakis worries about the impacts the order is already having on 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,” zamantakis said.

“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.” 

zamantakis is available to speak with media about the domino effects of the redefinition of gender on for example, passports, sex segregation in prisons, migrant housing and domestic violence shelters.

Email Win Reynolds at win.reynolds@northwestern.edu to set up an interview.