Advocacy groups blast Trump's 2-gender order
By: Deborah Barfield Berry
USA Today
WASHINGTON - More than 175 organizations that advocate for women's and transgender rights released a letter Tuesday [01/28/2025] lasting Donald Trump's executive order requiring that federal agencies recognize only two sexes, male and female.
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In the letter, first reported by USA Today, the groups called the policy "cruel" and "lawless."
..... Trump officials say the order protects women.
..... "My administration will defend women's rights and protect freedom of conscience by using clear and accurate language and policies," the order reads. "these sexes are not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality."
..... However, advocates said in the letter the order could put people in harm's way by spreading disinformation and lead to harassment of transgender people and others.
..... "We know that the true intent of this order is to demonize, stigmatize, and discriminate against transgender, non-binary, and intersex people and to enforce gender roles and gender stereo-types,' they wrote. "It is appalling you wage these attacks in the name of 'defending women,' and particularly because of your repeated attacks on women;s rights."
..... The National Women's Law Center led the effort. Among the signatories are the Bavard Rustin Center for Social Justice, Florida National Organization for Women, National Council of Jewish Women, Transgender Law Center, Mississippi Black Women's round table, Momsrising and dozen more.
..... "The safety of all women and girls indeed depends on reaffirming that transgender women and girls are treated with equal dignity," they wrote.
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The ideological debate over sexual identity and transgender rights has been one of the issues at the heart of Trump's presidential campaign and the conservative movement.
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Trump had pledged to push for a law banning gender-affirming care for minors, and to keep boys out of girls' sports.
..... The executive order rescinds supports that have been added to schools, federal workplaces and other federal properties for people who identify as trans and protects the "right" to single-sex spaces.
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Separately, some experts said science shows the issue can be more complex.
..... Alice Dreger, a historian of science, said she's concerned about what will happen to tans people who have lived a certain way for decades, and for people who are intesex; that is, they were born with genetics and biology that don't fit neatly into "male" or "female: categories. "there are folks for whom this (categorization) simple won't work," Dregere said.
..... A 2022 survey found that 1.6% of all U.S. adults and 5.1% of adults under 30 identify as transgender, meaning their gender identity does not correspond with the sex registered for them at birth, or non-binary, meaning they don't identify as either male or female.
..... Ignoring the existence of these people "is not just denying of reality," Dreger said, "it's gas-lighting the entire nation."
..... From a biological perspective, gender identity can differ form one's genetic sex or the sex organs a person has, said Elvisha Dhamala, an expert in the neurobiology of human behavior at the Feistein Institutes of Medical Research in New York. In her research, she has shown that sex and gender are encoded in different parts of the brain.
Contributing: Karissa Waddidick and Karen Weintraub, USA Today.