Within hours of his inauguration, President Trump signed an executive order titled “Defending women from gender ideology extremism and restoring biological truth to the federal government”, following a whipping up of anti-trans feeling during the US election.
The order states that Trump’s administration will make it “the policy of the United States to recognise two sexes, male and female. These sexes are not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality.”
The response from LGBTQ+ groups was dismay and fear. Quoted in the Detroit Free Press, trans woman Rachel Crannell-Crocker remarked that Trump “wants to say we are not real,” while Bobbie Hirsch said “I’m scared, I’m really scared for my future.” Kimberly Frost, co-director of ILGA World, said Trump was “emboldened by anti-gender movements” to “use the lives of trans people as tools to sow divisions in society. Our communities deserve better.”
