How Trump promotes a radical, unscientific idea about intercourse and gender within the title of opposing ‘gender ideology extremism’

The Trump administration claims to be rooting out “gender ideology extremism” and “restoring organic reality” in the US.

In a January 2025 government order, President Donald Trump decreed that there are solely two genders – female and male – and that anybody who believes in another way denies “the organic actuality of intercourse.”

But as a gender research scholar, I do know what the science actually says about gender and intercourse.

Most researchers in my area, in addition to these in different disciplines reminiscent of sociology and biology, agree that organic intercourse is vastly extra sophisticated than solely the 2 variants of female and male. Sexual variety has been documented amongst all animals, together with people.

Trump’s declare in any other case is itself a gender “ideology” – that’s, a set of beliefs and values about gender.

Intercourse and gender usually are not the identical factor

Specialists in lots of disciplines have proven how gender is totally different from intercourse. Intercourse refers to bodily attributes reminiscent of genitals, hormones and chromosomes; gender is made up of the norms, roles, behaviors and expectations individuals are alleged to adjust to primarily based on the tradition and society they stay in.

As such, gender is socially constructed – that’s, outlined by a neighborhood’s beliefs and rituals. In different phrases, gender doesn’t comply with biology. As a substitute, folks have what’s referred to as a “gender identification” – an inside sense of themselves as masculine, female or someplace in-between.

There are a lot of methods during which gender and intercourse don’t essentially line up.

Amongst people, a conservative estimate by the United Nations means that as much as 1.7% of the world’s inhabitants are intersex, which means their our bodies fluctuate from what has been labeled typical combos of chromosomes, hormones and genitals.

Intersex rights advocates have lengthy pushed for medical therapy that displays this reality, slightly than widespread expectations of the human physique. Recognition of gender and intercourse variety can considerably scale back the stigma and trauma of being an intersex particular person.

Within the animal kingdom, feminine noticed hyenas have a penis. Male seahorses get pregnant.

It took biologists a very long time to determine that some male animals do issues that defy socially decided understandings of masculinity. However as soon as they did, groundbreaking insights into the complexity of evolutionary processes have emerged.

By labeling the idea of gender identification as an “ideology,” the Trump administration has decreased all folks – however particularly transgender and nonbinary folks – to a perception system, ignoring their complicated human identities.

What’s gender ideology, actually?

Trump’s government order on gender is itself primarily based on a gender ideology referred to as “organic determinism” – the idea that there are solely two genders and that the intercourse assigned at start completely determines one’s function in society.

This ideology dismisses analysis and knowledge that doc the complexity of human life. This may have severe social penalties.

As a result of adherents of organic determinism see intercourse and gender as one and the identical, they typically wish to ban puberty blockers, hormone remedy and different gender-affirming well being take care of trans youth. These are essential and generally lifesaving therapies; the Trump administration and different adherents of their ideology dismiss them as medical malpractice.

The chief order additionally claims that implementing a inflexible male-female divide will maintain girls and ladies protected as a result of bogs and home violence shelters grow to be harmful for girls when transgender individuals are allowed to make use of them.

Analysis has persistently debunked this notion. Privateness and security issues haven’t elevated because of the authorized recognition of transgender people. There isn’t any proof that cisgender girls – that’s, these assigned feminine at start – ought to worry violence dedicated in opposition to them by transgender girls.

Biology will not be future

A lot of my educational work has centered on how societies rooted in organic determinism are usually patriarchal. They’re designed by males for the good thing about males, and males maintain most positions of authority.

Patriarchal international locations, together with the U.S., are inclined to worth masculinity over femininity. Political and non secular leaders, the media and social norms counsel girls are weaker than males, extra emotional and higher suited to care work. Because of this, they painting girls as much less efficient leaders than males.

Traditionally, these societies have restricted girls’s sphere of affect to the family. That, in flip, prevented them from widespread entry to, and success in, financial, non secular and political management positions, simply to call a couple of.

U.S. feminists within the Sixties and Nineteen Seventies protested the concept an individual’s physique ought to dictate what they’ll and can’t do with their life. Again then, patriarchal beliefs restricted girls’s participation in sports activities – they weren’t allowed to run marathons – and jobs, with fields reminiscent of training legislation and surgical procedure basically off-limits.

Girls within the U.S. additionally lacked full bodily autonomy for a lot of the Twentieth century. Entry to contraception was restricted, and terminating a being pregnant was unlawful.

By the Eighties, girls had succeeded in convincing a lot of U.S. society that that they had the similar skills and may take pleasure in the identical rights as males. By the early 2000s, that they had made nice strides towards attaining equality in training, profession selection and reproductive freedom, amongst others.

Trans folks started making related progress within the 2010s.

Transferring backward

Because the Trump administration reverts to a simplistic interpretation of intercourse and gender, public debate on these fundamental social and political rights is reemerging.

There may be laws on the state and federal degree banning transgender girls athletes from taking part in sports activities, payments that might make it against the law to establish as transgender and challenges to girls serving in fight roles within the U.S. army.

Abortion, established as a constitutional proper in 1973, had that constitutional safety reversed in 2022. Abortion is now outlawed in 12 states; others severely restrict the flexibility to get the process.

To implement Trump’s “gender ideology” government order, the Division of Veterans Affairs is phasing out gender-affirming well being care. The Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention briefly scrubbed knowledge about girls’s well being that has been very important in elevating public consciousness and fueling ongoing analysis into points of ladies’s well being, reminiscent of protected types of contraception.

The administration’s insurance policies and concepts are ingrained in a gender ideology that predates the feminist motion of the mid-Twentieth century.

When requested in courtroom throughout proceedings in lawsuits difficult the constitutionality of Trump’s government order, attorneys representing the Trump administration have repeatedly failed to outline what precisely the administration is referring to with the time period “radical gender ideology.”

One lawyer, when prompted by a decide, replied that he was “detest to invest” what the president means by the phrase.

In my evaluation, the administation’s incapacity to outline “gender ideology” is a significant sign. The Trump administration is pursuing, in essence, its personal gender ideology masked as anti-gender ideology.