While other Western and Westernised countries have adopted and indeed, celebrating liberal gender and diversity programs in keeping with modern democratic ideas, the leader of the West, United States of America, is going back on all of them at breakneck speed under the Presidency of Donald Trump.
One of the first Executive Orders that Trump signed was on gender and diversity, following through on promises he made on the campaign trail. He described the existing policies as “unpopular, inflationary, illegal, and radical.” He revoked a Biden directive aimed at preventing discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation. Trump also signed an order recognising only two sexes – male and female – and declaring that they cannot be changed.
“These sexes are not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality. Sex is not a synonym for and does not include the concept of gender identity,” the Executive Order says. In his inaugural address, he said, “As of today, it will be the official policy of the United States Government that there are only two genders, male and female.”
In his election campaign, he had ranted against “woke culture” which promoted racial ethnic and gender diversity, encompassed in “Diversity, Equality and Inclusion (DEI)” programs. The BBC reported that several large US corporations have ended or scaled down their DEI programs. In the list are MacDonald’s, Walmart and Facebook’s parent company Meta. However, Apple and retailers Target and Costco, publicly defended their DEI programs.
DEI received attention in the wake of racial justice protests and riots after the murder of a Black American, George Floyd, in 2020. But in 2023, DEI received a setback when the US Supreme Court banned US universities from considering an applicant’s race as part of their admissions process.
Gender inequality
The 2023 Global Gender Gap report from the World Economic Forum had ranked the US, 43rd out of 146 countries for gender equality. This was a 16-place drop from 2022. The US trails Canada and Mexico, which rank 30th and 33rd respectively. The gender pay gap in the US has remained relatively flat over the past two decades. In 2022, women earned only 82 percent of what men earned.
Women still lag in top leadership positions in business and Government, though women outnumber men in the US college-educated workforce, making up 51 percent of those 25 years and older.
In 2019, the unemployment rate was 6.1 percent for both Black and American Indian or Alaska Native adults, compared to just 3.3 percent and 2.7 percent for White and Asian adults. Similarly, the rate for Hispanic adults was 4.3 percent.
Black and Hispanic adults continue to have considerably lower earnings than White or Asian adults. The median household income in 2020 was roughly US$ 46,000 and US$ 55,500 for Black and Hispanic workers, compared to US$ 75,000 and US$ 95,000 for White and Asian households. These earning differences have changed little since 1970.
Trump’s order to de-recognise “transgender” as a legal category with rights, has grabbed much attention because of its psychological and medical implications. There are about two million declared transgender adults in the US.
Trump has been against Gender ideology. ‘’Gender ideology’, he has said, “replaces the biological category of sex with an ever-shifting concept of self-assessed gender identity, permitting the false claim that males can identify as and thus become women and vice versa, and requiring all institutions of society to regard this false claim as true.”
“Gender ideology includes the idea that there is a vast spectrum of genders that are disconnected from one’s sex. Gender ideology is internally inconsistent, in that it diminishes sex as an identifiable or useful category but nevertheless maintains that it is possible for a person to be born in the wrong sexed body.”
Trump’s executive order declares sex as “an individual’s immutable biological classification as either male or female” and states that “gender identity” cannot be included in the definition of “sex,” and that “sex” and “gender” cannot be used interchangeably.
“There only two sexes, male and female” it says, and defines a “female” as “a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell.” The order defines “male” as “a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the small reproductive cell.”
“Project 47”, the official policy platform for the Trump poll campaign, promised to cut federal funding for “radical gender ideology” and “thrusting inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content on American children.”
Trump had criticised policies that allowed transgender athletes to play on teams that aligned with their “gender identity” rather than the “sex assigned at birth”, saying this could harm women’s sports programs. Trump called for banning certain kinds of medical treatment for transgender minors. Trump also promised to restrict access to gender-affirming care.
However, the order declaring only two official sexes could have wide-ranging implications. The WHO has warned that, “rigid gender norms negatively affect people with diverse gender identities, who often face violence, stigma and discrimination as a result, including in healthcare settings.” Significantly, Trump signed an Executive Order withdrawing the US from the WHO.
Medical experts say that the executive order rejects the reality of sexual and gender diversity. It is shockingly out of step with what we know from science, said Kellan E. Baker, executive director of the Institute for Health Research and Policy at health services network Whitman-Walker, to ABC News. Baker said that “sex is not a binary, immutable thing. Science tells us it’s not that simple.”
The Centre for Disease Control and Prevention defines sex as “an individual’s biological status as male, female, or something else. Sex is assigned at birth and associated with physical attributes, such as anatomy and chromosomes.”
Trump does not recognise “intersex” people who have sex traits, such as genitals, chromosomes, hormones or reproductive organs, which differ from expectations of male and female anatomy.
Not all conditions are noticeable at birth, according to MedlinePlus, a resource from the National Library of Medicine. Therefore, real sex may not be known until later in life.
Trump’s executive order also revokes a 2022 Biden administration rule in which the U.S. Department of State made it possible for people applying for American passports to select “X” to mark their gender. In his first term, Trump banned some transgender people from serving in the military.
According to a 2023 survey by KFF and the Washington Post, experts say that Trump’s policy inhibits mental health care. Suicide rates among transgender patients could rise. But Trump has long said that his policy is about keeping women and girls safe. The concern is, especially with children, in private women’s spaces and in particular, women’s prisons.
He has pointed to instances where women in prison have accused transgender women inmates of abuse, including rape. But Government data has shown transgender inmates are at a higher risk of sexual victimisation than other inmates.
The administration’s actions come amid a broader lack of clarity about the legal rights of transgender people in the United States. For example, the Supreme Court has ruled that employers cannot fire workers for being transgender. But they have not spelled out further specifics — for example, about bathroom and locker room usage.
Famous transgender Americans
TIME magazine lists some of them; Janet Mock, a transgender advocate and writer, published a best-selling memoir about her transition, Redefining Realness, in 2014 and hosts an MSNBC web talk show about pop culture; Lynn Conway, the pioneering computer scientist and engineer who influenced a generation of computer chip designers and has worked at Xerox PARC, IBM, and DARPA; Christine Jorgensen, a former soldier, became a nationwide media sensation after having sex reassignment surgery in Denmark in 1952.
Model and actress Carmen Carrera vaulted to reality TV fame after appearing on RuPaul’s Drag Race. Nearly 50,000 people have signed an online petition asking Victoria’s Secret to make her the company’s first transgender “Angel.” Caitlyn Jenner, made famous as an Olympic gold medallist in 1976 and later as a reality TV dad, appears as a woman for the first time on the cover of Vanity Fair’s June 2015 issue.
Laverne Cox has used her growing celebrity as a star of the critically acclaimed Netflix series, Orange is the New Black, to become an outspoken leader of the trans rights movement, addressing crowds of thousands at schools and other forums around the country
Geena Rocero was already a successful model before she gave a viral 2014 TED talk in which she came out publicly as transgender. “All of us are put in boxes by our family, by our religion, by our society, our moment in history, even our own bodies,” she said. “Some people have the courage to break free.”
Rachel Levine was the Assistant Secretary for Health in the US Department of Health Human Services, appointed by Joe Biden in February 2021. The U.S. Senate voted to confirm her nomination in March. Levine is the first openly transgender person to hold an office that requires Senate confirmation.
