Trump

By D’Anne Witkowski

It is simply impossible to keep up with the barrage of anti
LGBTQ+ news coming out of the Trump Administration. Upon
taking office, Trump wasted no time signing executive orders to hurt
as many marginalized people as possible.

On Inauguration Day Trump signed an executive order called
“Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism And
Restoring Biological Truth To The Federal Government,” the
purpose of which was to declare that there are only two genders and
therefore transgender people cannot and do not exist.

A couple of things: Trump is not a wizard. He cannot Bibbidi-
Bobbidi-Boo trans and non-binary people out of existence with the
stroke of his giant Sharpie marker. Trans and non-binary people
exist, have always existed, and will continue to exist.

Also, let’s talk about the word “extremism” in this order’s title.
The mere existence of trans people and the recognition that they are
human is not extremist. But using your first day as the president to
sign an order with the specific intent to demonize a very specific and
relatively small group of people? Using the same kind of logic that a
toddler uses when he covers his eyes while playing hide-and-seek
and thinks that no one can see him? That’s extremism.

Also, if you read the order, it is clear how incredibly stupid the
people who wrote it are (because let’s face it, Trump doesn’t write
stuff himself). The order declares that sex, which is “not a synonym
for and does not include the concept of ‘gender identity,’” is
determined “at conception.”

Except it’s not. “We refer to conception as fertilization and nobody
is male or female at fertilization,” Dr. Eve Feinberg of the
Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine told NBC
News.

In other words, NBC explains, “all fertilized eggs or embryos are
filled with both male Y and female X chromosomes, and the gender
doesn’t reveal itself until weeks later.”

Not that a complete lack of scientific or medical knowledge has
ever stopped Trump — or any Republican, really — before.
Republicans are proudly wrong about so many things besides
transgender people. Climate change, abortion, public health,
education, economics. The list goes on and on.

Then there’s the whole infantilization of women thing going on.
This order is based on the assumption that women are helpless
creatures who not only cannot recognize danger, but also cannot
protect themselves from it. I, for one, do not need a big strong daddy
to protect me from transgender people. Transgender people are not
a danger to me. Statistically the biggest danger to women is
cisgender men, especially cisgender men with guns.

According to the Violence Policy Center, “More than 2,400
females were killed by males in 2022 and of these, 87.5 percent knew
their killer. Guns were used in 66 percent of the attacks.”

Are Republicans doing anything about that? No. Of course not.

They want women to be at the mercy of men and for guns to be even
more readily available. That’s how you can tell that they don’t
actually give a fuck about women.

The cruelty is, of course, the point.

“Executive orders and laws not only are about the practical
implementation and mechanics of implementing what those laws
and orders are seeking to do—they also are about a broader signal
to the country about what and who is acceptable and what and who
are not acceptable,” Imara Jones, CEO of TransLash Media, tells
Time. “I think that the thing that these executive orders are doing is
they are saying that in this country, trans people are personae non
gratae. And so, consequently, it empowers individuals in authority
to be able to exercise their discretion against trans people, if that’s
what they want to do.”

Oh, they want to, all right. Republicans are obsessed with hurting
trans people. And Black people. And women. And immigrants. And
poor people. And Muslims. Anyone who isn’t a cisgender white man
shouldn’t expect anything but grief from the Trump Administration.
And that’s at best.

They are exceptionally scary times. I know that’s not helpful to say,
because duh. But we are going to witness things we’d never thought
we’d see in our lifetimes. Not in the United States, anyway. As I
write this Secretary of Defense Pete “Sex Crimer” Hegseth is
working to overhaul the military to “revive the warrior ethos” with
“a focus on lethality,” he wrote in a message to the Pentagon in
which he refers to service members as “warfighters.”

It is not at all comforting to know that Trump and the people who
work for him see so many people in this country as enemies.

D’Anne Witkowski is a writer living in Michigan with her wife and son. She has been writing about LGBTQ+ politics for nearly two decades. Follow her on Twitter @MamaDWitkowski.

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