United States President Donald Trump’s far-right program began by attacking trans, nonbinary people and women.
His first executive order, on January 20, declared “sexes are not changeable … immutable biological classifications [are] male or female. It is not possible for a person to be born in the wrong sexed body.”
Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government states “efforts to eradicate the biological reality of sex fundamentally attack women by depriving them of their dignity, safety, and well-being”.
It goes on to say: “The erasure of sex in language and policy has a corrosive impact not just on women but on the validity of the entire American system”.
Trump is not only attacking minorities, he is ignoring science.
A Nature editorial argued in 2018 against Trump’s first move to classify people on the basis of their anatomy.
“As many as one in 100 people have differences or disorders of sex development, such as hormonal conditions, genetic changes or anatomical ambiguities, some of which mean that their genitalia cannot clearly be classified as male or female.
“For most of the twentieth century, doctors would often surgically alter an infant’s ambiguous genitals to match whichever sex was easier, and expect the child to adapt. Frequently, they were wrong.”
It said sex is “more complex than male and female” and “gender as a spectrum that includes transgender people and those who identify as neither male nor female”.
Trump has moved quickly. US government agencies have deleted references to gender, the State Department has frozen passport applications with “X” markers, the Bureau of Prisons has stopped reporting the number of transgender incarcerated people and prisons have isolated transgender prisoners and refused them their hormones.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has removed lessons on building school environments for transgender and nonbinary students.
Trump also removed affirmative action Diversity Equality Inclusion (DEI) programs instructing agencies to hire women, non-binary and non-white workers.
The Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing order terminates diversity, equity and inclusion in the federal workforce and in federal contracting and spending.
Laying waste to DEI undermines anti-racist, feminist, anti-colonial movements and cements heteronormative, white, male, privilege.
Women’s Agenda reports that Google, Disney, Meta/Facebook, Amazon, Walmart, Goldman Sachs, Deloitte, Ford, Target, Accenture jumped quickly to ditch their DEI policies.
(Google and Meta also pulled out of the 2025 Mardi Gras Parade in Gadigal Country/Sydney in March after having been its corporate face in recent years.)
Trump’s “Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation” January 28 order banned gender-affirming care for transgender and non-binary children. It ends government funding for puberty blockers, for estrogen or testosterone and surgical procedures for young people 19 years and under.
This is a significant set-back as research shows young transgender people who access gender affirming care have much lower rates of suicide, self-harm and mental health issues.
Trump’s February 5 order bans transgender women from women’s sport. Keep Women Out of Men’s Sports cuts federal funds for schools allowing trans women or girls to compete.
Some two thirds of Trump’s executive orders mirror entirely or partially proposals from the reactionary Project 2025.
Published in April 2023, Project 2025 is a 900-page neoliberal, dystopian wish list, including mass sackings to “take down the Deep State”, secure the border to deport “illegal aliens” and to ban men in women’s sport.
Democratic Socialist of America activist Cyn Huang said conservatives want society to be “reconfigured”.
Billionaire and neo-fascist Elon Musk has been appointed to help do that. Musk is pushing to sack some 200,000 federal public sector workers through the newly-created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
Musk, a Nazi sympathiser, is also a committed transphobe. He has publicly condemned his transgender daughter and uses X to promote trans prejudice. Musk has also organised against a pro-LGBTIQ curriculum.
Trumps’ discriminatory moves are finding willing supporters in Australia, however it is facing resistance.
In a nod to Trump, the Queensland Liberal National Party government suddenly, in late January, banned public access to puberty blockers to trangender children.
The reactionary Senator Pauline Hanson, in February, called for a parliamentary inquiry to consider banning all medical treatment for transgender people under 18 years old. She also wanted to investigate “the influence of activist groups in shaping public policy, medical guidelines, and education regarding gender treatments”. She was supported by 18 Coalition MPs, but it failed to get her inquiry up.
However, Labor’s Health Minister Mark Butler has since ordered the National Health and Medical Research Council to develop national guidelines for medical treatment, including puberty blockers.
Labor has a mixed record on trans rights.
For instance, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese had to back down on not including a question on sexuality in the 2026 Census, after Labor was publicly shamed. Earlier it had said it did not want to include that question in case it became “divisive”.
Regarding how a person self-describes as “divisive” gives a clue as to Labor’s flakiness on this existential matter.
The billionaires and their apologists in parliament have long used the divide and rule tactic to divide workers and distract from their own crimes against the 99%.
Just as Trump is facing resistance to his attacks on trans people, the Queensland LNP’s move sparked a round of well-attended national mobilizations in defence of trans children’s rights.
LGBTIQ people will not go back into the closet. The generation of queers and young people who fought long and hard for marriage equality are shaping up for any attempt to take back our rights.
The rainbow community understands the importance of solidarity. The progress pride flag replaced the 1978 rainbow flag in 2018 adding black to represent First Nations people and trans colours for the transgender community. The iconography indicates a deep-seated political awareness of multiple oppressions.
As neoliberal capitalism becomes more vicious, attacking queers, migrants and First Nations communities, we must redouble efforts to win a world in which diversity is the norm, not the exception.
[Rachel Evans is a long-time LGBTIQ campaigner and a member of the Socialist Alliance national executive. She is contesting the seat of Sydney for Socialist Alliance.]