United States President Donald Trump’s far-right program began by attacking transgender and non-binary people, and women.
His first executive order on January 20 declared that “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.”
The executive order states: “Efforts to eradicate the biological reality of sex fundamentally attack women by depriving them of their dignity, safety, and well-being.
“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, but is ignoring science.
A Nature editorial in 2018 argued against classifying 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 is 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 incarcerated transgender people and prisons have isolated transgender prisoners and refused them hormones.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention removed lessons on building school environments for transgender and non-binary students.
Trump also removed affirmative action Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) programs that instruct agencies to hire women, non-binary and non-white workers.
The Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing order terminates DEI in the federal workforce and in federal contracting and spending.
Laying waste to DEI undermines anti-racist, feminist and anti-colonial movements and cements heteronormative, white, male privilege.
Women’s Agenda reports that Google, Disney, Meta, Amazon, Walmart, Goldman Sachs, Deloitte, Ford, Target and Accenture jumped quickly to ditch their DEI policies.
Google and Meta 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 order on January 28 banned gender-affirming care for transgender and non-binary children. It ends government funding for puberty blockers, oestrogen or testosterone and surgical procedures for people 19 years and under.
This is a significant set-back, as research shows that 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. Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports cuts federal funds for schools that allow trans women or girls to compete.
About two-thirds of Trump’s executive orders entirely or partially mirror proposals from the reactionary Project 2025.
Published in April 2023, Project 2025 is a 900-page dystopian neoliberal wishlist, including mass sackings to “take down the Deep State”, securing the border to deport “illegal aliens” and banning transgender women in women’s sport.
Democratic Socialists 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 about 200,000 federal public sector workers through the newly created Department of Government Efficiency.
Musk, a fascist sympathiser, is also a committed transphobe. He has publicly condemned his transgender daughter, uses X to promote transgender prejudice and has organised against California's SAFETY Act, which protects LGBTIQ school students.
Trump's discriminatory moves are finding willing supporters in Australia, but it is facing resistance.
In a nod to Trump, the Queensland Liberal National Party government, in late January, banned public access to puberty blockers to transgender children.
The reactionary Senator Pauline Hanson called for a parliamentary inquiry in February 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 failed to initiate the inquiry.
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 transgender rights.
For example, 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 transgender people, the Queensland LNP’s move sparked a round of well-attended national mobilisations in defence of transgender 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 squaring up against any attempt to take away 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 blue, pink and white 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.]