During his inauguration and onwards, President Donald Trump has implemented extreme laws concerning the rights of immigrants, war, and LGBTQ+ rights. In particular, one law has been getting a ton of attention. In an executive order on January 20th, titled Defending women from gender ideology extremism, and restoring biological truth to the federal government, he stated that, “It is the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female.”
This executive order has caused panic among not only transgender individuals, but also the LGBTQ+ community as a whole. As Trump continues to crack down on “woke” ideology, more people continue to question the nature of those who pride themselves on being allies of the LGBTQ+ community. Google, one of the U.S.’s largest corporations, has begun to comply with this crackdown, despite their previous support of the LGBTQ+ community. Google has released a change in their calendar application, voicing that specific celebrations such as Pride Month, will be removed from their default calendar programming. This has been said to be due to the fact that it, “wasn’t scalable or sustainable” for Google to keep them on there.
I find this statement to be extremely strange, as Google Calendar is a digital space. Not to mention, Google has had these events for as long as the Calendar has been an application. The sudden announcement of them being unsustainable when there has been a surge of hate and executive orders to try and eradicate these conversations shows that Google actively is choosing compliance over supporting human rights and practicing active inclusivity.
This also raises a question of how else not only companies, but also people, will continue to comply with the extreme rule of Donald Trump and far-right extremism.
Extreme beliefs can breed misinformation, and I have seen this happen time after time, in being a part of the LGBTQ+ community. For starters, inside of the executive order, Defending women from gender ideology extremism, and restoring biological truth to the federal government, there is an interesting segment that states, “Sex shall refer to an individual’s immutable biological classification as either male or female.”
This issues many problems, particularly for intersex people. Intersexuality can be caused when chromosomes making up the sex of the person end up outside of the usual XY or XX. This can be XXY or XYY, or for a multitude of other reasons. To many republican leaders, this does not serve any important purpose to mention. It makes many extreme talking points they bring up seem invalid.
The problem with denying intersex people is that it ends up denying both how trans people identify, and how intersexuality exists as a whole. For one, while a transgender experience is unique to each individual, most transgender people are not erasing their sex. Rather, their perceived gender role in society. Intersex people as well have not been served much of a voice in this conversation. Their sex at birth is neither completely male nor female, so if they have it changed to be a male or a female by their parents, is it a betrayal to their sex if they don’t identify with their “corrected” body, and how would this be any different than a transgender individual, who believes that they were born in the wrong body as well?
Intersex people are constantly ignored in conversations about gender and sex. In my opinion, it is because it would counter the majority of the conservative talking points made about gender and sex. That would mean less people would comply with the preconceived notion that sex and gender are the same thing, or that sex and gender could ever be challenged or changed.
However, why is challenging gender such an issue? This supposed threat to Americans only makes up 5% of the population. For people in power, challenging gender and sex means challenging systems meant to keep people “in their place” for decades, and this sudden challenge might give people a dangerous idea. To therefore rebel against the government for doing something that could cause more harm than good. So people who so blatantly challenge very large and known roles in society end up becoming something of a scapegoat.
Though, all this to say, people and companies are starting to comply because change is scary. Many conservatives, especially those who support 2025, seek to keep America “as it was,” and use nostalgia or examples of when “America was great,” to suggest that the coming out of homosexuality or transgender people is a downgrade from what they once knew. However, since the 1960s, as bad as the time period was, it was a huge shifting period for civil rights & expression as a whole. Which raises the question of what America might older generations be referring to, when that time was as “woke” as what we are doing now? Since when did we not fight for our rights as LGBTQ+ people, or black people, or women, or any kind of minority?
This fight in modern-day for civil rights is nothing new, so we shouldn’t act like it is, as it can only push further misunderstanding of these causes.
The argument that transgender people cause a disruption in society is only a carefully crafted argument to strike LGBTQ+ people as a punching bag, and to further push dangerous policies and agendas. In fact, there are only 10 trans athletes at a more professional level, but it is often misconstrued to be thousands in the media. Why make trans people out to be dangerous, when we pose the most danger to them? Why continue to let trans children be miserable if our goal is to protect children?
I believe we continue to let this happen because we let the majority of our peers comply with dangerous misinformation, that even extends outside of the LGBTQ+ community. When we allow others and ourselves to platform false ideas, we end up letting them target strangers, and then our peers, and then our friends, and then our families, and eventually, you.
Although, there is work to be done and ways that it can be helped. Charities and scientific research for LGBTQ+ people will continue to be done, and research will continue, despite any funding freezes or any other sort will not stop us from fighting. When we continue to challenge and organize against these policies, together we can fight for a brighter future for every
