I cannot hide my bias, so I won’t try. My heart overflows with pain as I read each of the Day 1 Executive Orders. I want to reach out to all those who support these stances and plead with them to answer why. How can this be what people want and believe is right? I simply do not understand.
I fear that in discourse, I will not find the words to explain the truth I feel. When faced with those who echo these unfathomable sentiments, I will be unable to express why these orders feel so fundamentally wrong. So I write, and in doing so hope that I find those words and become a better defender for the causes I hold dear.
There is nothing I can say that others closer to the issue cannot say better, but I must say something because my heart cannot bear the silence.
I hope that this is the first in a series of posts. We’ll see how long my heart can last.
Defending Women from Gender Ideology and Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government
I start here because I am heartbroken, most especially by this order. I think of my friends and family who this affects and lament that they must live in a time when their government so blatantly and fundamentally rejects them.
The first sentence of Section 1 roots the entire purpose of this executive order in fear. It purports that the transgender movement permits men to self-identify as women in order to harm and endanger women. It implies that this is the goal of the transgender movement, to justify painting the whole transgender community as a danger to women. I particularly want to pick this apart because the rest of the order relies on people believing 1) that this is a legitimate fear, and 2) that this fear justifies systematically dismantling, denying, and destroying the experience, identity, and safety of an entire demographic of people.
Firstly, I won’t claim that no transgender person has ever committed sexual crimes. Cisgender people commit sexual crimes, too. It happens. But people do not become transgender to commit sexual crimes. Most examples of “men self-identifying as women to enter women’s bathrooms” that I was able to find are not of transgender people but of people disguising themselves or claiming to be transgender to perpetrate crimes that they would have found opportunity to perpetrate regardless. The transgender community should not be repressed and punished for the actions of criminals who use their community as a scapegoat. Also, I feel I must point out that even if those criminals were transgender, their crime was not being transgender. Their crime was sexual assault, a crime that, again, cisgender people also commit. I would love an executive order denouncing sexual assault and detailing a plan on how to curtail it, but this is not that order.
Transgender people are not trying to hurt anyone by existing. The vast majority of transgender people only seek to have their physical reality reflect their internal reality. Yes, this very personal decision will affect others when it comes to the discussion of intimate single-sex spaces, and I can understand why that is a frightening notion. However, it is critical to point out that transgender people are statistically far more likely to be the victims of sexual assault rather than the perpetrators. This is a very well-supported statistic. Please, if you fact-check nothing else in this debate, please fact-check this. If we are worried about protecting minority groups from sexual violence, we should be looking to protect rather than blame the transgender community. I am terrified for the safety of all the trans women I know who may be forced to use male bathrooms because that situation has proven to be far more statistically dangerous for them than it is for a woman sharing a bathroom with a trans woman.
So, yes, I accede that a transgender identity can be misused to commit crimes against women, but such cases are the actions of a few and do not justify the repression of the entire community, and the potential danger presented to women is far outweighed by the dangers that trans people will face as a result of this executive order.
Highlights
I could debate this executive order sentence by sentence, but I’m disheartened by the assumption that my arguments will sway no one who doesn’t already agree with me. The first sentence is so egregious, and I hope I’ve dismantled that core fear enough that the rest of the document finds no support. So, to save myself from the mental anguish of an uphill battle, I offer instead a few highlights I felt a strong response to. Warning: I get a little saucy.
I find it wildly amusing that the transgender movement “fundamentally attacks women by depriving them of their dignity, safety, and well-being,” but nowhere is it implied that men are in any way so threatened. And perhaps, statistically, they aren’t, but damn, that’s an incriminatingly sexist frame. And does anyone else find it strange that though the danger outlined is supposedly only from trans women, the reaction is to deny the validation and existence of ALL transgender and non-binary people? Very curious. Could it be that this is not a legitimate claim but just a scare tactic used to justify a movement against the entire trans community? Shock and awe.
My heart breaks anew at Section 2. “It is the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female.” This sentence sums up succinctly this executive order’s blatant rejection of an entire community, and it’s hidden after Section 1 so that fear could take root first and make this discrimination more palatable.
Section 2, g, the “Gender identity” portion, is an interesting journey because I agree with a large portion of the beginning: “Gender identity is a fully internal and subjective sense of self, disconnected from biological reality and sex and exists on an infinite continuum.” Ok, I’m with you so far. “…that does not provide a meaningful basis for identification and cannot be recognized as a replacement for sex.” And you lost me. I’m flabbergasted that this doesn’t seem like pertinent information in any situation where it’s necessary to define sex. By denying more categories exist, you can’t make them stop existing, you’re just … lumping categories together! Science needs to make the distinction between, for example, the experiences of females and trans males—otherwise, we get very skewed and biased data that marginalizes an entire minority. There are countless examples in scientific history of how this is a super big, harmful no-no.
Section 3, c. “Federal employees acting in an official capacity on behalf of their agency shall use the term “sex” and not “gender” in all applicable Federal policies and documents.” This just feels petty.
Section 4, b. Where do trans women seeking shelter from sexual violence go if they cannot go to women’s shelters? It sure sounds like federal funding will not support them. So where is this very specifically vulnerable and statistically endangered community supposed to go to seek safety from sexual violence? Especially as that violence escalates due to people being forced to use spaces that don’t conform with their expressed identities?
Section 4, c. And good fucking luck if you’re trans and incarcerated! You have literally no choice but to conform to the body that God fucking forced you into. Not only trapped in a cell but also in your body! What pure fucking joy.
Pirate Ferret.com 
1 thought on “A Response to the Executive Orders of January 20, 2024”