Anyone else think Trump will ultimately do more damage to the gender critical cause?

[savehannah]

I hear lots of gender critical Americans (especially despairing parents of trans-identified children) cheering Trump's changes on the gender front, and on the face of it, things like not prosecuting parents for non-affirmation of transgender status and not allowing schools to secretly socially transition pupils seem like progress.

However, since Trump is also anti-homosexual, anti-abortion and anti-reproductive (and other) rights for women, I feel this will just lead to even more of a backlash.

Gender critical people have been trying for a long time to show themselves to be on 'the right side of history' and it felt like this was starting to become realised by more and more people (at least in the UK), that it's not just right-wing nutters that believe in the importance of biological reality.

But now gender critical beliefs are being pushed hard as part of hard right-wing policy alongside lots of unacceptable things, doesn't this lend more credence to the idea of the tolerant left being correct, and mean that people who believe tolerance means stamping on women's rights and allowing lifelong medicalisation of troubled teens feel vindicated in pushing hard back the other way?

And again conflating LGB with T, something which UK gender critical groups have tried to separate. Trump hates them all and wants to take away their rights so they are all a marginalised minority and need to fight together against the fascism. Rather than people realising in many ways the trans righrs movement is homophobic, 'trans away the gay' etc.

"However, since Trump is also anti-homosexual, anti-abortion and anti-reproductive (and other) rights for women, I feel this will just lead to even more of a backlash."

"Trump hates them all and wants to take away their rights so they are all a marginalised minority and need to fight together against the fascism."

Evidence please. There are definitely gay men in his administration, and I hear these other claims often repeated but rarely backed with evidence. These claims mostly seem to be the usual hyperbole from people suffering from TDS.

Trump hates trans people more than he hates women, that's all it is really.
I am GC and it horrifies me that other seemingly GC people are cheering Trump along.

I think though that his views are allowing people to be a bit more gender critical without being immediately shut down.

In answer to your question though - I don't know!

I’m slightly more concerned about the damage he’s doing to the world

No.

Because to reverse his executive orders a Democrat Presidential candidate for 2028 will need to convince the voting public why he (and it will be a he, the Democrats won’t go with a woman again):

a) wants to allow men and boys back into women and girls’ sport again

b) provide federal funding for this

c) provide federal funding to re-start the sterilisation and surgical mutilation of children

d) allow males to assume a legal woman identity and enter federal building single sex spaces.

One of two things will happen with the prospective 2028 Democrat Presidential candidate when he is inevitably asked about these things. He will either:

1. agree that these things need to stay, have a chance of being elected and have to keep them or
2. commit to reversing these EOs and kiss any chance he has of being elected goodbye, and the new Republican candidate will just perpetuate them.

Remember some of these EOs are the most bipartisan-supported decisions ever taken by a president. Democrat voters support the sport one in record numbers. It is not a right wing policy. It never was. None of his EOs are.

In another 8 years those who support men in women’s sport and sterilising children now will be quietly pretending they never did. These policies are here to stay regardless of other things he may do on a global scale with respect other matters.

I agree that if the GC gets inextricably linked to whatever else Donald Trump gets up to that could be damaging. Only time will tell. Trump didn't have any anti gay policies as far as I know although Project 2025 is anti gay marriage. It's currently not clear how close to Project 2025 Trumps presidency is going to be.
This article in the New York Post mentions some gay appointees. (Seems a bit of a puff piece but it's surprisingly difficult to get information on this) Obviously, despite the headline there are no Ts involved.
nypost.com/2025/01/18/us-news/trump-is-tapping-members-of-the-lgbt-community-for-top-spots-in-administration/

My concern is that it will further polerise the two sides (which imho is American politics' fault anyway) so that embedded into people mind will always be that trump = bad therefore all his policies are bad, even the good ones. No one needs to think deeply about anything (as per bloody unusual) because they will support their team and that's it.

I think it would have been immesurably more powerful for the Dems to support women but now I think because trump has taken on this position they are now far less likely to.

The fact that the liberals are in power in the UK and we are still seeing the tide turn and there is far less general group think in both parties on this issue means that we are in a far better position to stop it, indeed we ARE stopping it. It might take another decade or two but the momentum and bloody hard work of thousands of women (and some men) would have had no hand holds in the climbing wall if we didn't have at least SOME variation in binary political tribalism.

It is and was the left (except for the Communists) which cast support for women's rights as a right wing policy position. The right just said ta very much and stuck the ball in the net.
You reap what you sow.

Trump didn't invent sex realism or women's rights. I can't stop the Democrats trying to pretend that he did.

Like a pp, I don't believe Trump is anti-gay. Speaking as a non-citizen it seems to me it's only a particular grouping of the Republicans - the religious right - which is fundamentally and virulently homophobic. And therefore big fans of transgenderism itself.

Project 2025 sounds ghastly and I am disgusted with the Democrats for placing more importance on getting male people into women's toilets than on beating Trump - if they were so against Project 2025. Taking a supportive position on Women's rights would have been an easy win, not to mention a morally right and scientifically sound policy position, for a party that prides itself on its goodness and rationality. But Genderism is and was everything to them and in my cynicism I see Project 2025 as the new "abortion rights".

If Project 2025 is coming about, it's as much on the Democrats as on Trump, and I cannot see why or how giving up women's rights to fair sports, or privacy for example would prevent execution of the other policies.

The support for the lies of genderism also undermined the Democrats' attempt to get voters to believe their concerns about Trump's intentions were valid or grounded. As they say, if you lie about something so fundamental as sex, I won't believe a word you say about anything else.

Agreed. In fact this debate will be more intense earlier than that see the mid terms 20 months away in 2026.

Are Dems going to go into that election saying women don't exist or not? Every candidate will face the question. If we think the gender wars in the US have hit a peak think again 2026 will be crazy. I think a bunch of Dems, not all will suddenly reverse ferret like mad.

The Dems had a choice they could have backed women and JKR there was a chance to back off. Instead they said "trans" stuff is one of our top issues and that undermine everything else they said. Biden did more gender stuff by exec order than many other topics. That was a choice.

Remember Trump himself and most repubs never really focused on this stuff till after women started complaining and then they leapt on the band waggon. Yes religious people had a focus but even for them the priority was abortion.

The 1st Trump administration stopped trans stuff in military, but let men rape women in prison, let schools tell kids their bodies were wrong and let women's sport get undermined. Because Jenner and a bunch of others had influence and there was big profits for corporations.

Trump was forced by women [and decent men]] doing things to start taking this stuff seriously. Now they are pretending it was their priority all along.

'Gender critical' feminists are already regarded as fascist-adjacent, so it's not like TRAs were waiting for an excuse like Trump's EOs to attack us.

It does mean that we keep having to bat away posters - or more often 'ploppers' who plop down an accusation, and then scarper - saying we must love Trump and all he stands for if we agree with one or two of his EOs.
But there'll always be eejits like that, they just have a new false accusation to play with.

As far as lesbian and gay rights being caught in the crossfire from the trans-related EO, it has had the opposite effect at the very heart of lesbian and gay history: at the Stonewall Bar in NYC where the 1969 riots were a crucial moment in the development of a gay rights movement.

It had been taken over by the trans movement, plastered in trans and 'Progress' flags, and the history of the events in 1969 had been rewritten to give a central role to transwomen - anachronistic since transgenderism hadn't been invented in 1969, and the clientele of the Stonewall Bar were gay men, some of them transvestites or drag queens, but gay men.

The EO required the National Monuments website to remove trans references. In this case the '✂T' order has removed one of the most galling cases of the trans movement rewriting L&G history, and the description of the 1969 Stonewall Riots is now historically accurate again.

I don't think you know what 'gender critical' is. Trump is no way 'gender critical'.

I do a lot of gaming (probably too much) and ‘chat’ to American gamers online. They are not young males locked in their bedrooms but adults, men and women, with proper jobs. A surprising number switched sides and voted for Trump because of gender issues and the unfairness being introduced into women’s sports. But hey a vote is not forever as once he has sorted the problem out I will vote Democratic next time. Pro trans politics being a headline is not a vote winner in the States.

I realise I didn't really answer the question posed by the OP, so here goes:

It may well be that GC gets more associated with Trump in the short term, but there's not a lot to be done about that.
Many people will also think that GC (sex realism, really) attitudes are just correct and won't be bothered about who else supports them.

In the medium to long term, the left/Dems will have to ditch Genderism if they ever want to get reelected - see NotBadConsidering's post above. And at that stage, GC views will stop being associated with Trump specifically.

I think it's more the case that the Democrat's abandonment of science directly contributed to Trump's win.

@savehannah Please define exactly what you mean by 'fascism'.

This is a word that I am seeing bandied about more and more, yet it is increasingly being diluted in its meaning. Therefore, I would like to know exactly what you mean when you use it.

In the medium to long term, the left/Dems will have to ditch Genderism if they ever want to get reelected - see NotBadConsidering's post above. And at that stage, GC views will stop being associated with Trump specifically.

Yes, I agree with this. We're already starting to see it here with Labour, Wes Streeting is not a popular figure among TRAs, and nor is Starmer, even TRA adjacent MPs like Rayner have been criticised for not doing something about it and prioritising their careers.

It may well be that GC gets more associated with Trump in the short term, but there's not a lot to be done about that.
Many people will also think that GC (sex realism, really) attitudes are just correct and won't be bothered about who else supports them.

This too. It's never been in our control how people see gender critical views.

Repeat post

Well, the Christian right still exists in the GOP, but it's been in steep decline for ages and it's mainly focused on abortion, which is now a state level issue.

I'd love to know how the idea got around that Trump is anti-gay. In his pre-politics celebrity years, he was gay-friendly long before it was fashionable. So much so that sometimes I wonder if he's latently bi.

So in the past month we've seen:

• Trump appointing gay and lesbian figures like Scott Bessent, Ric Grenell and Tammy Bruce to prominent roles in his administration
• Trump dancing with the Village People
• The Log Cabin Republicans deciding not to bother holding their own inauguration event, because the various GOP events were so gay-friendly it seemed redundant

Meanwhile on Reddit, people seem convinced he's going to send all the LGBTQXYZ folx to concentration camps.

I'm not saying there's nothing to worry about with Trump, but just maybe, on gay issues, this is the American left being dumb, irrational and tribalist.

I think he doesn't care beyond the short term political win. I doubt he has strong opinions about abortion either - just something for the conservatives.

He certainly hadn't taken on board all the issues in the EO, otherwise he would have referred to two sexes, not two genders.

(Biden is a career politician but I suspect was similar disinterested - just something a section of the party wanted that might have something to do with gay rights - an easy 'progressive' win.)

TRAs have always tried to conflate gender conservative and gender critical, and for some reason those deep male voices are easier for people like Starmer to hear - hence apparently trying to distance himself from this issue because of Reform.

I don't think Trump really gives a rat's arse about trans people, but he knows people around him hate them and they're a good wedge issue.

Note that it's his government that has decreed the words 'women' and 'woman' as well as 'trans' and 'gender' have been put on a list of words that , if mentioned in research abstracts, will be grounds for it not being federally funded. So looks like someone is actually banning the word 'woman' after all.

Add to this that he is empowering every single abusive men, which is hardly surprising given his predilections. For example making it harder to impossible to report sexual misconduct in schools and colleges https://time.com/5836774/trump-new-title-ix-rules/ And I would be extremely surprised if he does not attempt to widen such obstructions to the entire public sphere; we are talking about the kind of man who almost certainly believes that 'false allegations' is at least as bad a problem as real assaults.

So in terms of this being any sort of victory for 'protecting women', it's not looking good.

Biden is a career politician but I suspect was similar disinterested - just something a section of the party wanted that might have something to do with gay rights - an easy 'progressive' win.

I think that holds for some Democrats, but Biden is a true believer. Sarah McBride, the newly elected TW Congressperson from Delaware, used to work in Beau Biden's office and bonded with Joe and Jill over Beau's death.

TBH I don't think Biden understands what he believes in, he just wants to be a good ally to Beau's friend, but when we saw Biden wibbling on about "if your 8 year old wants to be trans that's great", it wasn't just him reading a script.

That is what I mean - I don't think he is interested enough to think it through. It's all just part of his benevolent grandfather self image (unless you are the wrong grandchild, but that is another thread).

Perhaps the difference is that Biden genuinely believes in his own virtue, whereas Trump thinks virtue is for wimps.

I'm afraid I can't take your word for it that use of the words woman and women will prevent projects being funded.
I suspect that in reality it's the words trans and gender in conjunction with, or as a prefix or qualifier of, woman/women which will preclude federal funding being obtained. Am I right about that?

Quite. Citation, please.

As in, the exact title/s of the Executive Order/s referred to, so that we can check the wording for ourselves.