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.

and JD Vance moreso.

They're 'transgender critical'. They're more than happy to keep gender stereotypes/roles - they just want to pin them firmly to sex.

Gender critical is the green, the Conservative Evangelical Right - which is what Trump has aligned himself with - is the red.

Story here, www.washingtonpost.com/science/2025/02/04/national-science-foundation-trump-executive-orders-words/
wave it off if you want. I'll be honest it's possible they mean it just gets 'reviewed' to check it's not non-u and I could have jumped the gun on that. But it's still not a good look, nor is the fact that they have demanded all pages about 'women in leadership' be removed from NASA's website, for example. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00480-x

But that is not my main point. My main point is this is an anti women administration, though and through.

Maybe a handful of assaults could be prevented by anti trans legislation, but all abusers of women, every single one, will be emboldened by this administration. And the likelihood is high that it will be made even harder overall for any survivor to get justice. As many GC women are keen on saying 'men hate women so much they'll go to any length to demonstrate it'. I hope to God

Maybe fewer cis women will lose out on jobs to trans women, but given the administration have made crystal clear than women, POC, LGBTQ+,disabled etc people are not to get 'special treatment' (aka the treatment default humans get to take for granted) prepare for a lot more women to just plain lose out on jobs to men.

Maybe cis women won't occasionally lose out on medals or sports titles to trans women, but I wonder what happens to the funding of girls' and women's sports under such an administration?

Like I said, I'm having trouble seeing this as any kind of victory for 'protecting women'. OK so you've defeated the transes, but to me this seems to be at the expense of the even greater empowerment of every misogynist man.

Maybe there's a theoretical scenario where this wouldn't have to be the case, but it is with this revolting bunch.

You lost me completely at "cis women".

From the Nature article.

"In the corridors of NASA buildings across the United States, Pride flags and pictures celebrating women in science are being taken down. Scientists are adding space-mission stickers to their laptops to cover ones that displayed rainbows and other symbols of LGBT+ support. Employees are stripping pronouns from their e-mail signatures and holding darkly humorous conversations in which they try to avoid saying any pronouns at all."

Oh no! 😮

I am going to have to find archive versions when I get a chance, as the articles are both paywalled. I cannot comment fully until I have read them properly. However, I can't help but laugh at the above quote, given the hoops that we used to (and sometimes still do) have to go through to get posts to stay up on this forum RE pronouns.

So you get close to admitting it doesn't say what you said it did, and you just pivoted. The list of words which would trigger review were GI jargon words and phrases. I didn't see women or woman on the list.
This is the Democrats problem in a nutshell - less than honest about one thing, so of course we discount what they say about something else.

And stop trying to force team women's rights with trans activism/men's privileges. We're not having it. TA is fundamentally inimical to women's rights and freedoms.

Firstly, both Washington Post and Nature are very hard left wing and anti-women/pro-trans, so I wouldn't take anything they say as gospel. In fact, I would trust them if they said it was the year 2025, I would check.

Secondly, its not a Maybe a handful of assaults could be prevented by anti trans legislation (and you 'anti trans' as well as use of 'cis' shows your agenda - its pro women legislation), it is many, MANY assaults, as the images here show. Its an epidemic, transwomen assaulting women and girls, just because the media hasn't reported it doesn't make these women and girls suffering non-existent and 'didn't happen'. Please stop minimising it. And its not just about assault or safety, its also about privacy and dignity for women and girls.

Maybe cis women won't occasionally lose out on medals or sports titles to trans women

This demonstrates your profound ignorance of the issue. It is literally thousands, not 'occasionally'. And its not just about medals or titles. Its also about having all those years and years of sacrifice of family time, friends time, free time to train hard to be selected for a team and it be all for nothing to lose to a boy. Not to mention girls losing out on a sports scholarship to college - when they could not have afforded to go otherwise. It is now over 5000 transwomen victors, 27 world records, 109 U.S. records, $1.6 million in prize money. Just in the last few years.

I'm going to ignore the unecessary 'cis' in @Echobelly's post, because there is a serious issue here.

Trump and co aren't just throwing out some of the fatuous or harmful aspects of DEI initiatives, they seem bent on throwing out important ones too.

The sort of 'keyword vetting' described here seems liable to harm women, people with disabilities and genuinely disadvantaged minorities.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2025/02/04/national-science-foundation-trump-executive-orders-words/

and definitely 'oh no' to In the corridors of NASA buildings across the United States, ... pictures celebrating women in science are being taken down

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,

The 'tolerant left'? Say what, now? 🙄

Nobody has done more harm to the GC cause in the US than the Democratic Party.

*Images in my post are under review.

How do we know that the women in the pictures are female?

Even if they all are female, there are more important things than a few pictures on a wall. All this shallow virtue signalling isn't worth shit compared to what could be done to properly support female scientists and encourage more young women (actual female people) in science.

I think that is my big issue with much of this version of DEI, it is shallow. It is so much easier to put a sticker on your laptop and add pronouns to an email signature than it is to make physical changes to a workplace to allow a disabled person to work there. Who needs good maternity care or childcare facilities when some of your male staff can identify as 'women' to even up the gender split of your company?

A better version of DEI would be practical and based in reality. It would not put one protected characteristic (I am in the UK) above all others.

I'm American, a lesbian, conservative, people don't understand that the old Republican party has changed, with Trump it became populist. And with this election lots of Democrats voted for him + Hispanics and Black Americans.
So the party is a lot broader and more Centrist which is a good thing. Look at the former Democrats in his administration; RFK jr , Tulsi Gabbard + gays + women
He's very popular, between giving women back their rights and unearthing immense graft and corruption with DOGE.
So I'm very happy.

Given the slew of detransitioner law suits against healthcare providers I suspect US heathcare will back off the gender gravy train very quickly. Once puberty blockers, cross sex hormones and genital surgeries have been shown to be harmful it'll be impossible to go back - this phase of medical history will surely be compared to lobotomies by future historians. So I would hope that sex realism will remain in the US when Trump is dumped.

Today, on this side of the Atlantic, it just looks as though Trump, and by association America, are now on Putin's side. Ending funding of Ukraine is one thing, but the parroting Putin propaganda is in a different league.

That’s a no from me. Nice try, though

In the corridors of NASA buildings across the United States, ... pictures celebrating women in science are being taken down.

I don't know about the corridors of NASA buildings, but their website is full of pictures celebrating women in space, including at least one woman wearing a hijab! Lots of the photos of astronauts in space include people of colour. And the video on their recruitment page features a woman astronaut.

So although NASA have removed text about gender, race, etc., from their recruitment page, their website demonstrates diversity and inclusion in action.

The US Air Force was reported as having immediately removed all mention of the WASPs and the Tuskegee RedTails from their material. This was revealed to be completely untrue.

There has been a lot of scaremongering/untruths about 'removing' women, people of colour, disabled people etc. NASA continues to use historically accurate images of their diverse space crews. Historical facts about women aviators, African American pilots in WWII, remain because they are part of history.

I am in the US and I am worried about a backlash because of the extent of his orders.

His EO on gender identity is the only one I agreed with but I think it has gone too far in that he has announced that transgender people cannot serve in the US military. Why not? This is hardly the position the JKR took in her famous statement.

As for the idea that the republican party has become more centrist????

I agree, lawsuits will change the situation in the US. Once insurance companies work out that covering these operations is a big financial risk, they will stop covering them, and that change will stay whoever is in power.

I also agree that it is lawsuits that will end the medical transition debacle.

Trump isn’t gender critical. He just hates trans people.

we can protect women’s rights while still recognizing there are people who identify as trans and deserve to be protected too. We all deserve to go to school, get jobs, and have secure housing regardless of how we choose to present ourselves.

From their recent reporting, The Washington Post don't believe sex is a meaningful category, so it's not clear why they would care about Trump removing women's rights.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5217266-times-article-re-us-military?reply=140073242&utm_campaign=thread&utm_medium=share&utm_source=copylink

This has been discussed previously, so you may find this link interesting.

It's the slippery slope argument again, just framed slightly differently.

"I don't want a restriction on trans rights,,, because abortion".

Why not?

Because people were only signing up to the military to receive free hormones/surgery. And once they start on the transition process they are no longer able to serve on the front-line due to their requirement for continual artificial hormones.

I've just found another example of scaremongering about women being 'removed' by the LGBTQ+ related EO.

For instance it was reported that the Rubin Observatory had removed any mention of Dr Vera C. Rubin after whom it was named, because of the alleged diktat to remove any mention of women in science.
In fact, the observatory website has a whole 'Who was Vera Rubin' page.

It looks like a lot of people are disseminating scare stories, and a lot of people are not applying the necessary pinch of salt...

People who lie about biological sex lie about other things too - shocker!