LGBTQIA+

My partner and I found a lovely city park with a picnic area and gazebo to eat breakfast in after camping on National Forest land nearby. After a mug of coffee, I visited the public restroom. I didn’t expect a stranger to yell at me through the flimsy stall door.

“Hello? Are you a male or female?”

I was the only person using the restroom — the kids who had been in there a minute ago had left. I felt this man’s eyes on my sneakers and blue hiking pants under the stall. I was scared this harassment could escalate if I didn’t say something to diffuse the situation. I gulped and called back, “Hello?”

“Oh, you’re a female. My bad.” He sounded reassured by my quavering voice. I heard his footsteps leaving the room. My heart raced as I fumbled with toilet paper, fingers shaking. I felt nauseated.

My voice had immediately identified me as the “female” I didn’t feel myself to be — and all it took was two syllables. But my “female” voice had also saved me from further harassment. Would that man have dragged me out of the stall if I sounded “like a man” or remained quiet? Would he have looked under the stall? Would he have tried to check what was between my legs while my pants were down? Did he have any idea how much of a violation these real and imagined threats were to me?

And why was a man even in the women’s room, questioning me? Did a kid’s mother report me to her husband for looking too much like a man in the women’s room? Perhaps they were alarmed that I, with my short hair, had been in the restroom with their young kids. I felt physically ill at the troubling thought that someone would assume I would do anything harmful to children. I hadn’t said anything, made eye contact with anyone or done anything other than sit quietly in the stall in the room that matches my assigned sex at birth.

I felt bad for looking masculine to make myself more comfortable, because I didn’t want to make anyone else uncomfortable. Some part of me longed to return to my habit of looking more like a woman, but I also felt sick from not feeling right in my body. 

I can empathize with these strangers viewing me and my body as a threat because I have also viewed my body as a threat. I have been unhappy with the shape of my body, my appearance in the mirror and the tone of my voice. And to have that thrown back in my face in such a vulnerable moment — pants down, defenseless, forced by my body’s very personal needs to be in this gendered room — hit close to home.

Twenty-five years ago, trans women (those transitioning from male to female) outnumbered trans men (transitioning from female to male) two to one. Today, those seeking hormonal treatment for gender dysphoria are trending younger and are primarily trans men.

Yet, Trump’s first executive order was titled “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.” The text of the order repeatedly states its intent is to protect women from “men (who) self-identify as women and gain access to intimate single-sex spaces and activities designed for women … (which) attack women by depriving them of their dignity, safety and well-being.”

If the majority of those seeking treatment for gender dysphoria today are primarily trans men (females transitioning to males), then why do women’s spaces need protecting? Nowhere in the executive order or in any of the various state legislative efforts claiming to protect women has there been any concern expressed for protecting men’s spaces from the trans men who will be entering them.

That’s because the language around protecting women is really about asserting dominance over the bodies of individuals classified as female at birth — whether they are cisgender or transgender. It’s about keeping the female body pure, normalizing bodily oppression and perpetuating rape culture.

The language used is also rooted in racism.

There is a reason those who study the rise of Christian nationalism in America emphasize its connection with white supremacy. The language around protecting women from predatory men has an unsavory history in the United States. It isn’t that long ago that Black men in America were lynched regularly, and far too often the reason given was to protect some white woman’s body.

On Friday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order drastically limiting public service workers’ ability to obtain student loan forgiveness. Under the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program, workers at government agencies and 501(c)(3) nonprofits are eligible for loan forgiveness after 10 years of service. But Trump's order threatens to strip that benefit—specifically targeting employees at organizations that support transgender rights or diversity initiatives. If enforced, the order could have sweeping consequences, cutting off loan relief for workers at countless nonprofits, civil rights organizations, hospitals, and schools across the country.

“The prior administration abused the PSLF Program through a waiver process, using taxpayer funds to pay off loans for employees still years away from the statutorily required number of payments. Moreover, instead of alleviating worker shortages in necessary occupations, the PSLF Program has misdirected tax dollars into activist organizations that not only fail to serve the public interest, but actually harm our national security and American values, sometimes through criminal means,” says the order.

Organizations that would be barred from the order include what the order calls “subsidization of illegal activities, including illegal immigration, human smuggling, child trafficking, pervasive damage to public property, and disruption of the public order, which threaten the security and stability of the United States.” Further down in the order, this includes organizations that support “child abuse, including the chemical and surgical castration or mutilation of children or the trafficking of children to so-called transgender sanctuary States for purposes of emancipation from their lawful parents, in violation of applicable law” as well as organizations that are “engaging in a pattern of aiding and abetting illegal discrimination.”

Both of these are common administration euphemisms for supporting transgender people and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.

Peter is co-host of the If Books Could Kill podcast, which I highly recommend.

 The percentage of Republican men who believe that women should return to their traditional roles in society has jumped from 28 to 48%. Among Republican women, the increase is from 23 to 37%. This has happened in the span of two years. As alarming as this is, it’s important to ask yourself: what do you think happened here? Do you think that Republican voters, organically and of their own volition, drastically shifted their fundamental perceptions of women’s role in society? Of course not. They are being influenced by messaging from conservative elites, who themselves are radicalizing on issues of race and gender.

This dynamic is often obvious. YouGov polling shows Republican support for higher tariffs at 51%, with just 5% supporting lower tariffs. A year ago those numbers were 38 and 20%, respectively. Again, what happened? Did they all read the same economics textbook? Or did they follow the lead of Donald Trump, who made higher tariffs a central campaign issue?

Democrats tend to miss this. When Kamala Harris lost, several prominent Democrats said the party had strayed too far from the public on trans issues. Gavin Newsom, speaking on his new podcast to his guest Charlie Kirk (Jesus Christ) repeated the talking point just this week. But just a few years ago the savvy political wisdom was that Republican anti-trans efforts had overstepped, alienating voters. Republicans, though, weren’t cowed by public opinion. Rather than retreat, they went on the offensive, seeking to reshape the public debate. And they did, leveraging inflection points like women’s sports to galvanize their base and push liberals into a defensive posture.

If you’re a political party, your goal is not just to know where voters stand, but to know how to move them. Instead, Democratic operatives seem content to reduce their platform to a focus-grouped ephemera, drifting whichever way the political winds blow it. 

I don't know about this. Treating people with respect ought not depend on identifying some anatomical feature. Situating that feature in the brain does not make it any better.

For those who question the slogan “Trans Women are Women,” the science provides a compelling answer. Gender identity is deeply rooted in brain development, and transgender women have been shown to possess brain structures that align more closely with cisgender women than cisgender men. The term “woman” is not just about chromosomes or reproductive capacity; it is a social and neurological identity shaped by a complex interplay of biology, psychology, and lived experience.

When TERFs or gender-critical individuals ask, “What is a woman?” the most accurate response is, “A woman is someone who identifies and experiences themselves as a woman, and this identity is supported by both social and biological science. Brain studies show that transgender women have neurological patterns that differ from cisgender men and align more closely with cisgender women. To reduce womanhood to mere reproductive function ignores the complexity of human identity and the science behind gender.”

The conversation didn’t stop there. Charlie Kirk quickly pivoted to other transgender issues, bringing up Vice President Kamala Harris’ support for incarcerated transgender people. Newsom agreed that the Kamala is for they/them ads were politically damaging, calling them "devastating." When asked about transgender incarcerated people, Newsom responded, "This was even more challenging… because this is issues of people who are incarcerated getting taxpayer-funded gender reassignment… that is a 90/10 [issue]," referring to how he believes such policies poll. He also appeared frustrated that Harris "was in the video and expressed support."

At the close of the podcast, Charlie Kirk shifted the discussion to transgender healthcare, stating, "I encourage you to learn about the butchery that is happening under chemical castration in this state. The American people are overwhelmingly against it." Newsom responded, "Yeah. I think we have to be more sensitized to that."

Kirk continued, "Youth should be off limits, you might be right on deportations, I know I’m right on this," to which Newsom simply acknowledged, "Yeah." Kirk then cited the Cass Report—a widely criticized and legally discredited review used to justify bans on transgender healthcare in the UK—as evidence that gender-affirming care for youth should be prohibited. Newsom offered no pushback, replying, "I’m not an expert on this, but I appreciate your broader [point]."

Newsom’s invitation and capitulation to Charlie Kirk on his podcast will alarm LGBTQ+ advocates. Kirk has a well-documented history of extremist rhetoric and hostility toward the LGBTQ+ community. In a 2023 video, he stated, “These people are sick… I blame the decline of American men. Someone should have just ‘took care of it’ the way we used to take care of things in the 1950s and 60s, but as you have testosterone rates going down and men acting like women, well…”—seemingly advocating for violence against transgender people. Kirk has also repeatedly used the slur "tr*nny" and has encouraged its normalization. He once called transgender people “a throbbing middle finger to god.” In the last election cycle, TPUSA’s PAC, which he leads, spent millions on anti-transgender ads, making his presence on Newsom’s platform all the more striking.

A grounding in the queer history of the legal system in the United Kingdom reveals striking parallels between the moral panic leading to the enactment of Section 28 of the Local Government Act 1988, and the current moment’s discourse surrounding the inclusion of transgender people in social spaces and their potential right to self-identification of gender in law. Through use of moral panic theory, this article examines and contextualizes the historical forces at play in the formation of laws around queer and trans lives in the UK, and in particular the instrumentalization of fears over the safety of children and cisgender women. The article also provides a practical example of the influence of the trans moral panic on law reform, by evaluating the debate surrounding the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill 2022. It concludes that there is no ‘gender crisis’ in the UK, but there are powerful social forces at work to stoke a moral panic and, in doing so, stigmatize and alienate trans people in a similar manner to the stigmatization of homosexuality as an illegitimate way of life under Section 28.

Racism is foundational to reproductive control, and the United States eugenics movement shared and inspired much of the Nazi philosophy of “racial hygiene” that sought to maintain the dominance and “purity” of the white race. Today’s conservative reproductive agenda is little more than racial hygiene’s modern iteration.

Transgender people pose a grave threat to this agenda, because they resist the idea that women are defined by an innate female essence rooted in reproductive biology, and that being mothers is, therefore, their nature and destiny. If someone born with ovaries and a uterus can escape the call of motherhood and if someone born without can be a woman, the white supremacist message falls apart. If gender is “just a feeling,” as some conservatives put it, then how can we say that women’s purpose is to bear and raise children? If people can “mess with” their reproductive organs, how can reproduction be the pinnacle of human life? Gender-affirming care poses a challenge to the reproductive imperative. It must be suppressed to sustain white supremacy, or, in the words of Conservative Political Action Conference speaker Michael Knowles: “For the good of society … transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely.”

By rigidly policing gender norms and sexuality, anti-trans legislation reinforces the message that the proper and natural role of women is to bear children within a nuclear, heterosexual marriage. That is why the same bills that would ban gender-affirming care expressly allow nonconsensual surgeries on intersex newborns, because those interventions reinforce rather than undermine gender essentialism.

To white conservatives, womanhood is rooted in the reproductive body, and its achievement is motherhood. That message, in turn, serves to encourage reproduction with the aim of maintaining white demographic dominance. In other words, transphobia is a by-product of misogyny, which is a corollary of white supremacy. Anti-trans laws trace their roots back to racism.

The Department of Homeland Security has eliminated policies preventing the investigation of individuals or groups solely based on their sexual orientation or gender identity.

The DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis quietly updated its policy manual earlier this month, as first reported by Bloomberg, removing LGBTQ+ identities from the General Requirements section that prohibit surveillance based solely on immutable characteristics.

The manual now states: “OSIC Personnel are prohibited from engaging in intelligence activities based solely on an individual’s or group’s race, ethnicity, sex, religion, country of birth, nationality, or disability. The use of these characteristics is permitted only in combination with other information, and only where (1) intended and reasonably believed to support one or more of I&A’s national or departmental missions and (2) narrowly focused in support of that mission (or those missions).”

The manual previously stated, via the internet archive: “OSIC Personnel are prohibited from engaging in intelligence activities based solely on an individual’s or group’s race, ethnicity, gender, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, country of birth, nationality, or disability. The use of these characteristics is permitted only in combination with other information, and only where (1) intended and reasonably believed to support one or more of I&A’s national or departmental missions and (2) narrowly focused in support of that mission (or those missions).”

More Americans now say they favor or strongly favor laws and policies that:

• Ban health care professionals from providing care related to gender transitions for minors (up 10 percentage points)
• Require trans athletes to compete on teams that match their sex at birth (up 8 points)
• Require trans people to use public bathrooms that match their sex at birth (up 8 points)
• Make it illegal for public school districts to teach about gender identity in elementary schools (up 6 points)

At the same time, fewer Americans now express support for laws and policies that:

• Protect trans people from discrimination (down 8 points since 2022)
• Require health insurance companies to cover medical care for gender transitions (down 5 points)