"Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government."
An analysis of the January 20, 2025 Executive Order by Kara Dansky (who possesses much more legal insight than I do.)
I’m sharing a post published by my friend Kara Dansky, a lawyer and writer, who is way smarter than me. She is a thought leader in this space of protecting women and girls from the gender ideology and she is a legal expert on the subject, unlike myself (I don’t let that stop me though).
She is, perhaps, my favorite TERF, if I’m forced to pick one.
In November 2021, she published The Abolition of Sex: How the ‘Transgender’ Agenda Harms Women and Girls. And in 2023, Dansky published The Reckoning: How the Democrats and the Left Betrayed Women and Girls.
(I should note here: Since reading Kara’s piece this morning, I’ve had an exchange with her via email asking a few legal questions. She agrees with my take that sports in private clubs, those governed by the USOPC, individual races — eg The Boston Marathon — and those in private schools etc, will all fall outside of the E.O. As will private schools more broadly, private camps, and on and on. In addition to everything she outlines below that will fall outside of the E.O. There is work to be done. I spoke to it last night on Fox News @ Night with Trace Gallagher. Kara confirmed this morning to me directly that I did not, in fact, speak out of turn! Whew!)
Here’s what Danksy had to say on Trump’s Executive Order defending biological reality, signed yesterday. Read it and subscribe to her Substack.
This post offers a preliminary analysis of the new administration’s recent Executive Order (EO, or order) on sex and “gender identity.” It is free and shareable. If you are not already a paid subscriber and would like access to content that delves deeper into the movement to protect the sex-based rights of women and girls and to stop the abolition of sex, please consider becoming one today.
On January 19, The Free Press announced that the incoming administration planned to issue a new Executive Order titled, “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.” This announcement was met with much excitement all over the world by people who care about the material reality of sex. I decided to hold off on popping the champagne until I had a chance to read the order itself. The order has now been signed and made public here.
By now, people who follow these matters closely understand that redefining the word “sex” to include “gender identity” in the law in order to accommodate people’s “transgender identities” is code for decimating women’s rights, privacy, safety, and dignity. It means eliminating the material reality of sex and, thus, women and girls as a sex class. As I explained in my 2021 book, The Abolition of Sex: How the ‘Transgender’ Agenda Harms Women and Girls, it’s an outright assault on material reality. It’s a corporate fiction, fueled by a trillion dollar industry. In that book, I did my best to explain the leftist, feminist, critique of “gender identity.” In publishing The Reckoning: How the Democrats and the Left Betrayed Women and Girls in November of 2023, I had hoped to persuade the Democrats in power of what virtually all Americans know: we have all have had it with the sexist, homophobic, regressive, authoritarian movement that is “trans.” Obviously, that effort failed, and here we are.
First, some background on why this order is necessary.
Former President Biden has been saying that “transgender discrimination is the civil rights issue of our time” since 2012. Interestingly, that’s the same year that a young man named Tim McBride decided that he’s a woman named Sarah and landed a job as an intern at the Obama-Biden White House, having served as Joe Biden’s son Beau’s personal assistant and driver when Beau Biden was the Attorney General of Delaware. McBride would then go on to work at the Human Rights Campaign and speak at the 2016 Democratic National Convention, and later serve in the Delaware state assembly. Today, he’s a sitting Congressman.
Four years ago yesterday, President Biden issued Executive Order 13988, “Preventing and Combating Discrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity or Sexual Orientation.” That order instructed all federal agencies to redefine sex to include so-called “gender identity” for all purposes under federal administrative law. The Biden administration then spent the next four years doing just that.
For example, in February of 2021, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) issued a memo announcing that it would interpret the word sex to include “gender identity” throughout U.S. housing law. That meant the end of women-only housing, including domestic violence shelters and college dormitories at publicly-funded institutions, because the reach of the memo, which governed HUD’s interpretation of the Fair Housing Act, covered “nearly all housing, including private housing, public housing, and housing that receives federal funding,” according to HUD’s website.
A month later, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that Title IX’s prohibition of discrimination on the basis of sex would be interpreted to also prohibit discrimination on the basis of “gender identity,” meaning the end of women’s and girls’ sports and spaces at federally-funded educational institutions (which is nearly all educational institutions in the U.S.). The Department of Education (DOE) later did the same thing. In 2022, the DOE issued a new proposed rule to formally redefine sex to include “gender identity” in federal regulations for all Title IX purposes. That proposed rule became final in April of 2024, but was eventually vacated in its entirety because it exceeded the DOE’s statutory authority, was unconstitutional, and was arbitrary and capricious.
In May of 2021, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced that it would interpret Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act to prohibit discrimination on the basis of “gender identity.” In the meantime, HHS decided to start lying to the American public by simply stating on its websitethat “Section 1557 prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex (including sexual orientation and gender identity), age, or disability in covered health programs or activities.” This is patently false. Section 1557 is the nondiscrimination provision of the Affordable Care Act. It’s codified at 42 U.S. Code § 18116 and it doesn’t say a word about “gender identity.”
And on and on it went.
The Biden Administration based all of this on a misreading of the 2020 Supreme Court decision in Bostock v. Clayton County. In that case, the Court ruled that employment discrimination on the basis of “transgender status” constitutes unlawful sex discrimination. It did not explain what it meant by “transgender status.” It did not say a word about “gender identity,” and it limited the reach of its holding to the employment context. Nonetheless, the Biden Administration lied and told everyone repeatedly between 2021 and 2025 that Bostock stood for the proposition that sex includes “gender identity” for all purposes. I’m happy to report that that now appears to be gone.
So, what does the new EO do (and not do)?
First, a few limitations. As indicated by the title, the EO does not (and legally, cannot) touch state law; all state laws that enshrine “gender identity” remain, for now. As an EO, it can easily be undone by a future administration (though, as explained below, it anticipates codification of its definitional provisions). Finally, it does not (and legally, cannot) amend any existing federal statute; statutes (including the Violence Against Women Act) that enshrine “gender identity” have not been amended by this order. None of these observations are meant as a criticism of the EO; they are simply acknowledgments of the limitations of federal executive authority.
The order has eight sections, as follows: (1) Purpose; (2) Policy and Definitions; (3) Recognizing Women are Biologically Distinct from Men; (4) Privacy in Intimate Spaces; (5) Protecting Rights; (6) Bill Text; (7) Agency Implementation and Reporting; and (8) General Provisions.
(1) Purpose. This is a general statement about the importance of acknowledging material reality and of using language that reflects it. It condemns the use of “socially coercive means to permit men to self-identify as women and gain access to intimate single-sex spaces and activities designed for women.” It does not explicitly condemn the ability of men to gain access to intimate single-sex spaces by use of other means, such as the use of wrong-sex hormones and/or surgeries. It acknowledges the importance of basing federal policy on truth. It announces the administration’s intention to “defend women’s rights and protect freedom of conscience by using clear and accurate language and policies that recognize women are biologically female, and men are biologically male.”
(2) Policy and Definitions. This section establishes that “It is the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female. These sexes are not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality.” It defines women, woman, girls and girl to mean adult and juvenile human females; men, man, boys, and boy to mean adult and juvenile males; female to mean a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell; and male to mean a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the small reproductive cell. It also establishes definitions of the phrases “gender ideology” and “gender identity”:
“Gender ideology” replaces the biological category of sex with an ever-shifting concept of self-assessed gender identity, permitting the false claim that males can identify as and thus become women and vice versa, and requiring all institutions of society to regard this false claim as true. Gender ideology includes the idea that there is a vast spectrum of genders that are disconnected from one’s sex. Gender ideology is internally inconsistent, in that it diminishes sex as an identifiable or useful category but nevertheless maintains that it is possible for a person to be born in the wrong sexed body.
“Gender identity” reflects a fully internal and subjective sense of self, disconnected from biological reality and sex and existing on an infinite continuum, that does not provide a meaningful basis for identification and cannot be recognized as a replacement for sex.
(3) Recognizing Women are Biologically Distinct from Men. This section requires the Secretary for Health and Human Services to “provide to the U.S. Government, external partners, and the public clear guidance expanding on the sex-based definitions set forth in this order.” It obligates all federal agencies to use the terms “sex”, “male”, “female”, “men”, “women”, “boys” and “girls” exclusively as defined in the previous section, and to use the word “sex” in lieu of “gender.” It requires the Secretaries of State and Homeland Security and the Director of the Office of Personnel Management (which oversees the general operation of federal employment) to implement changes to require that all government issued identification documents and personnel records accurately reflect the holder’s sex. It orders agencies to remove all statements, policies, regulations, forms, communications, and internal and external messages that promote or otherwise inculcate gender ideology and to cease using them in their entirety. It requires that all agency forms that require an individual’s sex list male or female and not request gender identity. It requires agencies to take all necessary steps to end federal funding of gender ideology and to issue guidance to correct the previous administration’s misapplication of the Supreme Court’s decision in Bostock v. Clayton County.
(4) Privacy in Intimate Spaces. This section requires the Attorney General and the Secretary of Homeland Security to prevent males from being housed in women’s prisons and detention facilities, including, where necessary, amendments to the implementing regulations of the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA), which were promulgated in 2012 and permit men to be housed in such facilities under certain circumstances. It prohibits the expenditure of federal funds on medical procedures designed to “conform an inmate’s appearance to that of the opposite sex.” Generally, it requires agencies to “effectuate this policy by taking appropriate action to ensure that intimate spaces designated for women, girls, or females (or for men, boys, or males)” are designated by sex and not identity.”
(5) Protecting Rights. This requires the Attorney General to issue guidance to ensure the “freedom to express the binary nature of sex and the right to single-sex spaces” in federal workplaces and federally-funded entities, and to prioritize investigations and litigation to enforce that freedom.
(6) Bill Text. This requires the Assistant for Legislative Affairs to send the president proposed bill text to codify the definitions in the order within 30 days (it does not appear to anticipate codification of other provisions of the order).
(7) Agency Implementation and Reporting. This requires agencies to report on the status of all executive actions pertaining to the order within 120 days of the order. It rescinds previous orders, statements, and guidance documents pertaining to the enshrinement of “gender identity” in the law, including EO 13988. It dissolves the White House Gender Policy Council. It rescinds all guidance documents inconsistent with the order, including:
“The White House Toolkit on Transgender Equality”
“U.S. Department of Education Toolkit: Creating Inclusive and Nondiscriminatory School Environments for LGBTQI+ Students”
“U.S. Department of Education Supporting LGBTQI+ Youth and Families in School”
And many others.
(8) General Provisions. These provisions are quite standard for an order of this nature, and explain that nothing in the order impairs any other existing agency authority, nor does it establish a private right of action for any individual.
This order strikes me as significant for a number of reasons, and I’m particularly pleased to see it rescind all previous orders that enshrine “gender identity” in federal administrative law and clarify that the previous administration’s reliance on Bostock v. Clayton County was misplaced. I’m also very pleased to see it call for a reevaluation of the 2012 PREA regulations, which permit men to be housed in women’s facilities under certain circumstances.
Its limitations are important; there is much work to be done to eliminate “gender identity” at the state level and in federal statutes. And, of course, there is work to be done in the courts. But this order is a significant step toward eliminating the scourge of “gender identity.”
Former President Biden’s repeated insistence that “transgender discrimination is the civil rights issue of our time” appears to be behind us.
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The clarity of her writing is admirable. What a fine legal mind. Could be my favourite TERF too.
Thanks for your kind words!