"GENDER IDEOLOGY"

How trans people came to embody the right's biggest fears

- Schuyler Mitchell

HOURS AFTER being sworn in for a second term, President Donald Trump used his constitutionally vested powers to define "man" and "woman." In an executive order, he said his administration would recognize only two immutable, biological sexes, determined at conception, in the name of "defending women" from a rising scourge: "gender ideology." It was the first-ever use of the phrase in an official White House statement, but it wasn't new. Over the last decade, the fear of "gender ideology" has been used to mobilize right-wing movements from Argentina to Poland. Now it's a part of American parlance, too. It appeared in federal legislation in 2022, and Republicans have wielded it ever since to attack health care, picture books, and pronouns.