Late Monday evening, President Donald Trump signed an executive order that effectively lays the groundwork for a sweeping ban on the 15,000 transgender troops currently serving in the United States military. The order, delegating much of its implementation to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, declares that being transgender is “incompatible with service.” It further mandates that all transgender personnel must be misgendered in official military communication and policy. Most notably, the order frames transgender identity as inherently at odds with “a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one’s personal life.”
The executive order, titled “Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness,” claims its purpose is to “protect unit cohesion” from “ideologies harmful” to it—explicitly targeting the service of transgender troops. It asserts that the medical needs of transgender individuals are incompatible with military service, despite evidence that treatments like hormone therapy result in no operational downtime. Aware of this contradiction, the order offers an additional justification for the ban, framing transgender individuals as inherently “selfish” and “false.”
See the rationale given by the order here:
Consistent with the military mission and longstanding DoD policy, expressing a false “gender identity” divergent from an individual’s sex cannot satisfy the rigorous standards necessary for military service. Beyond the hormonal and surgical medical interventions involved, adoption of a gender identity inconsistent with an individual’s sex conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one’s personal life. A man’s assertion that he is a woman, and his requirement that others honor this falsehood, is not consistent with the humility and selflessness required of a service member.
While the order itself is vague on the specifics of implementation, its intent is clear: to serve as a ban on transgender service members. It declares that being transgender is “inconsistent with service” and mandates that pronouns used by the military must “accurately reflect an individual’s sex.” The order gives Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth 60 days to implement these directives, including ending “invented and identification-based pronoun usage” and prohibiting transgender service members from bunking with others of their gender.
If implemented broadly, the ban will have immediate and damaging consequences for both transgender service members and military readiness across the United States. SPARTA, a leading transgender military advocacy organization, estimates that removing 15,000 transgender service members would result in the loss of an $18 billion capital investment, with the Palm Center projecting an additional $1 billion cost to recruit and train replacements. Notably, up to 73% of these service members are senior enlisted personnel with 12-21 years of experience—expertise that cannot be easily replaced by the U.S. government.
You can see SPARTA’s figures here:
When asked about the potential for a ban when it was first floated in November, Emily Shilling, President of SPARTA, stated, “The most immediate impact is that transgender people serve in every theater of the world. If it were a fairly fast-moving ban, you would be pulling these individuals out of their units, leaving critical gaps in skill sets, experience, and leadership positions that you’re just not going to be able to fill with equivalent people anytime soon, especially given the shortfalls in recruiting,”
A transgender officer with years of military experience, speaking anonymously about the rumors of an impending transgender military ban, shared that she had recently spoken with several transgender service members deeply concerned about the possibility. When asked about claims that transgender people are a liability to the military, she dismissed the notion outright, stating, “Every trans service member that I have observed performing their job excels at their job, and that’s because we have to… Every trans sailor, every trans soldier, every trans Marine, and airman that I have known has excelled at their job.”
It remains unclear how swiftly or extensively Defense Secretary Hegseth will implement these changes, how many transgender service members will face discharge, or whether the administration will revert to a “don’t ask, don’t tell” approach—forcing transgender personnel back into the closet or demanding their detransition. What is clear, however, is the administration’s framing of being transgender not as an inherent aspect of human diversity but as a dishonorable and incompatible choice. This rhetoric signals a chilling disregard for the thousands of transgender service members who have served with distinction for decades, suggesting the administration feels no obligation to temper its actions with respect or restraint.
Within hours of his inauguration, President Trump signed an executive order titled “Defending women from gender ideology extremism and restoring biological truth to the federal government”, following a whipping up of anti-trans feeling during the US election.
The order states that Trump’s administration will make it “the policy of the United States to recognise two sexes, male and female. These sexes are not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality.”
The response from LGBTQ+ groups was dismay and fear. Quoted in the Detroit Free Press, trans woman Rachel Crannell-Crocker remarked that Trump “wants to say we are not real,” while Bobbie Hirsch said “I’m scared, I’m really scared for my future.” Kimberly Frost, co-director of ILGA World, said Trump was “emboldened by anti-gender movements” to “use the lives of trans people as tools to sow divisions in society. Our communities deserve better.”
Trump’s move is not unexpected. During a fraught and divisive election campaign, Republicans spent nearly $215m alone on network TV ads that vilified transgender people, according to recent data from AdImpact. The past few years have seen a rush of anti-trans bills in red states, such as banning changes to birth certificates or defining sex as immutably set at birth. Books featuring LGBTQ+ content have been banned, and drag shows have faced protests and been subject to lurid conspiracy theories by Trump’s far right supporters.
Having spent nearly a decade reporting on far right threats to gender rights, the order’s purpose is clear to me: it sits squarely within the attack on so-called “gender ideology” with the ultimate aim to restore a “natural order” of white male supremacy. And while the target is trans people, the threat goes much wider, potentially laying the groundwork for further attacks on the US’s already degraded abortion rights.
What is gender ideology?
Originating in the mid-1990s in Catholic and other conservative Christian circles, the term “gender ideology” sprung up in response to feminists seeking to place “gender” into a United Nations report on its 1994 women’s conference. Initially the term focused on abortion rights, but quickly expanded to criticise any rights related to gender and sexuality, including LGBTQ+ and trans rights.
As the term gathered momentum, it became framed as a threat to ‘traditional’ – see conservative and Christian nationalist – values. LGBTQ+ activists and feminists were accused of imposing “gender ideology” on everything from schools to families and government, determined to “indoctrinate” children and young people with the “transgender agenda.”
Attacks on “gender ideology” were amplified by conservative writers such as Dale O’Leary who popularised the term in her book Gender Agenda, and picked up by the Vatican, as well as the anti-abortion, anti-LGBTQ+ ‘religious freedom’ organisations such as Alliance Defending Freedom and the Heritage Foundation. The right-wing think tank is behind the controversial Project 2025, with ADF on the project’s advisory board.
The project – which brings “together … over 100 respected organizations from across the conservative movement, to take down the Deep State and return the government to the people” – is key to understanding Trump’s move.
Project 2025 published a “Mandate for Leadership”, providing an anti-rights blueprint for the incoming administration. It offered policy ideas to demolish so-called “gender ideology”, demanding that “enforcement of civil rights should be based on a proper understanding of those laws, rejecting gender ideology.” It demanded that “gender ideology” be removed from school curricula and, in language echoed in Trump’s order, warned “radical gender ideology is having a devastating effect on … young girls.”
The project also called on the government to “reverse the DEI [diversity, equality, inclusion] revolution in Labor policy”. Trump’s order did so willingly, revoking previous executive orders that protected against discrimination and stating that government agencies must “take immediate steps to end Federal implementation of unlawful and radical DEI ideology.”
A threat to abortion?
While the executive order is first and foremost a frightening attack on trans people, its wording sets alarm bells ringing for abortion rights, too. It will be no surprise that curtailing abortion rights is a key focus of Project 2025 – the mandate mentions “abortion” 199 times.
Trump’s previous administration created a conservative-majority Supreme Court that overruled Roe vs Wade, opening the door for individual states to implement deadly and devastating abortion bans across the US. Now, the executive order’s wording suggests a wider attack on reproductive rights.
The order defines “female” as meaning “a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell”, while male is defined as “a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the small reproductive cell.”
As well as being troubling for trans identity, the wording defines male and female foetal personhood from conception. If the foetus is recognised as a person at conception, then that foetus legally has the same rights as a born person, with catastrophic consequences for pregnant women and people. Foetal personhood means a woman can be prosecuted for murder if she has an abortion, as it violates the right to life. She can face manslaughter charges if she has a miscarriage for which she is blamed.
Bethany Van Kampen Saravia, senior legal and policy adviser at the gender rights NGO Ipas, told openDemocracy that “the language used in this cruel and dehumanising executive order is undoubtedly deliberate and deeply flawed on several counts. Simply put, it is outside of the executive authority to declare a fertilized egg a ‘person’ who has constitutionally protected rights.”
This is not a new threat. So far, 24 US states have included foetal personhood language in laws regulating or banning abortion, while 17 states have foetal personhood by law or judicial decision that applies to either criminal or civil law, or both. There have already been multiple cases where women in the States have been criminalised for miscarriage.
“Personhood arguments have long been used by anti-rights actors in attempts to fully ban and criminalize abortion and to punish pregnant people,” warned Van Kampen Saravia. “This language can also ban some forms of birth control and fertility treatments like IVF. This is a clear and deliberate signal of what is to come from this Administration.”
“It is outside of the executive authority of the President to instate a nationwide abortion ban, yet there is much that he can do to limit access to medication abortion and those threats need to be taken seriously,” she added. “Ipas US condemns these egregious acts of hate and bigotry. These executive orders are nothing shy of human rights violations and the world should be paying very close attention now to what is being feigned as ‘defending women’ and who is actually being targeted and criminalized.”
The ideology behind the ‘natural order’
The attacks on abortion and LGBTQ+ rights are often interlinked, as both pose a threat to the far right idea of a ‘natural order’ which has been undermined by feminism and human rights, and must be returned to through reversing social progress and protections.
The idea that there is a ‘natural order’ which needs to be re-established has its roots in fascist ideology, and its intent is found in almost all attacks on gender rights including from Trump, Putin, and anti-gender ideologues in Europe. It valorises male supremacy, female subordination, and declares the non-existence of LGBTQ+ people.
As I write in my book, the existence of trans people is a grave threat to the natural order and its advocates who want to reassert male supremacy and abolish the rights of LGBTQ+ people. The goal of male supremacist, anti-gender movements is to ‘naturalise’ gendered stereotypes about men’s and women’s behaviour and status: they want to naturalise male supremacy and female inferiority.
The far right wants to tie women’s inferiority to biology, and to claim that harmful gendered stereotypes are biologically innate in order to pin women to specific roles in society. These same stereotypes are used to justify women’s oppression: women are just more nurturing, or they are bad at leadership, for example, they should stay in the domestic sphere and leave the public sphere to the boys. The anti-gender movement wants to claim that women’s oppression is natural, rooted in women’s biology, and therefore cannot be challenged.
But biology is not destiny, as the famous feminist slogan states. The ‘natural order’ of female inferiority and male supremacy is disrupted by feminists saying women can have control over their fertility, or LGBTQ+ people saying one can express their gender identity as they choose. They therefore have to be stopped.
This order has nothing to do with “defending women” from “extreme gender ideology.” The extreme gender ideology is the one that tries to push women into oppressive boxes, ban abortion, and seek to abolish the existence of trans people and the LGBTQ+ community more widely.
The extreme gender ideology is the movement that elects a President after a judge in New York found a rape allegation made against him to be “substantially true”. It is the movement that celebrates his election with the slogan “your body, my choice.”
“Give birth to meat!” Photo by David Frenkel. Courtesy of Activatica