let’s talk about trump’s first declaration of war

The first anti-LGBT executive order is out. On the surface, it seems mostly anti-Trans, with strikes at non-binary people, but it’s also striking equally at intersex people, and provides the first nose under the tent of attacks on lesbian and gay people in general, and tacks another legal plank to “personhood at conception” as well.

It’s got hate for everyone!

Oh, here’s a node to Erin Reid’s rundown on Bluesky. She was the first person I’ve seen talking about this accurately at all. Some of my read is similar to hers, but I think she missed some important parts of the EO – particularly the point of the first section. It’s all even broader than people are recognising, and we need to fix that.

So let’s start at the beginning, shall we?

The first two paragraphs of this EO describe trans and nonbinary people as intrinsically false, a fake and a fraud, intended and intending to harm women. Similarly to the anti-gay initiatives of the 1980s and 1990s, it declares trans people to be dangerous, immoral, and wrong by feat of existence.

By implication, it also does the same for intersex people, as intersex people are first de facto and then de jure grouped in with trans and nonbinary people in this order.

The third paragraph builds on the first two to assert that the existence of trans, nonbinary, and intersex people is intrinsically criminal and harmful, and a threat to the rights of ‘real’ women. This section conclusion is critical, because the combined framing put into place by these three paragraphs together is not just propaganda, but a presentation of trans/nonbinary/intersex people as a threat to the “dignity, safety, and well-being” of others, specifically women and the “American system” as a whole.

It is, in other words, an assertion that TNI people are an intrinsic harm as a class. As such they form a criminal class, a status which historically exempts people from civil rights protections and authorises pre-emptive legal prejudice against them. In the same way that professional thieves cannot claim for civil rights protections as a criminal class, they are declaring that trans/nonbinary/intersex people are a criminal class too, one to be bound but not protected by law.

They did the same with gays and lesbians in decades past. Just a reminder.

Now. In that context:

Section two provides a series of definitions using terminology we’ve seen in fundamentalist and TERF circles, decrying the very idea of “gender” as a dangerous “ideology,” while defining “female” and “male” as “a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell” and “a person belonging, at conception, the sex that produces the small reproductive cell.” (emphasis added)

This is a nudge towards personhood-at-conception, by the way. Expect more of this as they push for a national comprehensive abortion ban.

But aside from that – this is a really weird way of saying “XX WOMAN XY MAN” without saying it. I think they’re either trying real hard not to say that, though I don’t know why. Either these definitions will catch couple of percent of “assigned female at birth” and “assigned male at birth” people and throw them into the opposite categories, or they’re trying to avoid that in a way that makes the attempt to avoid genetics self-nullifying, since the only “at conception” marker is genetics and it’ll fall back to that in practice no matter what.

Given that science knows at this point of multiple cases of women who have given birth to babies they carried normally despite having XY chromosomes, they’re gonna create a bunch of legal “men” who have given birth to children.

But they won’t care.

So.

Section three starts getting into the meat of some of the immediate attacks. Skipping down a little, here’s where things get spicy:

Section 3F starts justifying a federal ban on bathroom use by trans, nonbinary, and intersex people in businesses and schools. It doesn’t go directly there by name, but it declares the legal framework supporting TNI people to be invalid. Section 4D, further down, goes directly to that goal, banning TNI people from all “intimate spaces” – which, naturally, includes bathrooms.

As part of making that happen, Section 3B orders said agencies to use civil rights protections against trans/nonbinary/intersex people to “protect men and women as biologically distinct sexes.”

This is not a new strategy of attack. Similarly to how Trump in his first term tried to use civil rights law to attack health care availability for lesbian and gay people – declaring in regulations that carte blanche denial of medical care to queers was a religious right and to be defended by the Justice Department – here they are ordering weaponisation of civil rights law against trans, nonbinary, and intersex people.

The intent here is to assert that any accommodation – or even the mere presence of – TNI people is a violation of the civil rights of anyone who objects, and agencies are directed to side with the complainant in all cases.

They follow through on this explicitly in the entirety of Section 5, which explicitly orders the Economic Equal Opportunity Commission, the Civil Rights division in Justice, and several other groups within the Federal government to take the position that the 1964 Civil Rights act and all other civil rights law are to be used to attack trans/nonbinary and intersex people in workplaces and “federally funded institutions” (schools et al) as violations of women’s rights.

The plain-text intent is that trans, nonbinary, and intersex people are an intrinsically harmful / criminal class and are to be persecuted by law. TNI people’s existence violates the rights of women, and will be punished accordingly.

They promised eradication; this is the first wave of attempted delivery.

Now, I left out a section, which contains an important additional change:

Section 3D raises the spectre of State Department travel document revocations. Passports. IDs.

I’ve read this a few times and I can’t tell if the wording specifically does or does not allow revocation of existing documents (as happened in Florida and Texas) or only on renewal or new issuances, and that’s an important question.

Given that these departments will get packed full of Heritage Foundation ideologues, I again warn everyone to expect maximalist interpretations and enforcement.

We should have a clearer idea on this pretty soon. Accordingly, it’s critical to watch for document revocations starting to happen. Particularly with passports. I suspect the lowest-hanging fruit will be passports with an “X” marker, as opposed to “M” or “F.” If that starts to happen, assume they are already crawling through records to find anyone whose documents they can revoke.

I have to admit, this one surprises me a little. In the migration waves from Florida, they were very happy to see queers leaving – in some cases actively taunting refugees on “X” and other social media from government accounts, telling them “that’s what we want, get the fuck out.”

One might accordingly expect they’d want to leave travel documents in place to encourage national departures, but this implies otherwise.

I should also mention Section 4A, 4B, and 4C, which I never got to above. 4A and 4B bar trans women from rape shelters (despite being at high risk of rape; they see that as a benefit, not a problem) and women’s prisons. 4C further “shall ensure that no Federal funds are expended” for any transition support; in Florida, language like this has been used as part of a wider programme of forced detransition.

One can imagine a sequence where maximal enforcement leads to not just travel document revocation but prosecutions for applying for documents while trans, leading to prison sentences where you are forced to detransition. It’s the sort of thing they’d like to do, but there are a lot of steps between here and there. For now.

There are more sections; they are less sweeping. 3A requires agencies develop 30-day action plans to implement all this. 3C instructs all Federal agencies to discard the use of “gender” in favour of “sex,” and specifically the definition of “sex” described above, as part of all this. Sections 3E and 3G are all about “thou shall not talk about gender, only sex” and spending no money to support even the idea of “gender.”

Section 7 is an implementation deadline and revocation of all previous Biden administration protections of LGBT rights, and I say LGBT rights because they are specifically revoking an anti-bullying programme protecting all queer kids. They also specifically revoke a protective order for intersex children in this section, which is the de jour inclusion promised above.

None of this is an accident, if you’re unsure. They wax nostalgic about how much they loved bulling queer kids, how much fun it was and how they want to do it again. No, really. Sometimes in those exact words. See the link right there, in this very paragraph? It’s an example of some of them saying exactly that.

They love hurting children. It’s genuinely sick.

Anyway.

It’s a full declaration of war against the existence of trans, nonbinary, and intersex people. Under no circumstances should it be read as anything but that. It does, fortunately, acknowledge that some of this EO cannot take effect without changes in law, as passed by Congress; they will attempt to include those changes in law in his demanded “one big beautiful reconciliation bill” this spring.

People do not understand what this EO really is. Most politicians won’t understand what this EO really is. The political media will not inform them.

Once again, it’s up to us.

Tell everyone. Tell your reps. Demand better. You likely won’t get it, but, well… you might. And you have to try, or you may as well go ahead and strap Elon’s inaugural Nazi salutes to your own arm now.

And keep a weather eye out for passport revocations.

That’s going to be the canary in this coal mine.

#fascism #transRights #uspolitics

The #SCOTUS ruling on #TikTok was really unfortunate because it was based on the justices not understanding the technology, the facts of the situation.

You could see in the oral arguments that they didn't understand how the platform was engineered, they got multiple things very wrong about it. And that's really a shame.

The role of the Supreme Court in the US is to interpret laws and review lower court rulings, but in this case the issue wasn't either of those, it was a matter of fact that they struggled with, not law.

This legal proceeding was rushed. The two sides did not have time to hammer out their factual disagreement through the normal course of the normal process. And so when it got to the Supreme Court, the Court was presented with a record with inconsistencies.

And this is why we should never try to rush these legal processes.

The justices seemed to think that a shutdown wasn't even on the table. Well, the platform shut down. The justices were proven wrong. Unfortunately, as far as I know there is no procedure for the Court to fix a factual error like this. We are stuck with this ruling until who knows when some future case might provide the opportunity to fix it.

It's legally tragic.

#USPolitics #law #technology