US President Trump orders government recognize male, female as only sexes

Tuesday, January 28, 2025

On January 20, the day of Donald Trump‘s inauguration as the 47th president of the United States, he enacted an executive order entitled “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government”, declaring that the United States government would only recognize male and female as sexes, withdrawing the recognition of other gender identities. At his inauguration, Trump declared that executive orders would immediately be made to remove government diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs and that the use of gender for identification would be revoked and “it will henceforth be the official policy of the United States government that there are only two genders, male and female.”

The order revoked various rights for non-binary citizens, including the right to select the “X” option when asked for their gender for government identification documents, including passports; this right had been established by the Joe Biden administration. The order declares the following:

“‘Sex’ is not a synonym for and does not include the concept of ‘gender identity.’ ‘Female’ means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell. ‘Male’ means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the small reproductive cell. ‘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 regard this false claim as true. ‘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.”

The US State Department website removed references to gender identity, including the option to choose a third gender, “X” on passport applications on January 20. Federal agencies have been ordered by Trump to “implement changes to require that government-issued identification documents, including passports, visas, and Global Entry cards, accurately reflect the holder’s sex.” They have also been ordered to “remove all statements, policies, regulations, forms, communications, or other internal and external messages that promote or otherwise inculcate gender ideology, and shall cease issuing such statements, policies, regulations, forms, communications, or other messages. Agency forms that require an individual’s sex shall list male or female, and shall not request gender identity. Agencies shall take all necessary steps, as permitted by law, to end the federal funding of gender ideology.”

Following the order, the Human Rights Campaign, a lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) group said via its president, Kelley Robinson, the “targeting [of] the LGBTQ+ community serve[s] no other purpose than to hurt our families and our communities.”

“The incoming administration is trying to divide our communities in the hope that we forget what makes us strong […] But we refuse to back down or be intimidated. We are not going anywhere. And we will fight back against these harmful provisions with everything we’ve got,” Robinson declared.

Trump said at the inauguration, “I will end the government policy of trying to socially engineer race and gender into every aspect of public and private life. We will forge a society that is colorblind and merit-based.”

The first passport with the “X” option for gender identification was established in 2021, with the State Department under the Biden administration commenting that the action was representative of their commitment to supporting the “freedom, dignity, and equality” of all citizens, including LGBTQ people. Prior to the move, an intersex person living in Colorado, Dana Zzyym, had been involved in a lawsuit with the State Department that lasted almost a decade; Zzyym initially sued the Department in 2014 after their request for a passport with an identification option for non-binaries was refused.