PIP welcomes the Trump Administration’s “Day One” Executive Order “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government” (January 20, 2025). This Executive Order repudiates the core claim of gender ideology, which seeks to “eradicate the biological reality of sex,” by redefining “sex” (a biological, immutable characteristic of the person) to mean “gender identity” (an “internal, fluid, and subjective sense of self unmoored from biological facts”).
In addition, the Executive Order calls out the “legal and other socially coercive” tools by which gender ideology enables “men to self-identify as women and gain access to intimate single-sex spaces and activities designed for women, from women’s domestic abuse shelters to women’s workplace showers.” The damage wrought by gender ideology to women’s safety, privacy, and opportunity is substantial. As the Executive Order rightly notes, however, gender ideology has had “a corrosive impact not just on women but on the validity of the entire American system.”
As gender ideology has become embedded in language, law, and government policy, it has undermined trust in the integrity of science, medicine, and government. It has fueled widespread indoctrination of children and adults, coercing their endorsement and compliance in a self-contradictory, ideological set of fantasy beliefs about the human person. The Executive Order takes concrete steps to reverse this trajectory. It defines, for purposes of Executive branch policy, the terms: “male,” “female,” “man” and “boy,” “woman” and “girl,” “sex,” “gender identity,” and “gender ideology.” As the Executive Order correctly notes, “basing Federal policy on truth is critical to scientific inquiry, public safety, morale, and trust in government itself.”
The Executive Order lists specific changes, effective immediately, that require federal agencies to enforce sex-based laws accordingly and to interpret statutes, regulations, and agency guidance in accord with the defined terms – and biological reality. It specifically rejects the use of “gender” or “gender identity” in personnel files, government identity documents, etc., and requires “government-issued identification documents…[to] accurately reflect the holder’s sex.” In addition, the Secretary of Health and Human Services will provide further guidance to the federal government, consonant with the Executive Order, within 30 days.
The Executive Order specifically notes that federal funding should not be used to promote gender ideology, prohibits the unjust practice of housing males who identify as “women” in women’s prisons, forbids the use of federal money on medical or surgical “gender transitions” for prisoners, and mandates that appropriate agencies take steps to “ensure that intimate spaces designated for women, girls, or females (or for men, boys, or males) are designated by sex and not identity.” Moreover, the Executive Order rescinds multiple guidance documents from prior administrations that promote gender ideology in education.
The impact of this Executive Order will be dramatic, a significant step in reversing the damaging impact of government promotion of gender ideology. Particularly welcome are the clear definitions of male and female, man and woman, grounded in the reality of the body. This will go a long way toward restoring sanity to our post-modern culture.
However, it is critically important to realize that gender ideology will not be vanquished by executive order, and many of the downstream consequences of gender ideology will continue to plague our culture and injure the vulnerable.
This Order does not specifically address, much less prohibit, the social, medical, or even surgical transition of children, a devastating, ongoing medical scandal. This past December, the Supreme Court heard arguments in United Stats v. Skrmetti involving a state law that prohibits “gender” medical interventions in minors. The U.S. government, under the Biden administration, had intervened in that case to attack the law as discriminatory. It is unclear whether that case will yield a Supreme Court decision, given the change in administrations.
In addition, education is administered by states rather than the federal government. Because public education has been completely captured by gender ideology (and, predictably, the professional education advocacy groups oppose the new Executive Order), PIP expects that, at least in many states, government schools will continue promoting gender ideology, particularly where states and districts have adopted policies that specifically endorse and implement gender ideology. Parents must continue to be vigilant about the tone and posture of teacher trainings, and assess curricular resources, school policies, and student clubs for promotion of erroneous beliefs reflecting gender ideology.
Parental rights also are not addressed in this Executive Order. This spring, the Supreme Court is set to address the parental rights’ implications of coercive gender ideology curricula in public schools in Mahmoud v. Taylor—a case that exposes the anthropological error at the heart of gender ideology, and its religious liberty implications. But other parental rights aspects are unaddressed, including the growing tendency of state and local “child protection” services to define parental refusal to “affirm” a child’s expressed “gender identity” as “child abuse.” (The Supreme Court recently declined to take a case that addressed this issue.)
Executive orders, by definition, pertain to federal government policy and actions. Consequently, this Executive Order does not address the issue of gender ideology in the private sector.
Finally, as evident from the “LGBTQ” lecture from the pulpit at the National Cathedral on January 21, gender ideology has made inroads in various religious denominations, distorting Scripture and doctrine while weaponizing false “compassion” and denying the truth about the human person. None of this can be countered by federal executive action.
The Person and Identity Project has been at the forefront of efforts to counter gender ideology and promote the truth of the human person. We have long insisted on the importance of reality-based terminology, specifically the use of “sex,” not “gender” or “gender identity.” We applaud this Executive Order as a vital step in reclaiming our culture’s understanding of the truth about “who we are.”
But our work is not finished. It is more crucial than ever. We will continue to make the case in the public square of the truth of the human person—created in the image and likeness of God, male and female, body and soul, gifted with inherent dignity and a human nature, entrusted with a purpose on earth and called to an eternal destiny.
We are grateful to all who support our work as we continue not only to promote the truth of the human person and counter gender ideology but also to equip others to do the same.
– Written by Mary Hasson and Theresa Farnan
To read the full Executive Order, click here.
To read more about it from a Catholic, psychological perspective, click here.
