I attended both the Women’s March (as a reporter, not as an attendee) and Donald Trump’s first Inauguration in 2017. The Resistance was out in full force. There were so many activists in pink pussy hats that it took well over an hour to move a couple of dozen yards; the crowd spilled across the streets, up into trees, and even the massive jumbotrons featuring the A-list lineup of speakers—Michael Moore, Scarlett Johansson, Ashley Judd, Glorian Steinem, and Planned Parenthood CEO Cecile Richards (who in a strange twist of fate, died on the day of Trump’s second Inauguration) couldn’t reach all of the gathered thousands.
This time around feels very different. The Women’s March — renamed, without irony, the “People’s March — only attracted around 10,000 last Saturday. On Monday, Donald Trump, after announcing in his second Inaugural address that the U.S. government would only recognize two genders going forward, signed an executive order mere hours after arriving back at the White House. Titled “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism And Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government” is an incredibly comprehensive document that rejects the idea of gender as distinct from sex outright, lays out the correct terminology in great detail, and lists the various ways gender ideology will be eliminated. The first paragraph alone is simply excellent:
Across the country, ideologues who deny the biological reality of sex have increasingly used legal and other socially coercive means to permit 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. This is wrong. Efforts to eradicate the biological reality of sex fundamentally attack women by depriving them of their dignity, safety, and well-being. The erasure of sex in language and policy has a corrosive impact not just on women but on the validity of the entire American system. Basing Federal policy on truth is critical to scientific inquiry, public safety, morale, and trust in government itself.
The backlash has been predictable, but it feels … tired, somehow. Defeated. Perhaps this is because transgender issues hurt the Democrats badly in the 2024 election and likely contributed to Trump’s victory. Perhaps it is because the tech billionaires — Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg — are moving on and no longer enforcing the top-down narrative that was always astro-turfed rather than changed from the grassroots up to begin with. The LGBT movement still owns the entertainment industry and much of academia, true. But Trump’s executive order felt like an endorsement of the prevailing view, and even Democrats seem unsure of what to do about their suddenly inconvenient allies.
Mother Jones announced that “Trump Declares War on Transgender People.” The San Francisco Chronicle’s headline: “Trump executive order seeks to erase the existence of transgender people.” The Human Rights Campaign claimed that the Trump administration was “taking aim” at LGBT people. And of course, at the Inaugural Prayer Service at the National Cathedral on Tuesday, Bishop Mariann Edgar Budd took the opportunity to take aim at the Trump administration’s policies on immigration — and LGBT issues, telling Trump, Vance, and the gathered attendees: “In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now. There are gay, lesbian and transgender children in Democratic, Republican and independent families, some who fear for their lives.”
Of course, there is no such thing as a “transgender child”— but then again, there is no such thing as a female bishop, either. Clips of her bully pulpit moment promptly went viral, but the sight of an elderly LGBT activist cosplaying as a clergyperson didn’t quite project the strength the LGBT movement claims it did. Indeed, walking through the Capitol yesterday, I noted that LGBT or trans flags were displayed outside the offices of precisely two members of Congress. If a “transgender genocide” is underway, or the Trump administration is seeking to “erase the existence” of trans-identifying people, or a declaration of “war” has been launched, one would think there would be a few more. Or maybe — just maybe — the ludicrous “genocide” claims were never fully believed even by the politicians who leveled them. That’s probably a kinder conclusion than assuming they believe that a genocidal war is going on but are simply too busy with other issues to pay attention to it.
There are also those who are accusing Trump of waging a “culture war” with a small, vulnerable population. The truth is precisely the opposite. For a decade, trans activists have swept through our institutions. I was in the crowd when Obama referenced the Stonewall riots during his Second Inaugural, a phrase widely interpreted to be an endorsement of the transgender movement; he sealed the deal two years later in his 2015 State of the Union Address when he became the first president to use the term “transgender.” He and Biden gave the transgender movement everything they asked for, and now Trump is rejecting the war on reality championed by his two Democratic predecessors — and he is doing so on behalf of the common-sense majority.
