In the wake of President Donald Trump’s inauguration Monday, many marginalized communities in the U.S. are now facing oppressive legislation and an empowered far-right. Of the 26 executive orders Trump signed on day one – 17 more than former president Joe Biden signed on his first day in 2021 – one has particularly daunting verbiage for the transgender community.
The order states its cause as “Defending women from gender ideology extremism and restoring biological truth to the federal government.”
The verbiage of how it will enact this doesn’t attempt to hide its bigotry: “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.”
Although it never clearly uses the term transgender, it is beyond clear who “ideologues who deny the biological reality of sex” are referring to. Transgender women are often viewed in right-wing ideology as adjacent to cisgender men. Therefore, the belief that these ideologues are attempting to “gain access to intimate single-sex spaces and activities designed for women” is inherently a pervasive action rather than one just trying to conform to their identity.
The order as a whole is a mess, referring to males as “a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the small reproductive cell,” which is nobody, as all fetuses are phenotypically female at conception.
However, the definitional inaccuracy will largely be overlooked, as transgender women are barred from accessing not just the spaces, but gender-affirming care they not just desire, but require. One such space that has been under attack long before Trump re-entered office is sports.
Perhaps due to the new administration’s propensity to stoke the fires of the alt-right, protests have taken place recently vying for the ban of all transgender athletes in NCAA sports. While these protesters are vying for fairness in competition – a sexist claim that inherently places men above women – they are protesting against a minuscule minority.
The several dozen protesters ESPN reported on outweigh the “less than 10” transgender athletes that NCAA president Charlie Baker estimates populate college sports. Beyond the direct persecution of transgender women, cisgender women who don’t conform internally or externally to femininity showcase the misogyny intertwined with transphobia.
Barbra Banda is a prime example of this. Banda was born a female and became an incredible soccer player, winning the BBC Women’s Footballer of the Year award in 2024. Despite this, transgender-exclusionary radical feminists like J.K. Rowling attacked Banda’s womanhood based on her naturally higher-than-average levels of testosterone.
Another recent example of how intersectionality between transphobia and sexism often intersect in sports is the case of Imane Khelif, who was attacked vigorously during the 2024 Paris Olympics by anti-transgender protesters for possessing naturally occurring XY chromosomes.
This all stems from the faulty belief that sports are an inherently masculine practice and women must be inherently feminine in contrast. When that line gets blurred, members of right-wing politics are often angered, believing the participation of women in sports to be an attack on their worldview.
Additionally, when transgender women are added to the equation, it blurs the line further for them. Rather than accepting that transgender women are women, and gender – and gender expression – does not occur on a binary they attempt to restrict and force society to conform to their views.
That is what the executive order signed by Trump attempts to do; ignore the science in favor of transphobic and misogynistic claims that pigeonhole women and deny the existence of transgender people.
Sports can often be a window into larger societal acceptance for marginalized groups. For example, Jackie Robinson’s acceptance into the MLB in 1947 was a jump-starting moment for the Civil Rights Movement’s formal start in 1954. If transgender women and people as a whole are to be accepted into society, they must be given space within the confines of sports. In this line of thought, the president’s executive order is a direct step backward toward a more equal society.
Logan Adams is a junior studying journalism. Please note that the views and opinions of the columnists do not reflect those of The Post. Want to talk more about it? Let Logan know by tweeting him @LoganPAdams.
