The Gender Ideology Fight Is Far from Over

D onald Trump’s reelection capitalized on the anti–gender ideology backlash. His campaign’s most famous ad said that Kamala Harris was for “they/them” and Donald Trump is for you. In his first weeks, he issued an executive order directing federal departments to recognize only two sexes and defined them as an immutable biological binary. He followed up with threats to cut funding to schools that promote gender ideology. In April, the administration demanded that states receiving Personal Responsibility Education Program (sex-ed) funds remove all references to gender ideology. Another executive order forbids the federal government from funding any kind of sex-change or “conformation” surgery or chemical treatment for minors. Significantly, the administration banned many forms of DEI education across the federal government. This was a powerful move precisely because, without federal contracts, these professional ideological reeducators may end up seeking other professions.

Beyond that, the cultural temperature on this issue has changed entirely. We’re a long way from major sports leagues’ canceling events when states take even the slightest action to contain gender ideology. Instead of people feeling bullied into silence, as they did a decade ago, now people openly express what only J. K. Rowling and already self-canceled people said years ago. Professional comedy has taken a big anti-PC turn and has mocked transgenderism and its zealots.

Precisely because progressivism has seemed like an unstoppable machine that always succeeds in overturning the norms it challenges, the backlash against gender ideology has seemed like a strangely durable aberration, an enterprise that succeeded because it was so overwhelmingly justified and broad-based. Many conservatives and other normies think the battle is won.

They’re probably wrong: A dense network of blue-state governments, federal courts, big-city institutions, and professional bodies has blunted or delayed many of the Trump administration’s actions. And they are starting to push back vigorously.

Democratic attorneys general and governors in New York, California, Massachusetts, and elsewhere have refused to align state law with the federal “biological sex only” definition. They have moved to codify their own bans on conversion therapy or to mandate “gender-affirming care.” The ACLU has launched a lawsuit on behalf of so-called nonbinary citizens seeking passports or Global Entry documents that conform with their self-selected identity.

Colleges, particularly the elite Northeastern schools with large endowments and limited reliance on the federal government, find it easy to work around federal mandates, creating institutional redoubts from which the gender ideology movement can spring. They will still be backed up by many of the major medical bodies.

Whereas the administration touts that it has “restored biological truth” to America’s institutions, the fact is that it’s in a drawn-out form of legal trench warfare with blue states, major institutions, and lavishly funded NGOs who are suing the feds at every level. The old gender identity regime could be rebuilt even more easily than the old one was (partly) dismantled. Even the comedy scene is building up a backlash to the backlash, with popular podcast hosts like Marc Mason denouncing the entire panoply of podcast comedians who don’t share his liberal views.

This fight is far from over.