The Trump administration claims to be rooting out “gender ideology extremism” and “restoring biological truth” in the United States.
In a January 2025 executive order, President Donald Trump decreed that there are only two genders – male and female – and that anyone who believes differently denies “the biological reality of sex.”
Yet as a gender studies scholar, I know what the science really says about gender and sex.
This much we know: Alabama’s gender-affirming care ban will be law for the foreseeable future.
Attorneys for transgender young people and their families sued to overturn it. But after a three-year battle, the plaintiffs and the state moved to dismiss the lawsuit. The attorneys for the families said their clients had “to make heart-wrenching decisions that no family should ever have to make, and they are each making the decisions that are right for them.”
To be sure, the broader legal landscape looks threatening. The U.S. Supreme Court seems poised to uphold a similar ban on gender-affirming care in Tennessee. One can hardly blame parents for giving up on an unjust legal system.
My family and I stopped at Buffalo Wild Wings in Georgia a few weekends ago after watching one of our kids take part in a marching band competition. Surrounding us in the restaurant were wall-mounted televisions. Most showed sports, repeatedly punctuated by political ads.
At least half of them attacked transgender people. And I don’t know that I’ve ever seen anything more rancid on a TV broadcast.
One image after another of smiling human beings, framed as a monstrous threat.
Four members of Alabama’s congressional delegation attacked a private citizen last week.
And now we’re all in danger.
See, U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville and U.S. Reps. Robert Aderholt of Haleyville; Gary Palmer of Hoover, and Dale Strong of Madison went after someone who works at Space Camp.
Not a person accused of harming anyone, much less committing a crime. Not a person who, by any rational standard, counts as a public figure.
My 9-year-old daughter recently asked me if reading really makes you smarter.
Put on the spot, I garbled my answer. I was driving, and we had to get to a softball practice on time.
But here’s what I wanted to say: Reading teaches you new things. But more importantly, it makes you a more empathetic person. So, yeah.
Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall got sued last week over some comments he made a year ago about the state’s near-total abortion ban.
Marshall went on a radio show last year to suggest that assisting an Alabama woman’s efforts to get an abortion out of state was “potentially criminally actionable.”
Physicians and clinicians say that read of the law violates their free speech, due process, and travel rights if they share any sort of information about abortion or reproductive care outside Alabama (still legal, to varying degrees, in about 35 states).
Nearly 500 anti-LGBTQ bills have been introduced in state legislatures in the U.S. in 2023. Many of those bills seek to reduce or eliminate gender-affirming care for transgender minors or to ban drag performances in places where minors could view them.
Most of those bills have not become law. But many of those that have did not survive legal scrutiny when challenged in court.
In 1976, a woman from Roanoke, Virginia named Rhoda received a prescription for two drugs: estrogen and progestin. Twelve months later, a local reporter noted Rhoda’s surprisingly soft skin and visible breasts. He wrote that the drugs had made her “so completely female.”
Indeed, that was the point. The University of Virginia Medical Center in nearby Charlottesville had a clinic specifically for women like Rhoda. In fact, doctors there had been prescribing hormones and performing surgeries – what today we would call gender-affirming care – for years.
In early March 2023, I mixed with the Make America Great Again faithful at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference – a popular meeting, often known as CPAC, for conservative activists and political figures.
I walked, ate, and sat with the attendees at the National Harbor in Maryland over the course of four days. Many of them were dressed in MAGA and pro-Trump gear such as sequined hats and shirts that said things like “Trump won” the 2020 election. A few had tattoos of Trump’s face.
When students today fill out their college applications, they are not just identifying as “she” or “he.” More than 3% of incoming college students use a different set of pronouns. That’s according to my analysis of the more than 1.2 million applications submitted for the 2022-23 school year through the Common App, an online application platform used by more than 900 colleges.
While 3% may not seem like a lot, it represents nearly 37,000 students. It is also indicative of a growing number of young people who identify outside of a gender binary – that is, they do not identify as female or male. For example, the percentage of college students who indicated that they are nonbinary on one national survey has nearly tripled from 1.4% in 2016 to 4.1% in 2021.
Recent studies estimate that 1.8% to 2.7% – or approximately 750,000 to 1.1 million – adolescents in the U.S. identify as transgender or nonbinary. Many of these trans youth experience high levels of negative mental health symptoms due to anti-transgender stigma, discrimination, and lack of family or peer support. A 2021 study found that as much as 72% of trans youth were depressed and half had seriously considered suicide.
In 1942, a 17-year-old transgender girl named Lane visited a doctor in her Missouri hometown with her parents. Lane had known that she was a girl from a very young age, but fights with her parents over her transness had made it difficult for her to live comfortably and openly during her childhood. She had dropped out of high school, and she was determined to get out of Missouri as soon as she was old enough to pursue a career as a dancer.
The doctor reportedly found “a large portion of circulating female hormone” in her body during his examination and suggested to Lane’s parents that he undertake an exploratory laparotomy – a surgery in which he would probe her internal organs in order to find out more about her endocrine system. But the appointment ended abruptly after her father refused the surgery, feeling “the doctor did not know what he was talking about.”
On April 6, 2021, despite Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson’s veto, Arkansas became the first state to prohibit physicians from providing gender-affirming medical care like hormone treatments designed to delay puberty in transgender youth. So-called “puberty blockers” are used to delay the physical changes associated with puberty and provide time for transgender young people to consider their options.
Arkansas physicians now face criminal penalties if they prescribe puberty blockers or other forms of cross-gender health care to transgender youth. Twenty other states are considering similar bills. Some would classify puberty blockers and other gender-affirming medical treatments as child abuse or would revoke the medical licenses of physicians prescribing these therapies.
In the last century, significant progress has been made in advancing gender equity in the United States. Women gained the right to vote, fathers have become more involved parents, and more people and institutions recognize gender identities beyond the binary categories of male and female.
However, persistent gaps remain. Women hold only a quarter of U.S. congressional seats, only a handful of states mandate paid paternity leave, and state legislatures are introducing bills that discriminate against transgender people.
