Michael Gurian has been working at the forefront of sex and gender issues since the late 1980s to bring neuroscience into the public discussion.  To help our culture advance clear sex and gender policy, he has suggested that we use the term sexgender instead of gender to explore our own biological and cultural imperatives (Boys, A Rescue Plan, with Sean Kullman, 2025).

In today’s blog post, Dr. Gurian explores President Donald Trump’s January 20, 2025 Executive Order (EO) titled, “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.”  From the position of the all-inclusive sexgender, there is a lot that makes sense in this EO, Gurian notes, but there are some areas that would benefit from change.

I will analyze the Executive Order via it’s own categories by weaving my comments in italics within the Order itself: “EXECUTIVE ORDER, January 20, 2025, https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/defending-women-from-gender-ideology-extremism-and-restoring-biological-truth-to-the-federal-government/. By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including section 7301 of title 5, United States Code, it is hereby ordered:

“Section 1. Purpose. 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.”

President Trump’s point here is common sense and fits overwhelming evidence from the fields of genetics, biology, neurochemistry, and neuro-physiology. Sex has always come first in human development with gender as a social construct that should come second so that, first, doctors know how to treat the patient’s sex, and overall, societies understand how to most successfully raise girls into women and boys into men. 

In the 1970s, our culture began to shift from using “sex” to describe males and females to “gender.”  This happened for academic, political, and linguistic reasons.  For instance, in court cases, when the word “sex” was used, it was seen as meaning sexual intercourse.  “Gender” took hold as replacement for “sex” and has gained linguistic power for the last 50 years.  The linguistic compromise I posit as necessary for our culture going forward–at least in professional and medical work–is, thus, sexgender.  It puts sex first but includes gender.

Trump is also correct on this point: in hopes of providing equality and a life of dignity for all people– including trans, intersex, and gender-nonconforming citizens–socially coercive efforts over the simultaneous decades have negated biology and advanced the social construct, gender, as the primary arbiter of sexgender in human nature. Women’s and girls’ rights (and the healthy lives of boys and men) have been set back by the recent coercion, though that coercion was well-meant.

Meanwhile, the direction I will travel in this critique is a moderate one, especially in pointing out that LGBTQIA + people are our brothers, sisters, doctors, engineers, neighbors, coworkers, friends, and citizens. We need to protect the rights of all people by understanding the unique place that exceptions-to-the-rule also hold in our evolving and innovative society. The tenor of this Trump Executive Order, as we’ll explore below, is protective of biological sex, but does not show enough understanding of various other elements of sex, gender, and sexgender. In Boys, A Rescue Plan, I look at these carefully, pointing out what we’ve known via brain research for five decades:

*LGB (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual) is as natural to the brain as heterosexuality is, housed in the sexually dimorphic nucleus of the anterior hypothalamus, in approximately 5 – 10 percent of mammals and humans. Our society can support LGB people by giving them equal rights as our Supreme Court has done and understanding that LBG exists in our brain’s sex—it is not a “gender choice.” Fortunately, the Trump EO supports sexual biology, which is where homosexuality is housed, and thus should support the sovereignty and dignity of LGB people.

Intersex (the I part of LGBTQIA +) people are a larger population of people than most Americans—and indeed most people in the world—realize. They are born intersex just as a gay person is born gay. Like a gay person, intersex people may not realize they are intersex until later in childhood/adolescence, but they will sense that something is going on very young. Later, perhaps, they will learn that instead of XY and XX as their base sex chromosome, they have combinations of XXY, XYY, XO, and others. They could be born with both sets of genitals evident or not (both sets can be hidden or never grow) but either way, their bloodstream and brain are intersex at a molecular level. Somewhere just below 1% of people in the U.S. and elsewhere are intersex. They will need an “Intersex” category on documentation (more on this below). The Cleveland Clinic provides a good explanation of Intersex here: https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/articles/16324-intersex.

*We can best support gender non-conforming individuals (the Q + part of LGBTQIA *) by understanding them as bridge brains that lean toward the middle of the male/female brain spectrum. They “bridge” the sexgenders. In my talks and lectures, I show SPECT scans of male/female brains including male/female bridge brains. By educating the public, including parents, children, and advocacy groups about bridge brains, we can use scientifically grounded and common sense language to help our children and adults understand the part that sex plays in all lives and the part that gender plays in the lives of people with gender dysphoria. While being intersex is not a disorder but an inborn trait, being gender nonconforming first presents to parents and mental health practitioners as linked to depression (dysphoria). We need to start there with treatment, and one way to start there is to re-frame the spectrum of male/female brains for the patient/client via use of “sexgender” and “bridge brain.” In Boys, A Rescue Plan, Sean Kullman and I go into this much more.

*Trans and gender nonbinary/gender nonconforming are not the same thing just as intersex and gender dysphoria can overlap but are not the same thing. Trans people are extreme bridge brains. Twenty to thirty brain centers in a trans person scan like the other-sex brain at the University of Cleveland Medical School and elsewhere. While a gender nonconforming child is exploring sexgender identity via dysphoria and self-assessment and will, statistically speaking, likely complete the experiment within months or a year or two, a trans person will likely try to complete transition to the other brain sex if resources are available—the molecular pull of the trans brain to transition is as powerful as most other human drives. Some gender nonbinary children and adults are trans, but even despite the social contagion of the last 5 years regarding “trans” and “gender nonconforming” among girls, most of the children who say they are trans are not. But like our intersex citizens, our trans citizens are not well supported in the President’s EO and need better support. Trans is not a “gender choice” just like intersex and gay/lesbian are not.

*Some of the public distrust in government and institutions of public safety (including distrust of the medical community) to which Trump refers grows from extreme academic/medical rationales that use cultural explorations to pretend we can or should efface natural imperatives for ideological reasons. Sex is a hugely successful natural imperative in human evolution. Quite simply, we flourish today because of sex. Medical, scientific, and political communities will regain the public trust by modifying “gender-affirming” care to again respect sex first especially in growing children, but also while educating and assisting gender dysphoric children and adults to explore gender and gender identity as a part of the person’s freedom of expression. For many Americans, meanwhile, distrust of government and institutions of public safety will now occur because this EO does not keep our trans and intersex citizens from harm and it does not help our gender nonbinary citizens come to equilibrium in their explorations.

*What is called “gender affirming care” in our present academic and medical environments is a primary target of this EO. This kind of care is seen by many, including President Trump, as a recent medical rush (mainly persistent in the U.S.) to make gender nonconforming children into trans using significant biological intervention. A basic return to sex as the first cause in sexgender will help regain social trust, but as I will note in a moment, if that return to sex does not include various practical nuances of sexgender, a vibrant minority of Americans will not be served in our democracy either. These people will distrust their public institutions and lack of service for them will have profound consequences on them as individuals, and from there, on the collective good. More on this in a moment.

This unhealthy road is paved by an ongoing and purposeful attack against the ordinary and longstanding use and understanding of biological and scientific terms, replacing the immutable biological reality of sex with an internal, fluid, and subjective sense of self unmoored from biological facts. Invalidating the true and biological category of “woman” improperly transforms laws and policies designed to protect sex-based opportunities into laws and policies that undermine them, replacing longstanding, cherished legal rights and values with an identity-based, inchoate social concept. Accordingly, my Administration will defend women’s rights and protect freedom of conscience by using clear and accurate language and policies that recognize women are biologically female, and men are biologically male.

Sec. 2. Policy and Definitions. It is the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female. These sexes are not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality. Under my direction, the Executive Branch will enforce all sex-protective laws to promote this reality, and the following definitions shall govern all Executive interpretation of and application of Federal law and administration policy:

(a) “Sex” shall refer to an individual’s immutable biological classification as either male or female. “Sex” is not a synonym for and does not include the concept of “gender identity.”

(b) “Women” or “woman” and “girls” or “girl” shall mean adult and juvenile human females, respectively.

(c) “Men” or “man” and “boys” or “boy” shall mean adult and juvenile human males, respectively.

(d) “Female” means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell.

(e) “Male” means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the small reproductive cell.

These statements and definitions, like the EO’s opening, are important to the public conversation because the X (female) chromosome is housed in all female cells and the Y (male) chromosome is housed in all male cells, thus, social and practical definitions of male and female do fall along chromosomal (larger/smaller sex gamete) lines. This makes the Trump administration correct that sexual dimorphism (two sexes) appears in humans and mammals at a cellular level. A “gender non-conforming boy,” for instance, is still a boy–his sex has not changed; a”gender non-conforming girl” is still a girl–her sex has not changed.

All this said, for an intersex person and for a trans person once transition has significantly begun, more nuance will be needed, as I will develop below.

(f) “Gender ideology” replaces the biological category of sex with an ever-shifting concept of self-assessed gender identity, permitting the false claim that males can identify as and thus become women and vice versa, and requiring all institutions of society to regard this false claim as true. Gender ideology includes the idea that there is a vast spectrum of genders that are disconnected from one’s sex. Gender ideology is internally inconsistent, in that it diminishes sex as an identifiable or useful category but nevertheless maintains that it is possible for a person to be born in the wrong sexed body.

Here, more nuance is needed and can occur if we stop pitting sex and gender against each other but instead use the word “sexgender” for discussions of sex and gender. While gender ideology in the Big Three (academics, government, media) is ultra-focused on only using “gender” in social discourse, and while the Big Three has tried to replace biological sex as our evolutionary norm with gender as the norm, the Trump team is wrong that women can’t identify as men and men can’t identify as women. A small number of people have proven that this does happen, especially for trans and intersex people. While we can argue that children being gender nonconforming is a “fad,” a trans person–a trans brain (and, at times, an intersex brain)–presents to health professionals as much more than gender nonconforming.

In fact, she or he is living out a neural life counter to anatomical biology in enough ways that I suggest the medical community create a new category of awareness, diagnosis, treatment, and support: “Brain Sex Dysphoria.” While Brain Sex Dysphoria does not yet exist in physicians or mental health professional manuals, it needs to exist and it needs be used if we are to equally serve the minority of people who are born trans and intersex. The present diagnostic term “Gender Dysphoria” is too broad to encounter the spectrum of depressive episodes a trans or intersex person often presents to clinicians. Further, the word “gender” ought not be a part of the trans or intersex diagnosis since gender is a social construct (e.g. “transgender” should be changed to just “trans”). The trans or intersex person has likely felt trans/intersex since very early in life and it can be traumatic for this person to be forced into a bathroom that does not fit his/her brain sex. Altering the Trump EO toward more nuance on this point would allow the building of unisex bathrooms (as many corporations and schools are already doing) to help alleviate the trauma that a trans/intersex person can feel in certain spaces that do not fit his/her brain sex. Unisex bathrooms in all public spaces, and awareness of what trans and intersex are, can erase worries, also, that men are using women’s bathrooms and vice versa.

Overall, then, to be respectful of sex and yet also understand nuance, let’s alter our medical, psychiatric, and cultural conversation toward sexgender. Let’s include Brain Sex Dysphoria in medical and diagnostic frameworks. Let’s understand the difference between people who are trans/intersex and people who are mainly trending gender nonbinary for depressive and/or social reasons. Let’s ensure equal rights for all people by better understanding the gender nonconforming children who often call themselves “trans.”

The Trump EO does not allow for the fact that a trans person is not using “gender identity” as false concept–the trans brain does operate like the other sex brain and our proof is on the brain scans. Meanwhile, most gender nonconforming children will, by 17 – 18, realize they are LGB and back off of being gender non-conforming, so it is important that we don’t–culture-wide and throughout our schools–conflate trans and gender nonconforming identities too completely, but by 17, a trans person will not tend to back off. If that person is forced to do so, suicide can result. Until our society and its leaders make the distinction between trans and gender nonbinary scientifically and medically, e.g., adding Brain Sex Dysphoria to our diagnostic manuals, we will tend to choose extreme social political positions in which 1) every exception is put into the gender dysphoria category and/or 2) we insist there is no such thing as a trans/intersex person.

Both extreme positions are counterproductive to our democratic goals. Better would be to assist exceptions-to-the-rule, e.g., trans/intersex people whose cells are sex-gamete reflective and whose brains, for reasons at this point unresolved, operate much like the other sex brain, to carve out a specific and helpful category that is politically equal (a position not demoted or neglected yet also not replacing the primacy of operational sex gametes in more than 99% of human beings). I will suggest, below, a way to do this on government and institutional paperwork

(g) “Gender identity” reflects a fully internal and subjective sense of self, disconnected from biological reality and sex and existing on an infinite continuum, that does not provide a meaningful basis for identification and cannot be recognized as a replacement for sex.

The tenor of this point grows from the obvious overuse of “gender” in our social conversation these last forty years, mentioned above. Overusing gender—not understanding sex at birth—parents invite friends to “gender reveal parties” but there is no gender at a child’s birth. Elsewhere, parents are pressured to raise “gender neutral children” despite that children are a sex not a gender until their brains are old enough to start understanding social constructs. Even despite that some sexgender exceptions will emerge in some children later in life, the parent who raises a child according to their sex (including expanded definitions of what “boy” and “girl” can be) will rarely go wrong—resilience will build from this early alignment of child with sex because it will nurture the nature of the child from the standpoint of the child’s 23rd chromosome and, thus, the child’s molecular structure.

If and as gender questions and sexgender role questions emerge in late childhood or adolescence—including real or socially contagious questions of gender identity—those can be answered with clear categories suggested above (bridge brain, trans, intersex, gender nonbinary, gay/lesbian). All parents, wherever they fall on these issues, need not worry about dressing girls in pink and boys in blue (these do not have negative affect on children) nor that girls and boys play with dolls and sticks differently (they tend to do that and there is no harm), nor worry about other differences in boys and girls that every parent has experienced. These expressions of sex can be encouraged and respected even while parents give boys “girls'” jobs and give girls “boys’ jobs.” Gender roles can evolve in a family and community without throwing out sex.

At the same time, immediately and practically, since “gender” and “gender identity” do not replace sex but are secondary to it, our society must end the policy of allowing untransitioned juvenile or adult biological males to identify as women and then be housed in women’s prisons. And we must stop untransitioned males from playing–during and after puberty–in girls and women’s competitive sports (before puberty, boys and girls play sports together for convenience and joy—the male/female issue grows once sports become competitive). Our Big Three arbiters, especially our academic cultures, want to change old boundaries regarding changing sexgender roles and that is useful, but their old gender feminist concept that equality cannot come without sameness is false. We do not need to pretend sex does not exist to have equality for all people. In fact, we get equality for all people by starting with sex and protecting boys and girls and women and men as equals via sexgender.

But, again, the Trump EO lacks nuance on “gender identity.” “Gender identity” does in fact exist because of the true and existing sexgender spectrum in human development. Approximately 4 billion brains are evolving on a female-brain spectrum and 4 billion brains on a male brain spectrum. Gender identity, especially if we re-cast it as bridge brain, can be seen as an internal and subjective sense of self that begins in biological reality of sex then expands into the psycho-social continuum of sexgender in the brain. In this way, gender can be connected to biological reality—not replace it—but also be seen as neurologically expansive.

To have this nuance, and to have nuance that does not negate the primacy of sex, I return to the earlier point: we will need to stop using “gender” for everything and starting using “sexgender” for our human conversation. As we do this we would change the too-broad “gender identity” to “sexgender identity” which would allow for the obvious connection between gender and sex to be useful to us as an evolving culture while also allowing sex to remain primary while also allowing exceptions-to-the-rule (LGB, trans, intersex, and gender exploring) to be protected.

To go further with this, if we use sexgender across the board, “gender identity” can leave federal documents but our nation’s bridge brains (many of whom now call themselves gender nonconforming or gender nonbinary) will have the freedom to experiment with sexgender on the male spectrum and female spectrum to no harm and to help with dysphoria.

Thus, in review, I suggest, politics and policy take this moderate political position–

*use “sexgender” not “gender” to include all people;

*admit that there is a sexgender spectrum along the male and female continua;

*hold accurately to the fact that male and female (sexual dimorphism) is not erased by the existence of sexgender spectra;

*educate politicians, medical professionals, school systems, parents, and citizens on sexgender, including all categories, so that everyone is trained to help all kids and all adults;

*help our exceptional trans and intersex people by using “sex-based identity” and “brain sex dysphoria” rather than grouping trans/intersex people with “gender identity” and “gender dysphoria.”

Sec. 3. Recognizing Women Are Biologically Distinct From Men. (a) Within 30 days of the date of this order, the Secretary of Health and Human Services shall provide to the U.S. Government, external partners, and the public clear guidance expanding on the sex-based definitions set forth in this order.

(b) Each agency and all Federal employees shall enforce laws governing sex-based rights, protections, opportunities, and accommodations to protect men and women as biologically distinct sexes. Each agency should therefore give the terms “sex”, “male”, “female”, “men”, “women”, “boys” and “girls” the meanings set forth in section 2 of this order when interpreting or applying statutes, regulations, or guidance and in all other official agency business, documents, and communications.

(c) When administering or enforcing sex-based distinctions, every agency and all Federal employees acting in an official capacity on behalf of their agency shall use the term “sex” and not “gender” in all applicable Federal policies and documents.

(d) The Secretaries of State and Homeland Security, and the Director of the Office of Personnel Management, shall implement changes to require that government-issued identification documents, including passports, visas, and Global Entry cards, accurately reflect the holder’s sex, as defined under section 2 of this order; and the Director of the Office of Personnel Management shall ensure that applicable personnel records accurately report Federal employees’ sex, as defined by section 2 of this order.

The strange academic, medical, and political push over the last decade to remove sex from birth certificates (and, from there, other government documents) can come to an end under this Trump EO. However, in this Trump language, we miss an opportunity to include all people in our democracy in two ways:

*we need to allow a fully transitioned person to use the target sex in documentation because now the reproductive sex (after medication and surgery) is aligned with the brain sex, making this person a member of the other sex; and

*we need to open up an optional/additional “gender” category on documentation in the same way that race, ethnicity and, at times, religion are included in medical and insurance forms after sex has been established on the document; and

*either in this extra category or in its own category, we need to open an optional/additional “intersex” category, again, like we do for race, ethnicity, and religion—this category could also align with a new “trans” category.

Essential documentation and forms could look this way:

Please check one

1. Sex, Required Field: Male _____ Female _____
2. Other, Optional: (include various categories for race, ethnicity, religion, intersex, transitioning, and gender identity)

Or:

Please check one

1. Sex, Required Field: Male _____ Female _____
2. Additional:  Intersex _____ Trans _____
3. Other, Optional (include various categories for race, ethnicity, religion, and gender identity)

On birth certificates, no reference to gender is meaningful yet, nor is trans available yet, but “intersex” would be a useful addition for the children on whom there is obvious dual-sex genitalia. Later in other documentation used throughout the child’s and adult’s lifespan, we can could add the supplemental categories. A young adult or adult could fill out the form with both his/her sex and–if s/he chooses–the gender experimentation that might be just as helpful to medical and psychiatric practitioners as race, ethnicity, and religion can be. If we go in this direction on forms and documents, all citizens are represented even while the primacy of sex, embedded in this Trump EO, is protected.

(e) Agencies shall remove all statements, policies, regulations, forms, communications, or other internal and external messages that promote or otherwise inculcate gender ideology, and shall cease issuing such statements, policies, regulations, forms, communications or other messages. Agency forms that require an individual’s sex shall list male or female, and shall not request gender identity. Agencies shall take all necessary steps, as permitted by law, to end the Federal funding of gender ideology.

Here, again, I would like to see the nuance just suggested: trans, intersex, gender nonbinary people and bridge brains are citizens, too, just as all races, ethnic, and religious people are our equal citizens. Accepting trans, intersex, and bridge brains as categories in human evolution does us good in the same way that knowing race, ethnicity, and religion can be helpful for the providing of opportunities and services. But for this kind of nuance to take hold in the Big Three (academics, government, media) all political extremes would need to admit nuance.

One group at one extreme would need to look at brain scans and see that gender nonconforming, gay, queer, and trans people can be scientifically verified as brains—especially trans brains—on the sexually dimorphic spectrum. If we will all participate in this verification, we would, I believe, create inclusive language, policy, and law that is well nuanced. But for this to happen, the extreme elements at the other cultural pole will need to end the disavowal of sex. Only in an artificial universe does sex not exist as a primary evolutionary agent for both body and mind—an element even more determinant of an individual’s life-direction than race, ethnicity, religion, or gender. The insistence that a small minority’s experiment with gender must be accompanied by all people relinquishing the success-patterns that sex has evolved for us as a species muddies all waters and keeps extremes at the forefront of social conversation.

To quiet the extremes is another reason I ask for “sexgender” and “brain sex dysphoria” to enter our linguistics worldwide. I believe that their use would bring the political extremes to a shared, moderate position that will allow us as a nation to serve everyone. The present day chaos of “choosing one’s sex” (“gender identity”) will exit our social discourse in this moderate political position, but, too, the false order implied in “there’s no such thing as gender and trans” would leave our discourse so that our laws can evolve in favor of a balance between the two extreme poles of thought.

(f) The prior Administration argued that the Supreme Court’s decision in Bostock v. Clayton County (2020), which addressed Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, requires gender identity-based access to single-sex spaces under, for example, Title IX of the Educational Amendments Act. This position is legally untenable and has harmed women. The Attorney General shall therefore immediately issue guidance to agencies to correct the misapplication of the Supreme Court’s decision in Bostock v. Clayton County (2020) to sex-based distinctions in agency activities. In addition, the Attorney General shall issue guidance and assist agencies in protecting sex-based distinctions, which are explicitly permitted under Constitutional and statutory precedent.

This part of the EO will likely make its way back to the Supreme Court. By the time it gets there I hope “sexgender” will be used to modify case law (and all law) so that brain sex dysphoria, gender dysphoria, and sex and gender can be discussed. Meanwhile, I expect that the Supreme Court will support the idea that there has been a recent misapplication of Bostock v. Clayton County—especially in prisons and competitive adult sports. Title IX and all the Title laws were based on “sex” when they were legislated; their original intention was to protect women, men, girls, boys as sexes. Thus, I expect the Supreme Court to re-focus on sex first, gender later.

I hope this re-focus will include protections for trans people who have completely altered their sex and are now, for all intents and purposes, the sex they now present, but even without a penis and testicles, and even with estrogen and other hormones in their bloodstream, the chromosomal male’s muscle mass and key bloodstream elements may make this trans woman inappropriate for competition with biological women. Olympic Committees, the NCAA, and all similar institutions do need to provide rules for testosterone and other factors, which they are doing. They should continue to do so.

(g) Federal funds shall not be used to promote gender ideology. Each agency shall assess grant conditions and grantee preferences and ensure grant funds do not promote gender ideology.

Sec. 4. Privacy in Intimate Spaces. (a) The Attorney General and Secretary of Homeland Security shall ensure that males are not detained in women’s prisons or housed in women’s detention centers, including through amendment, as necessary, of Part 115.41 of title 28, Code of Federal Regulations and interpretation guidance regarding the Americans with Disabilities Act.

This is necessary. As noted above, we need to get men out of women’s prison cells.

Meanwhile as trans (not yet physically transitioned), intersex, and gender nonbinary individuals go to prison with their same sex, our government and private prison systems will need to ensure their safety. Bridge brains, trans, intersex, and gender nonconforming people can suffer significant prejudice and, at times, violence from peers. This violence and prejudice increases their dysphoria. Suicide is a high risk for many people in this dysphoric population.

(b) The Secretary of Housing and Urban Development shall prepare and submit for notice and comment rulemaking a policy to rescind the final rule entitled “Equal Access in Accordance with an Individual’s Gender Identity in Community Planning and Development Programs” of September 21, 2016, 81 FR 64763, and shall submit for public comment a policy protecting women seeking single-sex rape shelters.

For a decade, I have been unable to fathom how personnel at a rape shelter—including laws and policies supporting these shelters—have gone so far into artificial reality that we house a male in a women’s facility. Even if the male “identifies female,” he has not transitioned (has not had penis and testicles removed and has not effaced male hormonology with female for multiple years), so he is, to the woman prisoner’s mind, a potential male rapist. As such, how does it make common sense for him to live with her, uninvited by her, in what is now supposed to be her safe home?

(c) The Attorney General shall ensure that the Bureau of Prisons revises its policies concerning medical care to be consistent with this order, and shall ensure that no Federal funds are expended for any medical procedure, treatment, or drug for the purpose of conforming an inmate’s appearance to that of the opposite sex.

Donald Trump’s TV commercials about this issue significantly harmed Kamala Harris’ chances to become president. Eight years ago, too, Trump’s attacks on Hilary Clinton and other Democrats landed strongly in this area. Most Americans, including moderates like myself, find it anathema to leave our nation’s women so vulnerable. In the future, I think every person running for office should look carefully at whether extreme ideology on sexgender is effective. In most cases, I don’t see success for candidates who take extreme positions, whether now or going forward, because the public is viscerally frightened of extreme ideology.

(d) Agencies shall effectuate this policy by taking appropriate action to ensure that intimate spaces designated for women, girls, or females (or for men, boys, or males) are designated by sex and not identity.

Sec. 5. Protecting Rights. The Attorney General shall issue guidance to ensure the freedom to express the binary nature of sex and the right to single-sex spaces in workplaces and federally funded entities covered by the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In accordance with that guidance, the Attorney General, the Secretary of Labor, the General Counsel and Chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and each other agency head with enforcement responsibilities under the Civil Rights Act shall prioritize investigations and litigation to enforce the rights and freedoms identified.

The last sentence is somewhat vague but this part of the EO in total provides an important edict to protect people who speak common sense about sexgender. Meanwhile, we must be careful that this doesn’t get enforced in a boomerang extreme wherein people who talk about sexgender or gender become legal targets, which is another reason I think the use of sexgender (which includes binary sex and gender exploration, both) would be most useful. It would keep our social conversation away from extremes that snitch on and penalize one another in false triumphs. We can protect the rights of our people to talk about binary sex and about the efficacy of single sex spaces while also protecting the rights of people to explore all of what trans, intersex, gender dysphoria, bridge brain, and gender identity are from a neurological perspective.

Sec. 6. Bill Text. Within 30 days of the date of this order, the Assistant to the President for Legislative Affairs shall present to the President proposed bill text to codify the definitions in this order.

Sec. 7. Agency Implementation and Reporting. (a) Within 120 days of the date of this order, each agency head shall submit an update on implementation of this order to the President, through the Director of the Office of Management and Budget. That update shall address:

(i) changes to agency documents, including regulations, guidance, forms, and communications, made to comply with this order; and

(ii) agency-imposed requirements on federally funded entities, including contractors, to achieve the policy of this order.

(b) The requirements of this order supersede conflicting provisions in any previous Executive Orders or Presidential Memoranda, including but not limited to Executive Orders 13988 of January 20, 2021, 14004 of January 25, 2021, 14020 and 14021 of March 8, 2021, and 14075 of June 15, 2022. These Executive Orders are hereby rescinded, and the White House Gender Policy Council established by Executive Order 14020 is dissolved.

A number of us in the sexgender field were shocked to see Joe Biden establish a Gender Policy Council that included women and girls not boys and men while using a word, “gender,” that should linguistically and practically include both and all. Why didn’t President Biden just call it a Women’s Policy Council, we wondered, rather than the deceptive “Gender” Policy Council. Biden was not alone, though, in creating Councils that omit males. In Boys, A Rescue Plan (2025), Sean and I look at the multitude of federal agencies that help women and girls and the zero number that commensurately and equally to help boys/men. As experts in this field, we hope the Trump administration will follow this January 20 Executive Order with another one establishing a White House Council on Boys and Men to mirror the White House Council on Girls and Women.

(c) Each agency head shall promptly rescind all guidance documents inconsistent with the requirements of this order or the Attorney General’s guidance issued pursuant to this order, or rescind such parts of such documents that are inconsistent in such manner. Such documents include, but are not limited to:

(i) “The White House Toolkit on Transgender Equality”;

(ii) the Department of Education’s guidance documents including:

(A) “2024 Title IX Regulations: Pointers for Implementation” (July 2024);

(B) “U.S. Department of Education Toolkit: Creating Inclusive and Nondiscriminatory School Environments for LGBTQI+ Students”;

(C) “U.S. Department of Education Supporting LGBTQI+ Youth and Families in School” (June 21, 2023);

(D) “Departamento de Educación de EE.UU. Apoyar a los jóvenes y familias LGBTQI+ en la escuela” (June 21, 2023);

(E) “Supporting Intersex Students: A Resource for Students, Families, and Educators” (October 2021);

(F) “Supporting Transgender Youth in School” (June 2021);

(G) “Letter to Educators on Title IX’s 49th Anniversary” (June 23, 2021);

(H) “Confronting Anti-LGBTQI+ Harassment in Schools: A Resource for Students and Families” (June 2021);

(I) “Enforcement of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 With Respect to Discrimination Based on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity in Light of Bostock v. Clayton County” (June 22, 2021);

(J) “Education in a Pandemic: The Disparate Impacts of COVID-19 on America’s Students” (June 9, 2021); and

(K) “Back-to-School Message for Transgender Students from the U.S. Depts of Justice, Education, and HHS” (Aug. 17, 2021);

(iii) the Attorney General’s Memorandum of March 26, 2021 entitled “Application of Bostock v. Clayton County to Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972″; and

(iv) the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s “Enforcement Guidance on Harassment in the Workplace” (April 29, 2024).

The extreme position the Trump administration is taking on these documents is, I believe, a reaction to some previous federal documents “going too far” as they 1) tried to erase sex (male/female) and 2) tried to re-engineer our culture toward what I call “the culture of the exception.” This culture is often coerced by elements of the Big Three to use exceptions-to-the-rule as a way of erasing the rule; even more, to implant the exceptions as the rules themselves. When our culture argues that sex (the human rule) should be removed to serve the potential needs of a minority of people regarding sexgender, a culture of the exception erupts and, from that, intense backfire and animus flows.

But again, this minority of people exists. These are good people robust in our culture. They need our help. They should not be left out of an executive order.

My hope is that the drafters of the federal documents listed by Trump (and drafters of all similar documents) will revise them to include sexgender so that documents can be re-commissioned in a healthier way for our schools, professionals, and parents to use in their care of male/female children and also trans and other minority students. Academics, the legal profession, and the government have a duty to help our social institutions with nuanced documents that reflect what is going on in the real world. While exceptions to the rule ought not throw out sex, minority exceptions should have equal rights under the law. Via new language, our whole culture of adults—parents, schoolteachers, mentors, medical staff, legislators, everyone—can innovate to help us take care of everyone.

Sec. 8. General Provisions. (a) Nothing in this order shall be construed to impair or otherwise affect:

(i) the authority granted by law to an executive department or agency, or the head thereof; or

(ii) the functions of the Director of the Office of Management and Budget relating to budgetary, administrative, or legislative proposals.

(b) This order shall be implemented consistent with applicable law and subject to the availability of appropriations.

(c) This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.

(d) If any provision of this order, or the application of any provision to any person or circumstance, is held to be invalid, the remainder of this order and the application of its provisions to any other persons or circumstances shall not be affected thereby.

THE WHITE HOUSE, January 20, 2025.

Sexgender issues issues are covered deeply in Boys, A Rescue Plan because Sean and I feel that these issues connect directly with the development of our boys into men today. As a professional in the field, I am thankful for some parts of the new Trump Executive Order. Meanwhile, I fear that LGBTQIA +, like other minorities, will be harmed by the lack of nuance in this EO.

A social fabric woven with one kind of cloth–either extreme Left gender ideology and its virtue signaling or extreme Right anti-gender ideology and its virtue signaling–impede democracy. We are a fabric not just of many colors but of many kinds. “Many kinds” includes many kinds of boys and girls and women and men. Trump’s EO helps us sort through some of our recent culture-extremes, but now we need both of our political extremes to move toward the middle vision where, I believe, the majority of us are waiting to fulfill the needs of all Americans.