The Trump administration is implementing the president’s executive order on ‘defending women.’
The heads of U.S. agencies have been ordered to make sure that bathrooms and similar spaces are designated by biological sex, according to a new memorandum aimed at implementing one of President Donald Trump’s executive orders.
Agency heads must have by 5 p.m. ET on Jan. 31 taken “prompt actions to end all agency programs that use taxpayer money to promote or reflect gender ideology,” Charles Ezell, acting director of the Office of Personnel Management, said in the memo, which was distributed on Wednesday.
Specific steps to implement Trump’s order include terminating all programs, contracts, and grants that “promote or otherwise inculcate gender ideology,” placing employees who promote gender ideology on leave, taking down all websites that promote gender ideology, withdrawing any directives or statements that promote gender ideology, disbanding employee groups that promote gender ideology, and canceling any gender ideology training.
Agency heads were also told to turn off email system features that prompt users for their pronouns, ensure that all forms that require entry of an individual’s sex list male or female, ensure all policies and documents use the term sex rather than gender, and ensure that “intimate spaces designated for women, girls, or females (or for men, boys, or males) are designated by biological sex and not gender identity.”
Agency heads must report to the Office of Personnel Management how they’ve implemented the order by noon on Feb. 7.
Trump’s order is titled “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.” It states in part that the Trump 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.”
Male and female “are not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality,” it states.
The order says that sex shall refer to a person’s biological classification as male or female, and “does not include the concept of ‘gender identity.’”
