San José community members gather to discuss whether or not they agree or disagree with President Donald J. Trump’s executive orders on transgender rights.
Within the president’s first month in office, Trump has signed a handful of executive orders attempting to diminish rights for trans youth, according to a Feb. 5 article from Axios.
Defining two genders
On Jan. 20, Trump announced that the federal government would only recognize two sexes, male and female, according to the executive order he signed during his first day in office.
“Ideologues” are denying the biological reality of sex and are depriving women of their dignity, safety and well-being, according to the same executive order.
On Wednesday afternoon, panelists spoke at San José State’s “2025 Trans Teach In,” to educate students on LGBTQIA+ rights and to discuss Trump’s recent executive orders against the trans community, according to a Feb. 4 Instagram post from SJSU PRIDE.
The event was held at the Student Union and was hosted by SJSU PRIDE; the university’s Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies program and SJSU’s College of Social Sciences, according to the same source.
Robin McMahon, a sixth-year history student at SJSU who identifies as a nonbinary trans woman, said in an interview the night before the event that she was not surprised to see Trump sign multiple executive orders aimed to take away rights from the trans community.
“This is the kind of weird nonsense that I kind of expected,” McMahon said. “It’s a huge pain in my ass. It prevented me from getting my passport renewed.”
McMahon said this executive order has made it very difficult for trans community members who have changed their gender marker on their identification files.
The federal government stopped issuing U.S. passports with “X” gender markers and it suspended processing applications from Americans wanting to update their passports with a new gender marker, according to a Jan. 28 article from the 19th News.
“The language is kind of what we’ve come to expect, but it represents an escalation of the kind of actions to make it so that trans people are forced out of legal avenues of participation in society,” McMahon said.
The administration also claims that changing language and policy that is more gender neutral is having a “corrosive impact” on women and the validity of the entire “American system,” according to the same executive order.
McMahon said the trans community is an existential threat to those who are afraid to challenge society’s current dependency on gender roles.
“If those categories aren’t rigidly defined and aren’t rigidly enforced, (it) means that we have to reevaluate the morality of forcing those people to do that violence or (to) do that care,” she said. “If trans people are allowed to define where they fall in that spectrum or outside of it, then it is not compulsory for people to have to behave In masculine or feminine ways that make them easy to control.”
Around 1.3 million or 0.5% of adults in the U.S. identify as transgender, according to a 2022 data report from UCLA.
According to the same data report, about 300,000 or 1.4% of youth in the U.S. also identify as transgender.
Out of the 1.3 million adults who self-identify as transgender, about 515,200 or 38.5% identify as trans women, about 480,000 or 35.9% identify as trans men and about 341,800 or 25.6% self-reported that they are gender nonconforming, according to the same data report from UCLA.
Felicia Lam, a resident of San José who attended “Stand for the Flag” on Feb. 6, said she agrees with Trump’s recent executive orders that are relevant to the trans community.
“I understand different people have different personal feelings on their bodies,” Lam said. “That is their own business if (they) want to change (their) sex. Biological sex is their personal choice. But as a taxpayer, I really don’t agree that you’ll be using my money to help fund that.”
Turning Point USA hosted the event, “Stand for the Flag,” at the Calvary Christian Fellowship in San José, according to a webpage from the Santa Clara County Republican Party. The purpose of the event was to discuss issues related to women in sports.
The main speaker was Riley Gaines, who was formerly a competitive swimmer at the University of Kentucky, according to a Feb. 6 article from Sportskeeda.
Gaines became a prominent figure fighting against trans rights after she competed in the 2022 NCAA Women’s Swimming Championships against Lia Thompson, a trans-athlete, according to the same source.
Gaines said she believes people support Trump on issues related to trans rights because they understand intuitively that men and women are different.
“I believe that people turned out to the polls to reject absurdity, and that is what the Democratic Party has become,” Gaines said. “Whether it is putting men and women’s sports, whether it’s putting tampons in boys bathrooms, whether it’s referring to Latino individuals as Latinx, the Democratic Party has lost the ability to communicate with everyday common sense Americans.”
Trans healthcare
On Jan. 28, Trump signed an executive order stating that the federal government will not promote or support children who are interested in transitioning from one sex to another, according to the executive order text.
According to the same executive order, the administration will ensure institutions that receive federal funds for research or education grants will end the practice of “chemical and surgical mutilation” on children.
Trump’s executive order’s definition of “chemical and surgical mutilation” includes the use of puberty blockers to delay puberty for individuals who do not identify with the sex they were born with at birth.
These services are widely known as “gender-affirming care” to the public, according to the same executive order.
“Not only is it actively threatening to people who want to transition but can’t, or (threatening) to people who are trying to provide support for a person who wants to transition as their local guardians, (they) could be legally culpable for trying to affirm their gender,” McMahon said.
Gender-affirming health care are social, psychological, behavioral or medical interventions designed to affirm a person’s gender identity, according to a FAQ from the World Health Organization.
Some of these medical services are non-medical interventions including removing facial hair, voice modification, genital tucking or chest binding, according to the same FAQ.
On Jan. 20, Trump signed another executive order announcing that the U.S. will leave the World Health Organization for demanding “unfairly onerous payments” and for mishandling the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the executive order.
McMahon said losing access to this healthcare could lead to suicide and irreversible health complications that could lead to death.
Having gender-affirming surgery can improve severe psychological distress and reduce suicidal ideation, according to a 2021 study from the JAMA Network.
The Department of Defense indirectly provides health insurance to nearly 2 million individuals under the age of 18, according to the same executive order.
Through this executive order, the Secretary of Defense is expected to exclude gender-affirming care from the department’s insurance coverage plans.
Trans people in sports
On Feb. 5, Trump ordered a ban on trans women from participating in women’s sports in order to protect opportunities for women and girls to compete fairly in sports, according to the executive order he signed that day.
From the perspective of his administration, many institutions, including athletic associations, have “allowed men to compete in women’s sports,” according to the same executive order.
Trump’s administration is taking “swift action” to investigate universities that do not follow this executive order, including SJSU, according to a Feb. 6 press release from the Dept. of Education.
SJSU, along with the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association, are being investigated under the suspicion of violating Title IX, according to the same source.
Title IX is an education amendment and policy that prohibits sex-based discrimination in education programs and activities that receive funding from the federal government, according to a webpage from the Dept. of Education.
In a campus-wide email, SJSU’s President Cynthia Teniente-Matson states that the university is ready to fully engage with the investigation, follow already established procedures and remain transparent, according to a campus-wide email on Feb. 6.
Michelle Smith McDonald, the senior director of Media Relations for SJSU, wrote in an email to the Spartan Daily saying the university is committed to student safety.
“San José State maintains an unwavering commitment to the wellness, safety and privacy of our students, faculty and staff and to fostering a supportive and caring environment for all.”
Gaines said it was a powerful moment to watch Trump sign the executive order on the morning of Feb. 5.
“It’s revitalizing for me to see yesterday that visual – that incredibly powerful visual – when President Trump signed the executive order, being surrounded by so many young girls with their futures ahead of them, whether that be in athletics or not, I can’t tell you what that visual means to me,” Gaines said.
Trump’s administration is now requiring the federal government to remove all funds from educational programs “that deprive women and girls of fair athletic opportunities,” according to the executive order.
Helen Carroll, a former NCAA basketball coach and athletic director who works for the National Center for Lesbian Rights, said she works with multiple trans student -athletes on the high school level through her work.
Carroll was a panelist at the “2025 Trans Teach In,” on Wednesday afternoon during the first keynote panel, “Trans Participation in Sports.”
“I really feel terrible about it, because I think that it just means we just have to keep doing the work, doing the work, doing the work, and hope that we get it back to where it was in the first place, where facts do matter, where scientists are listened to,” Carroll said. “So we all have to battle that with the executive orders because most of them have a lot of misinformation in them.”
On Feb. 6, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) announced that its Board of Governors voted to change the association’s participation policy for transgender student athletes, according to its webpage.
Schools under the NCAA award around $3.5 billion in athletic scholarships to student -athletes and provide support to help them graduate at a higher rate than general students, according to the same webpage.
The participation policy for transgender student athletes is a list of guidelines and criteria all teams must follow during all competitions under the NCAA, according to the policy.
The Board of Governors voted to update the participation policy for transgender student-athletes following the Trump administration’s executive order that was signed on Feb. 5.
Gaines said this is a win and it should be worth celebrating.
“I think more specifically, the issue of men and women’s sports – because of how glaringly obvious it is that it is an injustice to women and to women’s rights – I believe it was the clever issue of the election,” Gaines said.
Carroll said she was very disappointed to see the NCAA change its policy on allowing trans athletes to participate in women’s sports.
“I was very disappointed, because the NCAA did not have to change their policy a few days ago,” Carroll said. “The executive order was not an order to change your policies immediately . . . From the executive order, he’s just saying what he would like to see . . . What they would like to see happen. But it’s not law. Title IX is still Title IX. It hasn’t changed at all.”
