Days after corporate media outlets said Joe Biden is “rolling back the culture war,” the president continued his war on biological sex and due process on Monday with the introduction of two executive orders that seek to dismantle Trump-era protections in the name of “advancing gender equity and equality” and promoting it as “a matter of human rights, justice, and fairness.”
Biden’s first order mandates the creation of a gender policy council, disguising issues such as promoting access to abortions and pushing gender- and race-driven agendas as a way to “advance gender equity and equality, with sensitivity to the experiences of those who suffer discrimination based on multiple factors, including membership in an underserved community.”
“We are very inclusive in our definition of gender,” council co-chair Jennifer Klein said in a White House briefing Monday. “We intend to address all sorts of discrimination and fight for equal rights for people, whether that’s LGBTQ+ people, women, girls, men.”
In addition to a commitment to fight “systemic bias and discrimination, including sexual harassment,” the council also plans to address women in the workforce, economic disparities including wage gaps, and “the caregiving needs of American families,” specifically examining “policies to advance equity for Black, indigenous and Latina women and girls of color.”
“It is, therefore, the policy of my Administration to establish and pursue a comprehensive approach to ensure that the Federal Government is working to advance equal rights and opportunities, regardless of gender or gender identity, in advancing domestic and foreign policy — including by promoting workplace diversity, fairness, and inclusion across the Federal workforce and military,” the order states.
In his second order, Biden instructs the Department of Education to review the Trump administration and former education secretary Betsy DeVos’s due process expansions on college campuses, which gave students accused of sexual misconduct a chance to receive a fair trial, investigation, and evaluation. The president hopes to reinstate at least some Obama-era policies that overhaul Title IX and potentially withhold or cut funding from schools that don’t comply with broader sexual harassment definitions and lowered evidence standards for victims, as he previously promised on the campaign trail.
“It is the policy of my Administration that all students should be guaranteed an educational environment free from discrimination on the basis of sex, including discrimination in the form of sexual harassment, which encompasses sexual violence, and including discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity,” the order states.
