It is quite amusing how an order that changes language is an existential attack when done by a rightist, but just a request for basic common courtesy when done by a leftist. I'd be much more angry about this if I didn't remember the past decade of language policing.

(And no, I don't want to misgender trans people. But I do want leftists to finally be honest that pronouns and the associated language games were and are an attempt to change people's thoughts by hacking their language. Maybe if we all agree that this order is bad, we can remember that when the next pendulum swing comes around.)

The current administration made it clear in the President's Inaugural Address that that they see gender as only male and female. That is absurd, but please go ahead and now defend that point, I'll be here.

Here is the excerpt:

"As of today, it will henceforth be the official policy of the United States government that there are only two genders: male and female. " https://www.whitehouse.gov/remarks/2025/01/the-inaugural-add...

This is a war against transfolk. Which side are you on, again?

Here is an excerpt of another document:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness"

You realize you're saying this in the same thread as the US government demanding a mass retraction of submitted scientific paperwork to facilitate the mass censorship of words and science they don't like, yeah?

I assume you know the difference between the president telling you to do something or else and a random nobody telling you to do something.

I think there is a legal difference, but if the effect is practical exclusion from the field, then I would call the distinction academic.

Again, we are talking about the president utilizing the power of the US government to censor and control information by directly retracting already printed scientific research.

Who are you referring to that is equal in power to the executive?

A broad consensus of academics, who are of course 90% Democrat. This level of consensus is locally equivalent to state power, and additionally is practically widespread.

So you're saying a broad consensus of academics as powerful as the executive branch, which also justifies the executive branch shredding the constitution in order to stop them and therefore not upholding their constitutional duty.

I think they are effectively locally as powerful. And I'm not defending what Trump is doing; I'm generally pro-trans, let alone pro-rule of law. But it does honestly have a nonzero aspect of schadenfreude to it; not to the victims, of course, but to the people who thought this degree of power and behavior entirely acceptable and valid when used in the other direction.