A CBC News article indicating how Trumps claims there’s only ‘2 genders’ highlights how most political leaders today often don’t have the perception and awareness to understand the complexity of humanity let alone even the world.
The executive order, which Trump signed after promising in his inauguration speech that it would be U.S. policy “that there are only two genders,” also ordered trans women into male prisons and a halt in the issuance of passports with an “X” gender marker, sparking fear in trans people across the country about their legal status.
While the administration claims the move is a return to “biological facts,” experts say it ignores both biological and historical reality — that humans have never fit into just two sexes or two genders.
“The terminology could be new, people’s awareness could be new, but the idea or the practice of changing gender is hardly new. It is observed in every time period in U.S. history,” said Jules Gill-Peterson, an associate professor of history at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.
“Gender” refers to how someone identifies and represents themselves in society.
When asked about Trump’s executive orders, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre said he was “only aware of two” genders, adding that he believes the government should let people “make their own personal decisions.”
The regression we’re seeing now is “staggering,” they said.
“That kind of psychological burden of being told that what you are is impossible – it’s hard to overstate, really.”
People often misinterpret the meaning of things at earlier stages of psychological development because they lack the life experiences to be fully aware of the depth of understanding of things and thus they don’t perceive them properly. In other words, they have a very narrow view of the world (aka worldview) and are considered ignorant due to this lack of awareness.
At the same time, even when a person achieves a somewhat mature stage of development in their life, they can temporarily regress back to an earlier level of consciousness due to the fear they may be experiencing from conflict or uncertainty in the world around them. A perfect example of this is what occur in both America and Germany prior to World War II.
This articles highlights this as it shows how most people often misinterpret what gender means, often wanting to push what they believe it means instead.
What’s remarkable from the article is Canadian Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre inadvertently highlighting his own lack of awareness due to his beliefs and then showing how he is misinterpreting the meaning of gender as “society deciding the gender of individuals” (i.e. “people make their own personal decisions” of what gender means societally for someone else) rather than “individuals choosing their own gender themselves, regardless of what society believes it should be.”