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What does a second Donald Trump presidency really mean, especially for women and minority rights not only in the US but also globally? (Un)fortunately, we have a considerable number of precedents to rely on. We still remember Trump’s first administration as US president and his attack on women’s rights including ethnic, religious, gender and sexual minorities across a broad range of issues, including undermining access to birth control, eroding efforts to end the pay gap between men and women, weakening Title IX – the law banning sex discrimination in public education – and appointing judges to the Supreme Court that resulted in ending federal protection of abortion rights.
Despite having such alarming examples, it is shocking to see certain groups and people in Sri Lanka congratulating newly elected US president, applauding him for defending the rights of the child, the biological woman and the traditional societal nucleus of the family, claiming that there were only males and females in this world. In doing so, he cancelled the rights of women’s bodily autonomy, trans and non-binary persons to be their authentic selves. To reflect more, let us dive into the relevant Executive Orders Trump signed so far.
One of the Executive Orders signed by President Trump is Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth To The Federal Government. Under the pretext of pro-life and defending the women’s agenda, the Trump administration is imposing abortion bans and reinstating the global gag rule to deny funding for organizations providing abortion information and referrals or services in countries across the globe. The global gag rule is devastating as it causes the most vulnerable women and girls to lose access to vital sexual and reproductive health services – not just abortion care but also access to contraception and cancer screenings. While the policy is intended to decrease abortions, there is no evidence that it actually does. In fact, evidence suggests (Guttmacher report, 2024) that it increases the number of unwanted pregnancies and forces more women to seek unsafe abortions.
This Executive Order is rooted in far right ideologies which push women back into spaces where women’s sole purpose is to give support to other people’s life plans and be a tool for population growth. It also overlooks the violence and discrimination against women. Sri Lanka adhering to this type of ideology has made abortion illegal in this country too. The country law implies that even where there are complications of physical and mental health due to rape, incest, fetal impairment and economic and social reasons or at the request of the woman, abortions are not legally permitted. In this regard, in 2013, Sumithra Rahubadda, the then Secretary to the Ministry of Child Development and Women’s Empowerment said “…regardless of what priests say, unwanted pregnancies and serious fetal anomalies are real issues in society. There are many instances of women becoming pregnant while working abroad, girls being impregnated by their own fathers and women suffering due to fetal anomalies. What will happen to girls who are raped by their own fathers? How can they live in a society like that…”
During the 1990s, due to persistent advocacy and campaigning of various women’s groups, several discussions and parliamentary debates were held to amend the Penal Code with regard to rape to include marital rape and incest under its purview and to make abortion legal. During one such critical parliamentary debate regarding considering making abortion legal, one of the shocking views was that women have a natural tendency to be promiscuous and would “run wild given the opportunity”, a view that has been repeated time and again in abortion debates around the world. For example, John Amaratunga of the UNP said that allowing any form of abortion would “open the floodgates” and that “a mere certification from a medical officer which entitles a person to resort to such an action would be made use of to continue (it) in a bigger scale”.
Agreeing with such a misogynistic view, UNP MP A.H.M. Azwer said, “We have a culture. We have something called a decent upbringing. When something like this happens in our villages we call them indecent women, indecent girls. You must not give protection to that indecency. That is against our traditions and our culture. All our religions are opposed to this.” He further commented “What is rape in some societies is not so in others.” With reference to rape in marriage, he said, “The primary objective of marriage is procreation” (implying that it doesn’t matter how it happened).
By siding with pro-life agendas, people who are applauding President Trump are also supporting such sexist, misogynistic and inhumane views. Looking at abortion in this way, as Catherine Mackinnon has pointed out: “…has shielded the place of battery, marital rape and women’s exploited domestic labor. It has preserved the central institutions whereby women are deprived of identity, autonomy, control and self-definition.”
In all these commentaries and debates where many male MPs conveniently put the burden of safeguarding culture and religion on women and their bodies, nobody actually bothered to consider what the party of concern (women themselves) want regarding their bodily rights and autonomy. It seems like the pro-life debate is not about women after all but in reality is against them because if it was really about the welfare of women, then governments would have worked towards critical issues such as marital rape, maternal health and pre- and post-natal care instead of snatching away women’s bodily rights. Appreciating President Trump for such a malicious policy is equivalent to echoing what the MPs uttered during the parliamentary debates.
Under the same blanket order, the Trump administration is targeting transgender, non-binary and intersex individuals. It includes provisions that mandate the legal recognition of only two sexes, rolls back Title IX protections for transgender students, cuts funding for gender affirming healthcare programs, denies incarcerated transgender individuals’ placement in gender aligned facilities, and bans the use of the word “gender” in government contexts. What many of us need to note is that this order is not only targeting LGBTIQ persons but women and migrant populations as well.
This worldwide hateful movement that uses narratives about protecting children and the freedom of religion as excuses is very problematic and contentious.
The supporters of this order are also maligning the LGBTIQ community by making claims many of the younger community members are just enjoying such a “lifestyle” temporarily, without realizing the trauma and other mental health issues they will go through later on.
If we are talking about mental health issues, then we also need to see what the causes behind it are. In a recent study conducted by PubMed Central (2022) 3,262 school going adolescents (10-19 years) were surveyed and anxiety, loneliness and bullying were cited as the major mental health issues. A UNICEF report noted that with regard to bullying victimization, physical characteristics, socioeconomic backgrounds and ethnicity were significant drivers.
Children who identified as Tamil, Muslim, Burgher or Other were more likely to be victims of bullying by their peers than those who identified themselves as Sinhala. Moreover, children who were victims of bullying or who came from households where violence was accepted as the norm were more likely to bully others in later stages of their lives. The Family Planning Association conducted some qualitative studies and during a Focused Group Discussion a school going boy said “Dancing is my favorite subject. Within a short period of time, I excelled in this subject and was acknowledged by my teachers, but my popularity and talent were not accepted by my fellow students. They harassed me, but I was very patient and always treated them kindly as a friend. But their goal was to make me hate the subject. The tables turned sooner than I expected, and I was at a stage where I was unable to tell my problem to either my parents or my teachers and I eventually had to select different subjects.”
In such a context are people ready to raise their concerns regarding the underlying causes of mental health issues in children who are witnessing domestic abuse, racism and intolerance towards difference? Despite having a plethora of evidence, it is evident that instead of creating a safe space for kids, just spreading negative and hateful information regarding diverse gender and sexual orientation is far more important for many.
Some people also implied that all of the LGBTIQ community members are sexual predators and urged President Trump to save their children from the community. Dr. Gene Abel’s (a researcher in the field of sexual violence for over 25 years) study is enough to refute such a malicious claim where he explicitly stated that 80 percent of the men who molested little boys were heterosexual and most of these men were married and had children of their own.
A 2013 study by CARE International Sri Lanka interviewed 1,658 male respondents, and 28 per cent reported that they had experienced sexual abuse during childhood. The study also found that sexual abuse of boys occurred in schools and universities in the context of ragging (verbal, physical or emotional abuse of newcomers to education institutions). Elsewhere, sexual abuse of children is reported to be widespread including in children’s homes and in the context of child sex tourism, in religious establishments and in the home by family members. A study conducted by PEaCE-ECPAT Sri Lanka in 2023 found that the most devastating child abuse report covered by numerous media outlets was the sexual abuse of 11 girls in an NGO-run child welfare center, which is essentially an orphanage, in Ratnapura, where the matron’s husband, a 60-year old employee of a gas station, was found to have sexually and physically abused 11 of the 19 inmates in the children’s home.
People need to realize the risk of implying pedophilia and sexual abuse as the same as consensual same-sex relationships among adults. When you make such an implication, you not only put the child’s life in danger further but also give the abusers and perpetrators an excuse to get away with their heinous crimes.
It is clear from examining the media and factual reports of child abuse that a sizable percentage of perpetrators are those who are acquainted with the victims but are not necessarily biologically related. In fact, according to ECPAT data, 31% of cases of child abuse fall into this category. We ask, are the people ready to address this issue or does the culture they claim to protect stop them from doing so?
To make things worse for minorities, President Trump signed another Executive Order Ending Radical And Wasteful Government DEI Programs And Preferencing. His efforts on this go beyond Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) with one recent order rescinding a Civil Rights era rule (Equal Employment Opportunity) that has helped protect millions of workers from discrimination. “It is still stunning to me that he took such an extraordinary step,” said Fatima Goss Graves, CEO of the National Women’s Law Center, a nonprofit advocacy group focused on gender justice. Revoking the rule signals “he is going after something bigger: the basic and foundational idea that we should be able to work at workplaces without discrimination.” It will have far reaching impacts even in Sri Lanka, as President Trump has ordered that all US government staff working on DEI schemes be put on immediate paid administrative leave. He called DEI programs as “dangerous, demeaning and immoral”.
In Sri Lanka due to the notorious law and negative mindset of people, many LGBTIQ people either have to hide their identity at workplaces or face harassment. It is therefore paramount to sensitize workplaces to make them understand that sexual orientation has nothing to do with competency or capability and should not be the grounds for discrimination in the hiring process or how companies treat their employees. DEI by no means is about promoting homosexuality, rather it is about educating and sensitizingto encourage better understanding and acceptance of all minorities. DEI is not limited to sexual orientation or gender identity; it covers gender, race, class, caste, disability and others as well. By opposing such efforts and echoing President Trump’s reasoning, we are surely giving complete discretion to employers to apply discriminatory measures within the hiring process and in the workplace in general and nobody can hold them accountable for this.
Sri Lanka is a country that has experienced colonial rule, racism, war, discrimination by majorities against the vulnerable minorities and so many other human rights violations. It is ironic to see that we live in a time when people are rooting for the same issues that our ancestors fought to get rid of. Time and again, we keep on forgetting that religion and culture do not give us free rein to violate someone’s rights simply because they are different from us.