In the spate of executive orders signed by the new President of the United States this week, one stood out to me. Well, two did. I think it is asinine to say you’re going to remove violent criminals from our streets, and then grant pardons to over 1500 people, some of whom are violent criminals who were incarcerated and are now free to roam our streets. It’s so blatantly contradictory, it’s not worth my time.
No, the one that stood out to me was the one stating that a person’s sex is determined at the moment of conception – at which point, the order decrees, you are male or female and that’s the end of it.
I am a proud, unapologetic member of the “alphabet people.” We are an inclusive community, and our name, which has evolved over the years, reflects that. When I came out as a homosexual in 1984, we were generally referred to as “the gay community,” a blanket term that was even seen in the name of our annual high holy day, Pride, which was called, back then, “Gay Pride.” But our community is much larger than just gay men, and as we self-examined and took note that the name we used to describe ourselves excluded some people, notably women, the phrase “gay and lesbian” became more commonplace.
As our concept of who we are as a community expanded, so did the name by which we referred to ourselves. Spelled out, it was getting rather long as, inclusivity being our defining characteristic, there was a desire to include everyone who identified with us, so letters started to be used. I remember that LGBT was first, then the Q was added, and then the plus (+) which, to me, sums up who we are more than any of the letters, because the plus says “there are more” and it allows for the addition of those who may not be a part of the community today but may be added in the future. I don’t want to veer off on a tangent, so let me refer you to a good online resource that defines what all the letters mean: click here.
I met my first T, or transgender, person here at Stonewall Gardens. She was a resident and my next-door neighbor. She was older and has passed away and I have moved to another apartment with a larger patio for Gordon. Since that time, we have added a second transgender woman who not only moved into the apartment vacated by the passing of the first one, but shares the same birthday as her! How spooky-cool is that? I will tell you that I do not truly understand what a transgender person goes through, but I have learned from these women that sex and gender are two very different things. Just unpacking that sentence could and should be a whole post, and I don’t want to get sidetracked, but if the distinction interests you, check out Sex and gender: What is the difference?
The pie chart of things I know about biology is at left; grey indicates what I know, and blue what I do not know. So even if it sounds like I’m an expert, let me assure you I am not.
But the great thing about an empirical discipline like biology, and science as a whole, is you can look up information gleaned from it, and this part of the post is the result of a lot of “looking up” (a.k.a. online research).
“Defending women from gender ideology extremism and restoring biological truth to the federal government,” is an executive order so important it was signed on the new administration’s first day in office. It makes these two points:
- ‘Female’ means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell
- ‘Male’ means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the small reproductive cell
Here’s the problem. Most scientists now reject the idea that sex is strictly either/or, or ‘binary’ as we say in the LGBTQ+ community. One of the most prestigious and respected scientific journals in the world, Nature, pointed out, “the research and medical community now sees sex as more complex than male and female,” and adds that treating sex as a strict binary “has no foundation in science.”
How’s that for biological truth? But wait just a cotton-picking minute, will you? Given my cursory research, I think what this executive order does is declare us all female!
According to the National Center for Biotechnology Information, the undifferentiated genitalia that males and females share very early in fetal development are “phenotypically female.”
Talk about a biological truth!
Obviously, it’s more complicated than that, which is my point. The executive order is sketchy on the science, and the science is complex and cannot be used to justify an overly simplistic but nonetheless radical, Right wing, transphobic agenda.
But one thing is becoming clearer if not already clear: biology is not binary. While it’s true that most people inherit either XX (typically female) or XY (typically male) chromosomes at conception, the scientific consensus is that key traits overlap extensively and rarely fall into two discrete types. Declaring by executive order that sex is determined at this point is just wrong on the science, but then are we surprised they’d get it wrong when in the previous incarnation of this administration it was suggested that household bleach might be a suitable treatment for a deadly virus?
So what’s this really all about? Why do they care? Three reasons:
- Women’s sports
- Women’s restrooms
- Abortion
Items 1 & 2 are related in that they allow for the brand spankin’ new, acceptable-in-polite-society, racism. In days gone by and largely relegated to the trash heap of history, your garden variety bigots were convinced they needed to “protect” women – which meant white women – from black men, who, to hear the bigots tell it, were lurking around every corner just waiting for a chance to rape the defenseless (white) womenfolk.
That ludicrous line of thinking has, by and large, gone away – but the threat to (white) women hasn’t. Now the lurking monster is the transgender MtF (male-to-female) woman who has adopted this identity with the express purpose of competing in women’s sports in order to gain an advantage (based on the outdated notion that a man is stronger, faster, etc.). After the game, transgender women like nothing better than relaxing by going to the women’s room and raping all the (white) women there, despite the fact that the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law found transgender people are over four times more likely than cisgender people to be victims of violent crime.
As for item 3, I think this is the red meat of the issue. In their first turn at bat, the administration installed a conservative majority on the Supreme Court that stripped away the right of a woman to make decisions about her own body. And in the interregnum since, states have moved to further limit legal abortion by promoting and passing “fetal personhood” bills which attempt to enshrine in law the unscientific notion of “life” as beginning at conception. Now, by declaring that sex is determined at conception, we have yet another attempt to promote the idea that fetuses are “people.” If you can determine if they are male and female at conception, then you can call the fetus a man or a woman, and a man or a woman deserves full legal rights and protections; this could result in miscarriages being treated as manslaughter (as happened in the case of Brittney Poolaw in Oklahoma) and, potentially, abortion being treated as murder.
Well, okay, that was a lot of heavy lifting, so I’ll end on a lighter note. Well, I think it’s lighter; you might disagree. Mississippi state senator Bradford Blackmon introduced a bill this week that would prohibit men from masturbating; the bill, called the Contraception Begins at Erection Act, would make it unlawful for “a person to discharge genetic material without the intent to fertilize an embryo.” It would impose fines of $1,000 for a first offense, $5,000 for a second offense, and $10,000 for a third and for each subsequent offense.
In Catholic school, the nuns told me I’d grow hair on my palms for each ejaculation that did not at the very least have the potential of leading to actual procreation. My palms are hairless, and smooth as a baby’s bottom on account of all the lotion they’ve been subjected to over the years. So either the nuns were wrong, or I am doing it wrong!
Either way, if this law had been in force, I’d be penniless and out on the street.