We did not expect to revisit our California Bay Area women’s college gender studies class again, much less because the Republican Party became enthralled with the subject, but here we are! The Republicans have learned that sex and gender are different, you guys, and Trump wrote a whole Executive Order about it. It is called DEFENDING WOMEN FROM GENDER IDEOLOGY EXTREMISM AND RESTORING BIOLOGICAL TRUTH TO THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT and Trump (or whatever Heritage Foundation ChatBot wrote this) is here to tell you the biological reality of sex.
Hey, if believing in gender is an ideology, isn’t this infringing on religious expression?
Anyway, first of all, the EO posits:
“Gender identity” reflects a fully internal and subjective sense of self, disconnected from biological reality and sex and existing on an infinite continuum, that does not provide a meaningful basis for identification and cannot be recognized as a replacement for sex.
I am back at old Mills College, reading Marge Piercy again! Oh, wait, they think this is bad. They would like to do away with the term “gender” completely, and make everything about sex, and here is how they define that:
(d) “Female” means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell.
(e) “Male” means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the small reproductive cell.
Oh boy, fused gamete personhood! Except, no fused gamete produces anything at conception. All blastocysts/zygotes/embryos don’t express any sex characteristics, and then they are female until about nine weeks’ gestation, which is why men have nipples. In their hard-on to declare fetal personhood — “a person belonging, at conception” — they would appear to have defined everybody as either nonbinary/intersex, or legally considered female until they conceive a child. Sorry, males, you are no longer recognized in the United States. That’s one way to solve sexism!
And, the biological reality is that sex is fluid too. Somewhere between .06 and 1.5 percent of people are intersex, depending on what definition of “intersex” you want to use. (Genetic traits? External characteristics?) That’s somewhere between 201,000 to 5 million Americans, and way more than the .001 percent of transgender athletes. The Executive Order even calls out a two-page document, “Supporting Intersex Students: A Resource for Students, Families, and Educators,” as one it wants to ban, so they can’t claim that they are unaware. Download it while you can! Sex and gender are a wacky jambalaya of hormones and traits, which is why humanity is so spicy.
Anyway, how is the government going to determine this sex? Genital inspections? DNA testing? Are we all going to be forced to get a cheek swab and give that information to the government now if we want to use the bathroom? Freedom!
Oy, what a gender muggle-fuddle that Dominionist Heritage Foundationers Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists like JK Rowling and have found themselves in.
If gender was binary, and linked to sex, and being trans is a mental illness instead of a mental difference, depriving them of prescribed medication and ridiculing them instead of trying to help them would make people like Nancy Mace some very ugly and immoral bullies. If one can choose one’s gender, then gender is not the immutable hardwired-by-God trait that Mike Johnson and Martha-Ann Alito think it is. And if gender expression is a choice that doesn’t hurt anybody else, how is it anybody’s business to comment about, much less have the government legislate?
Just kidding, logic has never stopped the Right from being dumb, and mean. Hey, remember how JK Rowling would not shut up about how the Algerian Olympic boxer Imane Khelif was a man, even though she is not? Funny how the you can always tell people are unable to tell. And then Rowling (and Elon Musk) got their asses sued for cyberbullying, good times.
Anyway, back to the LARGE CELLS, why can’t these BIOLOGY EXPERTS say eggs and sperm? Are they picturing a homunculus with a giant dong all set to use it like a rudder to beat Riley Gaines at swimming? Is the zygote with the XX chromosomes sprung into existence with a Russian nesting doll of babies? Where are they getting this stuff? Oh, of course, they cribbed it from biology expert JK Rowling:
Richard Dawkins: .@jk_rowling's carefully phrased definition of “woman” is correct. The gamete-size definition is soundly based in evolutionary theory and has no exceptions – among humans, mammals, vertebrates, animals generally. And she’s right about beetroot.
JK Rowling: You’ve asked me several questions on this thread and accused me of avoiding answering, so here goes.
I believe a woman is a human being who belongs to the sex class that produces large gametes. It’s irrelevant whether or not her gametes have ever been fertilised, whether or not she’s carried a baby to term, irrelevant if she was born with a rare difference of sexual development that makes neither of the above possible, or if she’s aged beyond being able to produce viable eggs. She is a woman and just as much a woman as the others.
Okay, what if that difference of sexual development was being a woman born into a masculine body, Joanne?
Make no doubt about it, the Dominionists are coming after trans people, but more than that, they’re coming after people who do not perform gender to specifications. (Except for when JK Rowling pretends to be a man named Robert to sell books, of course.)
And oh boy, do they hate the not-performing-to-specifications so much that they have declared WAR, and will only be satisfied when the non-gender-conforming-enough are effectively erased from public existence. Prisoners being forced to de-transition in Florida, bullying, bathroom-policing (that can put people in jail) ... why are they so threatened by this, to the point they’d make up stories about guys wearing wigs to go in the women’s toilet to hear girls pee? Because fascism requires a binary, and enemies, and strong masculine identity, is why. If people can opt-out of gender identity, the whole hierarchy falls apart.
Protecting women, scoff noise. It’s no coincide that according to actual science, there’s a strong association between individuals who have an issue with trans people participating in sports and the ones who believe “female athletes are undeserving [and] women should more fully conform to traditionally idealized physical appearances.” Or as Tommy Tuberville probably grunted before he introduced his bill to ban transgender athletes from women’s sports under Title IX, WOMEN ARE FOR MAKE BABIES AND MAKE PPS HARD.
Executive orders are just a wish list, they can be overturned by Congress or courts. Biden did not breathe non-gender-conforming people into existence and bestow them with rights. Courts have ruled that they have rights, thanks to years of work from civil rights lawyers. And what about states’ rights, such as California, Maryland, and Washington, which allow people to have an “X” gender marker on their drivers’ licenses and (thanks previous State Departments!) passports? White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said that such people “can still apply to renew their passport — they just have to use their God-given sex, which was decided at birth.” Birth? But Trump just said at conception! Get your story straight!
Anyway, non-gender-conforming people have always been around, and they aren’t going anywhere. And somehow the BIG GAMETE standard is even dumber than the Colonial one that defined anybody unable to grow a big enough boner as legally a woman. But welcome to the new meanstupidverse, here we all are!
SEE ALSO!
[Trump executive order/ Variety/ Washington Blade/ New Yorker archive link/ Alabama dot com/ Great Expectations: Pregnancy and Childbirth]
"“Female” means a person belonging, at conception...“Male” means a person belonging, at conception"
BTW, as Jessica Valenti pointed out on her Abortion Every Day Substack, don't miss the significance of sneaking in fetal personhood here. This has BIG implications for abortion rights as well as rights to access some forms of birth control FFS...
My trans offspring is fucking terrified by all this. He got his name legally changed. He got a state id with his name and gender. But he hasn't gotten around to getting an updated conforming passport, and now I guess he can't. If he does get a new passport, it won't match his state id. This is very fucked, and for no good reason.