Summary
Donald Trump signed an executive order declaring only two sexes, male and female, based on reproductive cells at conception, banning gender-affirming care, and limiting federal recognition of gender diversity.
Experts, including Dr. Richard Bribiescas, president of the Human Biology Association, criticized the policy as nonsensical, stating, “Clearly, this order is not fully informed by current biological science.”
Biologists noted the order oversimplifies human biology, ignores intersex individuals, and conflates sex and gender.
Critics warned it advances anti-trans rhetoric and risks legal challenges.
The EO doesn’t depend on a zygote having completed sexual differentiation, but memes about it are dominating the conversation anyway because nobody under 30 was taught how to read in school and twitter-brained bad faith misinterpretations are the new standard for dialogue.
**TL;DR: The issue is that there is no “good faith” interpretation of the text for anybody who studied 11th grade biology or above. **
It essentially makes a bunch of statements and assumptions with very very concrete omissions:
1. The zygote (fertilized egg) is a “person”. It’s a philosophical question, but considering that in IVF studies, successful implantation rates are around 10-15% (implantation does not guarantee survival past the 3rd trimester). So it’s actually very unlikely that the particular zygote will become a human being with agency. So good faith arguments would argue for special protections, but not personhood to it and that’s how you spot that the endgame is to use this false argument to override the agency of the actual person carrying the pregnancy.
**2. There is no sex assigned at conception. ** A single-cell zygote only has 2 sex-specific parameters: sex chromosome sets (or the lack thereof), and DNA methylation patterns. Neither of those guarantee manifestation of a male or female phenotype. So based on that, we are all asexual. The default sex for humans is actually female, and the primary function of the Y chromosome is to inhibit the development of the female form signs of that initiate in everyone first. So by that default, we are all female. And then the best faith assumption is that they mean is chromosomally determined sex at conception, but chromosome variations like XXY and XYY aren’t uncommon, and there are conditions where male chromosome sets yield female phenotype due to testosterone insensitivity (see testicular feminisation).
So no, the EO reads like someone trying to make biological definitions who has a <11th grade understanding of biology.
I have a biology degree. I took developmental. The textbook is right here on the shelf next to my desk. I am perfectly well aware of how embryonic development of the sexual system in mammals works. Incidentally, you’ve managed to get it wrong, but I’m not going to get into it here because it has nothing to with the point in my post which was about reading comprehension and what the text actually says. The definitions contained in the text of the EO read:
source
The structure of the sentences clearly indicates the ‘belonging’ occurs ‘at conception’, not the production of disparately sized cells. When the production occurs is not specified at all and nothing in the definition depends upon when it occurs, merely that it does at some point. This creates it own set of problems, but not the ones everyone is pointing and laughing at.
Firstly, I have an MD and would have never commented on this without reading the specific text from the WH. Med school curricula cover this in molecular biology, embryology, medical genetics, pediatrics and obstetrics, and endocrinology.
Secondly, the definition implies that zygotes can be classified as male/female at conception, which they obviously cannot be without further clarification. Your “good faith” reasoning is that you can retrospectively make that assignment, but there are no criteria to determine how that assignment ultimately happens, which therefore requires additional layers of “good faith” reasoning. Which takes us back to, yeah, the WH definition is hot garbage.
The text provides some clarification for how they want the classification at conception to work which, definitely yes, is hot garbage and creates more problems than it “solves”, but that doesn’t make it not say what it says.
Can you point me to the part of the text where they provide clarification from a biological standpoint? This language sets up the interpretation: “the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female […] grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality”. So if this is an “incontrovertible reality” then why do people have such an easy time refuting it?
Which gives me flashbacks about having to learn the specific adrenal enzyme dysfunctions that lead to erroneous sex-assignments at birth. But again, I don’t think people need biology degrees to have an understanding of this and I’d like society to stop trying to give “good faith” interpretations to texts that are explicitly written in bad faith.