Does Donald Trump’s anti-trans executive order make all Americans female? 

As soon as US President Donald Trump took office, he wasted no time in signing a slew of executive orders. One was specifically designed to take aim at progressive gender ideology and trans people in the hopes of making America binary again. However, it may have backfired.

That’s the first part of the title of the executive order, signed on Jan. 20. In its intro, it argues that women are harmed when men who identify as women use their spaces and activities designed for women.

That’s the second part of the title, which refers to the order’s assertion that federal policy should be based on “biological reality” and “truth.” However, in a technical slip-up, it seems to confuse a basic tenant of human biology.

Now, in the United States, the notion of “gender” is being substituted for the biological idea of “s  e x.” And within that, there are only two: male and female.

According to the order, women and girls are females. And “female” means a person belonging, at conception, to the s e x that produces the large reproductive cell, it says.

Likewise, boys and men are males. For the US government, “male” means a person belonging, at conception, to the s e x that produces the small reproductive cell.

While this may seem clearly worded, Rachel Levin, a Pomona College neuroscientist who studies the development of s e x, told Stat News that it is a “dramatic failure to understand biology.”

As you may remember from your high school biology class, conception is when s p e r m and egg join. At that point, you are a zygote, one big cell. At that point, you don’t belong to either “s e x ,“ you are not “male” or “female.”

While it is possible to know chromosomal information (XX, XY or an atypical combination like XXY or XYY), the zygote turns into an embryo and develops along female lines. This is why experts say the wording could be interpreted as making pretty much everyone female.

At that time, a gene can send out a message to the “neutral” embryo to develop testes. In the absence of that signal, the embryo begins to develop ovaries.

At the same time, experts point out that human biology is more complicated than “male” or “female.” An estimated 5.6 million Americans are intersex, according to a review in the American Journal of Human Biology. These people have extra or missing s e x -linked chromosomes or are born with other variations that do not fit into either neat category.

Photo: Stella Walsh, an inter s e x athelete cerca 1932

As inters e x advocacy group interACT points out, some people may produce both s p e r m and eggs. Others have gonadal dysgenesis, which means they produce neither. Would that mean those with ovotestes could be assigned both s e x e s? Would it mean those without gonads belong to neither assignation?

"The Trump administration purports to talk about ‘biological realities,’ but demonstrates that they lack any understanding of the relevant science,” said interACT.  “This bizarre formulation, which disrespects the complexity of gender by reducing it to the production of eggs and s p e r m, entirely fails to consider the existence of inters e x people and misunderstands embryonic development.”

Many activists are looking beyond the biology and focusing on what the bill really tries to do — erase trans people. “The purpose of this executive order is to erase the existence of trans folks and continue to drive hatred towards our community,” Mariah Moore of the Transgender Law Center told Rolling Stone.

Besides rolling back trans protections in general, it specifically targets trans people in prison. It stipulates that no federal money should be used for “conforming an inmate’s appearance to that of the opposite sex,” and aims to “ensure that males are not detained in women’s prisons.”

Although executive orders are legally binding, advocates say it will take time for it to go into effect and promise that it will be challenged in courts around the nation. For instance, the American Civil Liberties Union has vowed to take “the Trump administration to court wherever we can” to defend LGBTQ+ individuals.

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