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.
Conception is literally the point when the sperm fertilizes the egg:
reference
At that point it’s not anything, it’s just a fertilized egg. Assigning a sex to it makes no sense at all.
So everyone should be no sex then?
At conception, yes, there is no sexual differentiation. In humans the SRY protein is responsible for a fetus developing male sexual characteristics. The effects of this gene are expressed after week 6 of development:
That is, at least a month and a half after conception.
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**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.
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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.
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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.
Doesn’t it have a complete set of sex chromosomes at that point?
As far as I an aware, yes. But the degree did not mention chromosomes, but rather