On his first day back in office, President Donald Trump issued an executive order on gender that basically says that women become female and men become male at conception.
However, specialists in medicine think that’s incorrect.
According to them, all fertilized eggs or embryos include both male Y and female X chromosomes, and the gender reveal occurs weeks later. Even then, it can be challenging to determine if the infant has the sexual traits of a boy, female, or both.
According to Dr. Eve Feinberg of Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, “we call conception as fertilization and nobody is male or female at fertilization.” Everybody has some mix of X and Y chromosomes, but the development of sex organ differentiation—which is not always a binary male or female pathway—does not start until nine to thirteen weeks.
Trump’s order, titled “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government,” is allegedly a broadside against ideologues who reject the biological reality of sex and those who have used legal and other forms of social coercion to allow men to identify as women and invade everything from women’s workplace showers to domestic abuse shelters.
It claims that the Trump administration would protect women’s rights by utilizing precise language and policies that acknowledge that males are naturally male and women are biologically feminine.
The fact that there are only two sexes—male and female—is also declared.
According to the order, a female is a person who is a member of the sex that generates the big reproductive cell at conception. Male refers to a person who is a member of the sex that generates the tiny reproductive cell upon conception.
In an email, Weill Cornell Medicine obstetrician and gynecologist Dr. Aileen Gariepy stated that this was untrue.
Gariepy went on to say that the new administration’s classifications of male and female are imprecise, unduly simplified, and ignore the difficulties in determining what sex is.
According to Gariepy, “sex” might relate to elements of physiology (like the hormone milieu), anatomy (like internal organs or external genitalia), or genetics (like chromosomes). Even these characteristics don’t always align.
Their anatomy does not always reflect the fact that biological girls have XX chromosomes and biological males have XY chromosomes.
For instance, the doctor explained that a child with XY chromosomes may be born with a clitoris and labia in androgen insensitivity syndrome, a rare genetic disorder. Additionally, an individual with XY chromosomes might not generate sperm, which are likely the little reproductive cells, while an individual with XX chromosomes might not make eggs.
Karoline Leavitt, the chief spokesperson for the Trump Administration, was contacted by NBC News to inquire about whether any doctors were involved in the drafting of the executive order and how the White House reconciles it with the scientific explanation of when and how sex is determined in the earliest stage of pregnancy. Leavitt did not answer right away.
Trump’s definitions of male and female based on reproductive cells—that is, egg and sperm cells—are among the most bizarre definitions he has encountered, according to pediatric psychiatrist Dr. Jack Turban, author of the book Free to Be: Understanding Kids & Gender Identity.
Does the government intend to quantify and isolate people’s reproductive cells? He went on.
According to Turban, sex is actually complex and can be characterized in a variety of ways, including by reproductive cells, sex chromosomes, internal sex organs, external genitalia, and other characteristics.
“These sex domains align for most people,” he stated. However, they don’t for intersex individuals. This is merely another attempt by politicians to hide the fact that sex is complicated, something we have been witnessing for years.
Those who are born with reproductive or sexual anatomy that doesn’t cleanly fall into the categories of male or female are referred to as intersex. Intersex encompasses androgen insensitivity syndrome.
In order to mobilize his MAGA supporters, Trump mercilessly assaulted the transgender population during his campaign.
Therefore, it is no coincidence that Trump’s gender ideology EO redefined the term “sex” in federal programs and services to refer only to biological characteristics at conception and as unchangeable, according to a report written by Elana Redfield and Ishani Chokshi for the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law.
They wrote that gender, gender identity, and any other traits are expressly excluded from the concept.