If you want to see a compilation of all of Trump’s executive orders, you can find links here that will take you to the contents of the official orders.
I’ve talked about the new rules on sex and gender before, but wanted to discuss them again, briefly. Click the screenshot below to see Trump’s EO on those issues:
It’s a long document (four pages when printed out single-space in 9-point Times type, but the upshot is an official recognition of two sexes (male and female, of course), which are seen as immutable. Coupled with that is a refusal to use, on government documents or in government work, any concept of gender.
One excerpt:
It is the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female. These sexes are not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality. Under my direction, the Executive Branch will enforce all sex-protective laws to promote this reality, and the following definitions shall govern all Executive interpretation of and application of Federal law and administration policy:
(a) “Sex” shall refer to an individual’s immutable biological classification as either male or female. “Sex” is not a synonym for and does not include the concept of “gender identity.”
(b) “Women” or “woman” and “girls” or “girl” shall mean adult and juvenile human females, respectively.
(c) “Men” or “man” and “boys” or “boy” shall mean adult and juvenile human males, respectively.
(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.
(f) “Gender ideology” replaces the biological category of sex with an ever-shifting concept of self-assessed gender identity, permitting the false claim that males can identify as and thus become women and vice versa, and requiring all institutions of society to regard this false claim as true. Gender ideology includes the idea that there is a vast spectrum of genders that are disconnected from one’s sex. Gender ideology is internally inconsistent, in that it diminishes sex as an identifiable or useful category but nevertheless maintains that it is possible for a person to be born in the wrong sexed body.
(g) “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.
While most of this seems okay to me, I’d make two changes. First, sex is not recognizable, at least via the apparatus to produce gametes, at conception, when we have only a single cell. With high probability you could identify its sex via DNA testing, but the reproductive apparatus develops only later. Ergo I would substitute “at birth” for “at conception”.
Second, it makes no provision for true intersex people, who cannot be identified as either male or female (hermaphrodites are one example). Though such people are vanishingly rare, so that sex is about as close to binary as you can get, they are not nonexistent, and constitute somewhere between 1 person in 5600 to 1 in 20,000. There has to be some provision for identifying the sex of these people, perhaps with an “I” for intersex.
It also deals with women’s spaces:
Sec. 4. Privacy in Intimate Spaces. (a) The Attorney General and Secretary of Homeland Security shall ensure that males are not detained in women’s prisons or housed in women’s detention centers, including through amendment, as necessary, of Part 115.41 of title 28, Code of Federal Regulations and interpretation guidance regarding the Americans with Disabilities Act.
(b) The Secretary of Housing and Urban Development shall prepare and submit for notice and comment rulemaking a policy to rescind the final rule entitled “Equal Access in Accordance with an Individual’s Gender Identity in Community Planning and Development Programs” of September 21, 2016, 81 FR 64763, and shall submit for public comment a policy protecting women seeking single-sex rape shelters.
Sec. 5. Protecting Rights. The Attorney General shall issue guidance to ensure the freedom to express the binary nature of sex and the right to single-sex spaces in workplaces and federally funded entities covered by the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In accordance with that guidance, the Attorney General, the Secretary of Labor, the General Counsel and Chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and each other agency head with enforcement responsibilities under the Civil Rights Act shall prioritize investigations and litigation to enforce the rights and freedoms identified.
In general I agree, but there may be specific cases, for example a trans woman in jail for embezzlement and not sexual aggression, might be placed in a woman’s prison. Even so, a trans woman is a biological male and on average men are more aggressive than women, but on the other hand a trans women in a male prison may be at risk of becoming sexually assaulted.
Also, re rape counseling and running women’s shelters, I do not think that there should be legal prohibitions against hiring trans women to do the job, I can’t imagine, in a private organization, of favoring their hiring. I said as much in two previous posts (one of which is here) in which I agreed with Ed Buckner. Buckner’s words are indented, mine doubly indented (bolding is his):
Coyne does offer some opinions that are related to ethics, of course.
For example,
Transgender women, for example, should not compete athletically against biological women; should not serve as rape counselors and workers in battered women’s shelters; or, if convicted of a crime, should not be placed in a women’s prison.
My own “ethical” opinion is close to Coyne’s. I would probably—but only after I studied the matter more carefully, including discussions with rape counselors and probably even with women who’ve been victims of rape or of women-batterers, modify some of what Coyne wrote slightly to say:
Neither men or women, cis- or trans-gendered, should serve as rape counselors and as workers in battered women’s shelters, unless the counselors or others working there pass a background check; even then, no one should so serve unless the clients are aware of and accept the status of the counselors/workers.
I can imagine circumstances where there might be an advantage to victims of having a man or a trans woman on hand, but the rights, needs, and wants of the victims, even if sometimes irrational, should be paramount.
In response, I agreed:
I think the second version, expressing Buckner’s views, is better than what I wrote, and it does summarize views I already held (but failed to express). While I still think that at present tranwomen should not compete against biological women in sports, and shouldn’t really be running battered women’s shelters, they should not be completely barred from that job nor from acting as rape counselors—so long as (as Buckner writes), they undergo a background check and the women residents of shelters or women being counseled for rape or sexual assault are made aware that the counselor is a trans woman (a biological man) and are okay with that. This view will, of course still be seen as “transphobic” by some extremists, but there’s a very good case for holding this view in light of the rights of biological women. This involves a conflict between two groups’ “rights”, and in the interests of fairness and the needs of biological women, I come down against sports participation of transwomen and cast a very cold eye on the other two issues.
In other words, I’d make the rule: “Any woman seeking counseling for rape or sexual assault, or seeking entry into a woman’s shelter, should have the right to have a woman counseling and dealing with her psychological or medical needs.”
In that sense I’d modify Trump’s rules.
h/t: Jay
Very reasonable.
I assume that strange designation “at conception” is a nod to the personhood begins at conception crowd because of the Genesis line “male and female he created them”.
It might also be intended to negate use of the phrase “assigned at birth”.
I also assumed that “at conception” was for the “personhood begins at conception” crowd, probably with one eye on making it easier to ban abortion altogether at some later date.
That’s a concern, obviously, and probably a nod to prolifers. But I’d argue division into sexes at 7-8 weeks is separate from the pro-life position of immediate “ensoulment”.
Pro-lifers will, but they will anyway.
D.A.
NYC
I suspect that conception is mentioned because that is when sex is fixed, even though it isn’t identifiable until later.
Women are going to reply: “why should the possibility of him being assaulted in a male prison matter more than the possibility of him assaulting us in a women’s prison?”, and on that they have a good argument.
The other problem with a policy that it “might” be allowed is that it then leads to endless wrangling, difficult decisions, law suits, etc. And it leads to lots of non-violent male prisoners declaring that they identify as trans purely to get transfered. A flat-out “no” is much easier to implement.
From there, yes the prisoner should be protected from assault in the male prison, such as by a separate wing or segregation from other male prisoners, but that is already necessary for many prisoners (Axel Rudakubana would live less than 5 minutes if mixed with other prisoners).
I do think that there are trans woman who are no threat to bio women in prisons, as much as most biological males pose no threat to women in situations where the latter are vulnerable. So it would be a fine wish that this could be done, on occasion, since trans women surely are highly vulnerable in a male prison population. But ensuring that there is no threat thru some sort of vetting process — that would have considerable difficulty! I don’t see a way to ensure that, unfortunately.
Unfortunately the statistics tell another story where around 50% of transwomen in federal prisons are incarcerated for sexual offences. This does not interestingly enough include prostitution.
This places them in a situation where they are rewarded with a supply of more potential victims. Shameful.
These men can be segregated in the male prisons and should have no business ever entering the female prison population.
It seems to me to be in contravention to the Geneva convention.
Yes, if these women were prisoners of war they would have to be held in separate facilities from male prisoners. It is unconscionable that civilian prisoners outside of wartime have less protection. Presumably Trump’s executive order will have no impact on state prisons, where ridiculous rules such as California’s SB-132 are in force.
I agree. No men in women’s prisons.
We can treat trans prisoners humanely by treating them as we would any other human being. No, I would not segregate any prisoner who claimed to be the opposite sex or of a feminine “gender” AFTER he committed a crime. Nor would I house him with the female population; the humane treatment of the group (women) cannot be overridden by misguided notions of humane treatment for an individual (a deceptive or deluded man).
I would be open to segregating someone who was visibly trans when he committed the crime for which he was incarcerated, but I would do so only if his outward appearance were likely to cause disruptions in the prison population (e.g., a man with noticeable breasts or a man with an artificial “vagina”). Note that this looks like my chief concern is with the desires or the safety of the individual. It is not. It is with the stability of the population (for both male prisoners and guards).
https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/geneva-convention-relative-treatment-prisoners-war
Doug, how to you think crimes committed by transwomen should be reported for statistical purposes? I mean, one with noticeable breasts or perhaps a neovagina.
Would a transwoman robbing a bank be a felony committed by a man or a woman?
A sexual assault?
For assessing and tracking escalating criminal histories, crimes should be flagged for developing antisocial behavior. So it may very much matter where and how even such crimes as shoplifting and vandalism are catalogued.
Since I’m always on the lookout for a good data source, I’m wondering:
Would you please reveal your source, so I can add it to my source list? This is for your assertion of around 50% of transwomen in federal prisons being incarcerated for sexual offenses excluding prostitution.
Sure. Sometimes it’s worse in other countries.
Canada
https://publications.gc.ca/collections/collection_2022/scc-csc/PS83-3-442-eng.pdf
England
Sorry it’s the daily mail
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14237553/amp/Almost-two-thirds-transgender-women-prisons-sentences-sex-offences.html
https://fairplayforwomen.com/transgender-male-criminality-sex-offences/
https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/18973/pdf/
America
https://4w.pub/50-of-trans-inmates-in-federal-custody-for-sex-offences/
https://wsau.com/2023/08/25/more-than-half-of-transgender-inmates-in-wisconsin-have-been-convicted-of-a-sex-crime/
There is plenty to google.
Frustratingly police have known for a very long time the link with transvestism and violence and sex offences. This was written in 1999 before the madness took root.
https://drreidmeloy.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/2000_TheNatureAndDyn.pdf
I have replied to your comment but it is currently awaiting moderation. Hope I have not offended anyone or done anything inappropriate 🤔🤷♀️
It’s not only about risk of violence from males housed in women’s prisons.
The microcosm of single-sex incarceration also necessarily limits the outlets for sexual contact between inmates and every communal complication that accompanies it, consensual or otherwise.
This is a good thing for the, hopefully, obvious reasons. Men who trans-identify (miraculously, many right there in the confines of male prisons–wild, I know) fall overwhelmingly into two categories: homosexual men and heterosexual men with a fetish for appearing female. The latter type is overrepresented in the trans-identifying male prison population.
Male offenders, violent or non, belong with males or in more protective restricted units if they are in danger of becoming victims of violence.
They categorically never belong in women’s prisons.
Try flipping the scenario and imagine a trans-identifying female transferring into a male prison. Of course her rape is almost assured, but if it weren’t-in this thought experiment- how do you envision her social role in an incarcerated male population?
Women are also going to reply “living in close quarters with a man is intrusive, embarrassing, and violates our right to privacy and respect EVEN IF that man is not an aggressive predator.” In prison you’re regularly in states of undress.
It’s not just rape. When men enter a woman’s prison there can be women who want consensual sex – and everyone else has to put up with it. The entire dynamics of the social milieu is changed. So is the environment: women’s prisons often have features that are too easily broken or exploited in a man’s prison. They have to be removed.
Here’s a former inmate discussing some of these additional problems (as well as assaults) :
https://www.the11thhourblog.com/post/report-from-the-frontlines-men-in-women-s-prisons
Bottom line, women are not human shields. We are not responsible for solving male-on-male violence, or taking it on the chin for the welfare of men. There’s no doubt there need to be reforms which protect trans-identified males. That needs to be addressed in some other way.
Ha! We were righting a similar take at the exact same time.
I utterly agree with you.
I also have to wonder how many goddamned men would “discover” their inner transness if it wasn’t the fast-track to a less frightening place where he could probably get laid.
In CANADA, in 2017, the Justin Trudeau government introduced the right of transgender federal prisoners to petition for imprisonment in a prison consistent with their gender identity.
In the period 2017-2022, 57 such petitions were made, of which 12 were granted (21%) by the Correctional Service Canada, i.e., the male petitioners were then transfered to a women’s prison.
This info comes from a recent (January 2025) article in the largest French-language newspaper in North America, La Presse (Montreal-based). This article also contains this sentence:
From an earlier La Presse article from February 2023:
The two articles referenced here:
Mohamed Al Ballouz n’a pas sa place dans une prison pour femmes [Mohamed Al Ballouz has no place in a women’s prison]. La Presse, January 13, 2025
Quelle prison pour les détenues trans ? [Which prison for trans prisoners?] La Presse, February 26, 2023
(both articles are freely accessible, and can be read in English using the Translate feature of one’s web browser)
Shout it from the rooftops:
Absolutely, Sastra! Women are not support humans put on the planet to validate the feelings of delusional men.
Absolutely.
I said MIGHT not SHOULD. There may be possible cases but I don’t know of any. I get the point.
Agreed, Coel. The proportion of women in jail who have been raped or sexually assaulted is very high and their feelings of not wanting to be in a confined space with a male, and with no means of escape, should trump (!) the feelings of a man who makes the unfalsifiable claim that he “identifies” as a woman.
No men, however vulnerable or whatever their “gender identity”, should be incarcerated in the female prison estate. This was accepted in the UK more than two centuries ago with the passage of the 1823 Gaols Act (although enforcement of that law had to wait until 1832 when prison inspectors were introduced).
Prof. Coyne, your proposal for rewording seems very reasonable, and echo my thoughts as I read through it. Other than that I like the overall EO. It’s good to see positive change coming from this administration to reverse the misguided policy of the last one regarding this issue.
They talk of ‘gender ideology’. It’s not an ideology, it’s closer to a non-theistic theology.
Transgenderism is very close to the Christian doctrine of transubstantiation.
Say no to gender theology!
+1
And IMHO if “trans” is interpreted as transcendence of the material world and all knowledge due to one’s god-like power, it also makes more sense.
Gender in Mystical and Occult Thought – Behmenism and its Development in England
B. J. Gibbons
Cambridge U. Press
1996
PS it would be theosophic – wisdom of god, not theologic. Thus, a cult heresy.
When I first read the executive order, I immediately thought that whomever wrote it has a good grasp of biology. Not perfect, but correct on the most important points: that sex and gender are not the same, and that sex is defined by gamete size. I wonder who wrote the text of the order.
May Mailman, one of Trump’s legal advisors and director of Women’s Independent Law Center. She’s just been appointed Deputy Assistant to the President and Senior Policy Strategist.
Thank you!
It is strange times indeed when I find myself to be agreeable to the some of the policies of the Orange One. A major item that is missing in this executive order is any expression of compassion toward, and more importantly, any directive that reinforces the rights of trans-identifying people. Their rights should also be inalienable, except where they take away the rights of cis-women in particular to speak up for themselves.
Still, this can provide a degree of cover for a future Democratic president who is more center-left. They can largely just keep this e.o. and move on. It would be politically difficult for them to walk back the biologically incorrect and unsafe policies from Biden/Harris over this matter. So this document is pretty convenient, dammit.
Agreed. I forgot to say that, and I am not sure they should be banned from the military, as I think accommodations can be made to allow them.
A lot of Americans agree with many of the EO’s Trump has issued, or at least their subjects. The immigration thing needs tuning, but this sex thing is pretty much on the mark. And remember, he lacks empathy, which is why there is no compassion reflected towards trans people. It wouldn’t have hurt him to put in a sentence or so!
I doubt Trump personally drafted any executive orders.
After watching The Apprentice, I don’t see him as lacking empathy—his focus is leadership in a cutthroat world, not displaying empathy for approval. I’d ask Melania, his children, and grandchildren about his capacity for it. He doesn’t virtue signal empathy, but I don’t believe he excluded protections for trans people out of spite. More likely, someone else drafted the orders, and he simply signed them.
However, if we see a surge in discrimination—employers refusing to hire trans individuals or denying them healthcare or housing—I’d reconsider and hope for an amendment to reinforce their protections. Fundamental rights must remain clear and upheld.
That said, gender identity is subjective, and employers should have discretion if an employee’s presentation detracts from the role. Where to draw that line, I’m not sure.
One more thought: the executive order wasn’t about denying trans rights but protecting women’s. A more generous reading of Trump’s intent might suggest he saw trans rights as a given, making explicit clarification unnecessary. Perhaps he assumed their rights, like all human rights, were self-evident.
I’m not sure that trans people have any rights, as trans people.. They have rights as people, and shouldn’t lose rights for being trans — 911 should still send the police to assist a trans person being robbed and a trans property owner shouldn’t lose a zoning dispute with the city just because she’s trans — but they gain no additional rights as trans people, … do they?
What would obeisance to the “rights” of trans people look like? What are those rights in the first place? Which of those rights are under threat? I’m glad the President stayed out of that.
Yes. This. There are no special “trans” rights.
Yes, was going to comment on the same thing. What special rights to they have as trans people that are different than everyone else’s rights?
“Rights of trans-people” are usually meant by trans supporters to be things like a transwomen competing with biological women, which is one of the very things that this executive order is trying to fix!
When pressed – and it is hard to do – they recourse to the “right” of minors accessing “life saving” hormones and surgery.
I pressed further at a pride parade b/c the biggest one on earth is in NYC, downstairs from me. And always lots of fun, btw.
But the TRActivist just replied: “Well it is the right to be fabulous!”
To which I said s/he already was fabulous – and we had a fun laugh.
D.A.
NYC
RE: “I’m not sure that trans people have any rights, as trans people.”
The right not to be discriminated against (because of being trans) in the labor and housing market.
That’s what I was looking for. But that “right” requires that gender identity or expression be written into civil rights legislation as a prohibited ground for discrimination, making trans a protected class so that all other individuals must adjust their behaviour to avoid trouble with the government, just as for race, religion, and sex. That’s a new right that they don’t have now, (except in countries where they do.) Every time you invent one of these protected-class rights you diminish the rights of everyone else (like employers and landlords) to make private decisions. An employer who doesn’t want to hire someone who is going to disrupt the workplace by demanding that everyone use his imaginary pronouns even out of his hearing (because someone will surely rat out the misgenderer) will now be breaking the law. Confess: if the law said you had to hire that guy in San Francisco who baits restaurant waiters into calling him Sir, and then shames them on TikTok, wouldn’t you think the law was being an ass?
Sastra (I think) reported that hiring managers are tossing resumés with “preferred” (read: “demanded”) pronouns in the header pages into the waste basket because they don’t want to hire troublemakers who are presumed to be (or support) trans. If the Justice Department found they were doing this, under your formulation of trans rights they would be in deep doo-doo.
(Because these posts on trans issues attract dozens of comments, I’m hoping I’m not over-commenting with this one, which I promise will be my last. I think the claim that “trans people should have full civil rights” is ambiguous unless parsed out as we are doing here, and it matters a lot.)
I agree with Mark. I would add only that the “trans” umbrella includes a wide range of people with different kinds of views about themselves. Those who simply don’t want to conform to cultural stereotypes about how males and females should behave or dress or talk should just be accepted. But a male “trans” person who is so distressed by his sex or sexuality as to express a belief to have been born in the wrong body, or to be female, is suffering a significant delusion. That mental illness might be reasonably disqualifying for some kinds of roles in society and for membership in some kinds of institutions like the military. Those distressed people should get kindness and compassion in all other respects, and psychological or psychiatric help to heal from the mental illness, but shouldn’t expect anyone else to affirm that the delusion is real (cf. pronouns etc.).
To answer some of the rebuttals,
By saying that trans-identifying people have rights that deserve protection, I did not mean that they should have rights that are different from everyone else. At least I can’t think of any. But they do have rights of life, liberty, etc, like everyone.
When a group is being singled out for discrimination and other injustices, it is common and necessary practice to enact special laws that reinforce the rights that they already have. These are intended to remind people that these rights exist, and to also help prod the police and judges to enforce them accordingly. Our civil rights laws and women’s rights laws and gay rights laws were made just for those reasons.
And I shouldn’t have to say that this argument does not mean that trans women get to shower with women, or whatever.
Sex is recognizable long before birth. Most couples in rich countries discover their baby’s sex when they have a routine ultrasound “for dates”. An embryo that miscarries or is ectopic can be sexed without difficulty if there is some medical or personal reason to know, (and of course if the conceptus can be identified and recovered for analysis.) In principle, even an early morula or blastocyst can be recognized as male or female. The challenge is to do so without destroying it. This would have implications for sex-selective assisted reproduction if non-destructive testing becomes possible. So “recognized at conception” works for me. “Determined” or “committed” might be be more accurate but the concept of recognition is important in its own right. It tells us that something is objectively knowable, not gnostic (a word I learned here.) Gender could be argued (and is, by the activists) to be also determined or committed at some unspecified time before birth. No.
There are many male criminals who risk violence in men’s prisons — young, slightly-built, “pretty” men particularly but also those who have done things deeply loathed in the prison culture, typically involving children or being police informants. Should all these men be incarcerated in women’s prisons just because the inmates there lack the physical ability or mental propensity to rape or murder them? Whether sincere or fraudulent, “transwomen” aren’t women. They don’t belong in women’s prisons. If they need protective custody with the child-abusers and stool pigeons in men’s prisons that can be arranged.
“Transwomen are men” is the whole thrust of this EO. It clears the mind. If I’m sexually attracted only to women, by definition I can reject transwomen. I don’t have to tie myself in knots worrying about whether it’s ethical to reject women with penises (or who once had them.) They’re men. Case closed. Everything else flows from that.
Yes but if you’re not born (even via C section) then you’re dead and have no need of government recognition except for a death certificate.
Yes, Leslie. Foetuses are screened by sex for IVF at very early stages of development, after all.
Leslie – re differentiating female and male morulae, are you referring to differential gene expression at the 16 cell stage? I believe that this has been shown to be true at least in bovine morulae and blastocysts. Pretty cool!
Excellent comment, Leslie.
Though I am a straight woman, I am aware of lesbians who are accused of transphobia because they don’t want to date “transwomen”.
Also, there are vulnerable men in prisons, old, physically or mentally disabled who may require special protection. That doesn’t mean you put the in a women’s prison.
There’s a slight technical issue – the slug of this article is bidens-new-sex-and-gender-policy and I believe you’d like to correct that.
I cannot correct it. I wrote the whole post before I made a typo in the title, so I let it be. The title is now correct so I’m not gonna worry about it.
While this policy is good, it’s likely to be reversed in 4 to 8 years. In the meantime, the damage this maniac will cause to the economy, our relationships with our allies, and the rule of law, can last decades. Do you really think that it’s worth it?
Definitely not worth it! I haven’t seen that our host has said it is.
NOT worth it. I don’t know why this is even a question. It isn’t that hard to hold two opposing opinions about our president, or about anyone else.
When did Dr. Coyne ever state or imply that he voted for Trump or wanted Trump to win? How about….NEVER. Because your question “Do you really think that it’s worth it” seems to imply that he wanted Trump to win just so Trump could issue this type of EO.
Also, let’s hope that the “I’m trans, you’re trans, my cousin is trans too!” fad has started to die down in 4 to 8 years just like the “recovered memory” and “Satanic ritual abuse” fads eventually did.
Yes.
It’s early days but the lack of performative outrage about these changes is interesting. Hard to picture half a million showing up to protest: (Edit, wikipedia says 1% as many showed up in 2025, just five thousand.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Women%27s_March
Maybe that’s a sign that the cultural tide has turned, and these changes won’t simply be un-done by the next democrat president. Because to become electable, he or she will have to have found something else to campaign on, something large numbers of people actually want.
Since it is moved by adolescent girls – like most moral panics and social contagions – there’s a good chance it will die down in its extreme forms.
Like DEI, a lot of its power was it presented a collective action problem. To individually oppose trans “rights” or DEI left one liable to various phobias/ist charges.
But see the DEI house of cards fall!
Which is little help for the tens of thousands of young people swept up in trans who have had their sexualities and lives permanently deranged.
After the suicide and death threats the most horrible actions of TRActivists has been the promotion of the false ideas that puberty suppressants and cross sex hormones are safe and reversible. This is a scandal orders of magnitude worse than lobotomy – which was the last time we used surgery in psychiatry.
D.A.
NYC
Sorry, but you should apologize because I didn’t vote for Trump and have repeatedly called him a narcissist with a personality disorder. Do you READ this site?
I will wait for an apology or a statement where you find that I said Trump was the best choice for President.
I hope this will inspire people in other countries to back away from gender ideology. This whole business of men competing in women’s sports needs to end worldwide.
Let’s hear it for women’s rights.
Here here! Frau Katze.
“Trans” as we know it is almost exclusively an anglosphere problem. It is almost unknown in most of the world. Thankfully.
It is interesting, even with such clickable translation tools, it didn’t infect more of humanity.
D.A.
NYC
You say “a trans women in a male prison may be at risk of becoming sexually assaulted”. Any inmate in a male prison is at risk of being raped by a fellow inmate. On the other hand, in a female prison, no inmate is at risk of being raped by a fellow inmate unless men who identify as trans are incarcerated in them. Your exception based on sympathy for males-identifying as trans is pointless and must instead be extended to females incarcerated in the female estate.
Exactly so.
I don’t think you understand what I meant. I can barely imagine a trans-woman being safely accommodated in a women’s prison. But you cannot imagine at all that a transwoman is at greater risk of being raped in a men’s prison than is a cis man? Sorry, but I can imagine that. I was simply thinking of possible exceptions to the generalization. The solution to all this might be permanent banning from social contact with any inmates, and that is a viable solution.
I certainly recognise that a trans-identifying individual is at risk of being raped by an inmate in a male prison. But to be more so than a heterosexual (or gay) man will depend on whether or not he is larger or less well-defended than the inmate with the intention and the opportunity. This is because rapists pick on weaker victims than themseves, and not all trans-identifying males are weak – look at Isla Bryson, or Sarah Jane Barker. (I don’t know how you deal with transexuals. I’m open to incarcerating them in the women’s estate.)
Separating trans-identifying men from contact with other inmates amounts to solitary confinement which I can’t approve either. Perhaps you’re thinking of collecting them into a group of similar individuals – but that won’t protect them from the risk of being raped by the stronger ones among them. It’s a dreadful situation but it’s not made any better by housing trans-identifying males in the women’s estate. It’s just made worse by spreading rape by inmate to both estates.
The big biology debate raging on X right now is over this claim coming from Progressives:
The counter argument seems to be that the embryo has undifferentiated gonads, not female ones, and a new study in Science has shown that femaleness is not the default, but also develops by an active process. As Jerry says, the apparatus isn’t recognizable — but it’s not female.
Their argument seems to be wrong, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable. Older sources still say we all start out as female. My guess is this may matter to them partly because if an organism goes from female to male, then sex is a spectrum and now gender identity can indicate where we are on that spectrum.
“My guess is this may matter to them partly because if an organism goes from female to male, then sex is a spectrum”
I don’t see that being able to switch from one state to the other makes it non-binary. A light switch can be flipped from completely on to completely off, but that does not make your light switch a spectrum (unless it is a dimmer switch!).
Plead read my post about leaving too many comments.
Or one of the non-clicky light switches that tilted a bulb of mercury to complete the circuit — if one moved the switch s-l-o-w-l-y enough then partial contact could occur, which (to this curious kid at least) made a satisfying hissing sound and flickering light.
Collin Wright’s short videos at realityslaststand give an excellent primer on the biology of all this. WEIT has published them here from time to time.
“Default female from conception” is wrong. But fit for purpose for Trump and the issue at hand.
D.A.
NYC
The problem is that humans who are born and old enough to talk and think that sex is a spectrum are not analogous to developmental stages of sex determination. As you recognize, the idea that “we all start out as female” is incorrect.
Those misconceptions about the anatomy of fetuses are pretty common. They have the primordia for both a uterus + fallopian tubes PLUS the primordia for the vas deferens and epididymous — so plumbing for both sexes. All mammals start that way.
With the orders on DEI and gender policy, Trump is giving the Democratic Party leadership an opportunity. Their policies are not popular with the public, but they lack either the will or the ability to step back from the mess they have embraced. They can grouse a bit now and then quietly retreat, never to resurrect this nonsense. Will they? Or do they really love the fundraising potential they see in facing President Vance? Or are they that captured in their epistemic bubble?
Everyone I know seems to agree that sex and gender are different constructs.
I am curious then what it is that trans people are changing on their birth certificates.
It is a grey area.
One is a biological construct, the other a psychological one.
Usually they match, but not always.
I and others have asked this question before, but can you define gender in a way that doesn’t reduce to sex stereotypes?
Why I regard it as a mix of mind and society.
“I regard it as” is core to the primary definition. Pure subjectivity, subject to change as the “argument” and activism of the moment demands.
“Gender” comes down to personality and social signalling/sex stereotypes.
That’s all it is. People should be absolutely free to be sex atypical/non-conforming in personality, dress, and everything else, but there’s no need to pretend they aren’t the sex they are. A person who suffers significant distress about their sex has a psychological disorder. They should be treated with compassion, but there’s no reason for society to prioritize “gender” over sex in law and social policy.
Very well said!
That’s funny I was just the other week in an argument over “gender” being a “synonym” for sex.
I no longer know what to say about gender. It’s a social construct. It’s a synonym for the biological sexes. Lately it seems that both are true in practice, and so it is basically a word for starting arguments.
My summary is:
Google Gemini: “genea comes from the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) root gene-, which means “give birth, beget” ; Latin word genus, which means “birth, race, kind” / “sort” “… maybe like in genesis or gene.
I do not recall the publication dates when “sex” was first established for the reproductive systems and their gametes. I might try AI on that.
There’s literature to show gender being used outside of its usage in language from 1908 in the Hermetic occult doctrine The Kybalion.
There is discussion of the spiritual properties of sex as explored by 16th century mystics in :
Gender in Mystical and Occult Thought – Behmenism and its Development in England
B. J. Gibbons
Cambridge U. Press
1996
In modern times, say the 60s, “gender” serves as a dialectical trap of Queer Theory and activist literature, also stemming from Robert Stoller and John Money (“gender identity”, 60s).
I notice that even the very woke will ask about the gender of someone’s unborn child, or their cat (and or talk of gender reveal parties). These uses are inconsistent with their theology, because nobody has asked the fetus (or the cat) about its soul. We can observe its sex but cannot, in their system, know its gender.
To me that indicates that “gender” is mostly just a euphemism for “sex”, a word which doesn’t also mean fucking. Nobody really thinks there are two independent concepts out there in the world. They just turn it on as an act, sometimes, to start arguments.
Within biological circles, ‘gender’ did used to be used as a synonym for ‘sex’ (in the sense of ‘sexes’). Used to be.
Recognition of ‘gender roles’ and consequent ‘gender presentation’ as cultural constructs put a gradual stop to that usage.
Of course these concepts have morphed into the internal/psychological concept of ‘gender identity’, which has now been reified as Truth.
The president of Latvia was recently interviewed at Davos by left/liberal leaning Ch4 News (Channel 4) from the UK. This was mostly about the, assumed, Russian sabotage of undersea data and power cables in the Baltic Sea.
But the president happens to be gay and the Trump gender thing had just been announced – so he was briefly asked about the US trans issue.
Interestingly he said something to the effect that trans advocates had been pushing an extreme position and this had caused a (reasonable?) backlash.
I think the president was making a sound comment.
Sex may not be observable at conception but surely that’s the point when sex is determined, no? Whether or not the sperm that fertilizes the egg has a Y chromosome.
As you rightly say Jerry:
“… a trans woman is a biological male and on average men are more aggressive than women… ”
Indeed, trans women retain “male pattern behaviour”, regardless of any feminising treatment.
Additionally, you are concerned that:
“… trans women in a male prison may be at risk of becoming sexually assaulted.”
Many prisons place trans women in segregated accommodation, within male prisons. The risk of sexual assault is exactly what women and girls fear most from biological males being in their sex-protected spaces. We cannot know what their intentions are, or if they wish us harm. Decent men do not come into our protected spaces as they respect how we feel, and understand our need for protection from predatory males (which is the original reason for female-only spaces).
Men masquerading as women feels like the “wolf in sheep’s clothing” scenario, and will always raise red flags for most women and girls. Self-ID has also made the situation worse, as any voyeur, exhibitionist or rapist can now claim to be a trans woman, even if that’s untrue.
Seems to me the real problem down the road is bird flu. Trump’s orders have canceled on-going disease and cancer research in the NIH.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/01/23/trump-administration-hhs-health-agencies-pause-travel-communications/
Yes, this truly is horrible.
Yes, but this is a diversion from the discussion and whataboutery (“the real problem”). Please try to stick to the topic.
It is a grey area.
One is a biological construct, the other a psychological one.
Usually they match, but not always.
No, one is a biological fact (sex), the other is a cultural construct (gender).
Yeah, culture. But hey, the mind is a part as well.
Unless we are going to split hairs, there are vanishingly few intersex people who cannot have their sex determined. The majority are errors of embryological development, that may be hard to recognise as male or female at birth, yet sort out as definite male or female with investigation. True hermaphrodites (with both ovarian and testicular tissues) have been described, but I believe there have only been one or two shown to produce both ova and sperm. There can be semantic arguments over those with abnormal sex chromosomes or androgen insensitivity, but we know which sex their body would have been if not for the enzyme deficiency etc that underlies their condition.
I’m actually frightened. In reading reactions to this fresh wave of much ado about transness (over here in the US) from people who I generally admire and consider very smart, I’m finding them fully captured.
Institutions like the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics and even the United Nations, medical and political experts I would often want to cite in discussions of other topics, are saying the most insane things.
These people I have admired are all in. They endorse all the way to the edges of this lunacy.
How are we ever going to pull out of this?
Intersex people are rare (as PCC(E) correctly points out), but real. However, they are not (in my opinion) exceptions to male/female binary. They have a sex (male or female) which may not be phenotypically apparent. Some (chimeras) might actually have both sexes (very, very rare). Some might be considered to have no sex (because they don’t produce either type of gamete). I would argue that intersex folks (which technically includes myself), fit into the male/female binary and are not exceptions. See the prior note by Christopher Moss for more information.