Trump's Executive Order Against Trans People Technically Makes Every American Female
If you legislate with scientific words, you should know the science.
If you want to argue technicalities (and you REALLY should at least examine those before making legally binding edicts reinterpreting reality), it actually makes every American nongender.
It specifies "at conception", at which point no sexual characteristics have developed.
That was my thought also. Trump getting rid of a legal gender distinction altogether by accident would be hilarious. I hope he stands his ground and insists it's not a mistake.
Ironically, the executive order goes on to acknowledge the difference between sex and gender
Or genderless. Either way I'm down.
Yeah they define female as member of species with largest sex cell but also state the sex person is at conception is their sex, therefore we are all sexless.
Another reason why politicians shouldn't have a say in science and biology.
Pretty sure according to current science, the sex is "undifferentiated" until a certain point in development. That means Trump wrote it so no one is female, lol.
Even as a zygote, the chromosomes are still XX and XY, aren't they? (Ignoring XXY, etc.)
It's still stupid as hell, and the female thing would be funny-sad, but scientifically I'm not sure it's accurate.
The EO definition didn't refer to chromosomes at all actually it referred to female as "at conception, to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell" and male "at conception, to the sex that produces the small reproductive cell."
A zygote is a singular cell at coneception... so you could also argue it's saying everyone's bigender actually. In any case its extremely poorly written, goes against science, and forgets about intersex people
(also note that XX and XY chromosomes don't guarantee AMAB or AFAB. You can have XX chromosomes and present completely AMAB and vice versa)
not all people with XY chromosomes end up with a penis.
not all people with XX chromosomes end up with a vagina
Fair. But if we do include intersex people with less common chromosomes in this topic, I wonder if they might get overlooked? I hope so, since it's probably the best chance here except in the unlikely case a "wait and see" stance is allowed.
*edit - correction: I somehow forgot that as orclev said (and usernamesAreTricky expanded on with a vice versa), it's possible for XY folks to be cis women. So chromosomes don't deliver the desired gotcha either.
Expression is where it's codified. For instance: I have XX chromosomes, but I also have dangling genitalia and a great big bushy beard. All because the X chromosome I recieved from my father had an SRY transcription error, and my body had male expression "switched on" by the SRY gene.
Yep
It rather depends on how you're defining sex. And I'm not joking, the article gives good examples on when it is ambiguous.
Thanks for pointing that out. When I first checked the link, I must have been tired as I missed that there was an article beyond the image and headline somehow. (Normally my habit would have been to check if the topic was covered, since headlines can be misleading. Case in point, in this case they were going for humour more than accuracy there, but the article indeed has examples.)
Well, it shows that the average right winger was fast asleep in school, especially during science and history classes.
That's because anyone with a basic understanding of human biology knows sex is a biological concept that is quite fluid - and gender has an incredibly soft scientific basis if any at all, within social contexts. If he had people who actually understood science helping his write this, they would only be explaining the ways it's wrong.
I'm trying to wrap my head around how executive orders work. I'm not American.
Can someone explain what's the legal process compared to a bill for example?
A policy applied to federal agencies on the whims of the executive/administration (president+staff). (FBI, CIA, DHS, ICE, TSA, HHS, FDA, so forth...)
Does not impact state law, judicials, or enforcement agencies. Though many of these do take their lead from federal guidelines to some degree, especially at the police and sheriff level.
This will be sued over constitutionality in the courts
Stacked courts will probably claim it's constitutional
Up to Congress to specifically and independently say it's unconstitutional. This Congress will probably not do that
IF there's another election, and the term limit is still adhered to, the next administration may chose to revoke it or alter it assuming they have differing policies.
Rinse and repeat.
[Edits: clarification and structure]
They're not laws... The president is the head of the "executive branch" which has a number of federal departments that execute the laws passed by the legislature.
Executive orders are basically "memos" from the president that direct those departments on how to operate since the laws don't typically get into too much detail about the specifics.
These orders apply only to federal offices, he has no authority over private business or state governments without passing a law.
Does this mean I have to update my drivers license since I'm going to be female for the next four years?
Oh, that could be fun.
Fixed the wage gap. Thank Thrump
That's so cool. I'm glad we can find a good laugh in the midst of this hell.
This is pretty poor for what's supposed to be a science blog
Presidency
Yeah, I stopped following IFLScience over 10 years ago. Even then, their posts vere not very accurate scientifically.
