Culture and Society
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Moments after the presidential inauguration, US President Donald Trump signed several anti-scientific executive orders (EOs), such as taking the United States out of the Paris Agreement to curtail human-made climate change and withdrawing the US from the World Health Organization. He also signed an EO targeting trans and non-binary people which had the unintended consequence of making every single American female. If you will legislate with scientific words, you should know the science.
The text of the EO declares: “'Female' means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell.” Linking sex and conception seems to bring anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ+ lingo together, but also demonstrates the lack of knowledge that at fertilization, and for many weeks after, every embryo is female. It's a point that people have been quick to raise online.
In the first few weeks after conception, all embryos look the same. We can call that state "unisex", but the basic blueprint is what we ascribe to female bodies – that’s why, for example, everyone has nipples and not just those people who might end up lactating (although everyone has the potential to do that).
The sex-specific changes kick in around the sixth week of embryological development when a gene called SRY starts to take effect. From that point onwards, most people with an XY genotype will follow a male developmental process. The Y chromosome sends out signals, but those signals need to be fully understood for the embryo to become a typical male. It is not difficult for the signals to be misunderstood. In the case of Swyer syndrome, where cisgender women have XY chromosomes instead of the more common XX, it can take just a single oxygen atom.
There are many examples of peculiarities when it comes to sexual development, with many different ways in which the sex chromosomes, hormones, and external factors interact with each other. There is the case of a Croatian woman who gave birth despite her cells being predominantly XY, including her ovaries. It is likely that there are many other women out there with similar unusual combinations of chromosomes but completely unaware, because they never had the need to check their DNA.
Sex is determined at birth by looking at the external genitals of children – which is also not applicable correctly to all children. While most women have XX chromosomes and most men have XY, there is no such thing as a strict sex binary in humans. Believing in a binary is ignoring factual reality. It would be like saying we shouldn't believe in carbon or oxygen in the universe because 99.8 percent of all elements are either hydrogen or helium.
The EO talks about the “ordinary and longstanding use and understanding of biological and scientific terms,” so it is important that those terms are actually understood and not misused for a political agenda to target a minority.
So are all Americans women now? Is Trump the first female president? Probably not. Despite the technicalities, if there were a court case, a judge would probably focus on intent rather than wording. But in science, if not in law, words still have meaning. Alternatively, we could just embrace it: after all, we know that when Shania Twain says "Let's go girls," she means all of us!
