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TRUMP’S DEFINITIONS OF “MALE” AND “FEMALE” ARE NONSENSE  
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Madison Pauly
January 23, 2025
Mother Jones
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_ “This executive order is essentially a Trojan horse for embryonic
and fetal personhood,” says Kulsoom Ijaz, senior staff attorney
at Pregnancy Justice. “They are smuggling this ideology into
federal policy.” _

"Correspondence Analysis of Y-chromosomal variation in the Czech
Republic Am J Phys Anthropol 2007", by Concus Cretus (CC BY-SA 4.0)

 

A few hours after taking the oath of office Monday, President Donald
Trump issued an executive order purporting to redefine “male” and
“female” by fiat.

The order
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with the cumbersome title “Defending Women From Gender Ideology
Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government,”
instructs all executive agencies—including those governing
education, health, housing, and employment—to use new definitions of
“male” and “female” in every aspect of their work:

(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.

The order is scant on details about how the new definitions will be
applied, nor does it explain how sex will be measured for the policy
purposes it does outline, such as determining which gender marker
appears on a person’s passport or separating incarcerated people by
sex. But the lack of specificity in no way limits its
potentially dire consequences for transgender people, who
face extremely high
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of discrimination and violence, including sexual violence
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a passport that matches one’s gender identity or expression, for
instance, is a crucial safety measure when applying for jobs, crossing
a border, or even showing ID in a grocery store line.

Yet Trump’s new sex definitions affect not only transgender people,
whose gender identity will no longer be acknowledged by executive
branch agencies, but also everyone else who may soon find themselves
classified according to whether they were destined at conception to
produce eggs or sperm.

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“The potential implications and scope of this executive order are
limited only by our imagination,” says Kellan Baker, executive
director of the Whitman-Walker Institute for Health Research & Policy
[[link removed]], a leading LGBTQ health
organization. “It seeks to define women according to the functions
of their bodies and regulate how all people, not just transgender
people, move through the world and their interactions with federal
government entities or federally supported entities.”

For one thing, lawyers fighting for the rights of pregnant people say
the executive order’s definitions of male and female advance an
anti-abortion agenda by defining sex as starting “at conception.”
This is the language of “fetal personhood
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theory
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the anti-abortion movement that maintains an embryo is a person with
full legal rights from the moment of fertilization, when egg meets
sperm. The theory has been used in efforts to end access to
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vitro fertilization, prosecute people who have miscarriages
for manslaughter
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and ban certain forms of birth control
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“By defining a male or female as a person starting at conception,
this administration is normalizing the extreme notion that embryos,
even fertilized embryos, have the same rights as you and I.”

“This executive order is essentially a Trojan horse for embryonic
and fetal personhood,” says Kulsoom Ijaz, senior staff attorney
at Pregnancy Justice [[link removed]]. “They
are smuggling this ideology into federal policy. By defining a male
or female as a person starting at conception, this administration is
normalizing the extreme notion that embryos, even fertilized embryos,
have the same rights as you and I.”

Agencies have been ordered to report back on their progress in
implementing the new sex definitions within 120 days. Much remains
unknown about what policies they’ll produce, whether they’ll
target pregnant people as well as trans people, and how the courts
will rule on the various legal challenges sure to be filed
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step of the way.

But to begin to understand the vast potential consequences of the
White House’s new definition of sex, I wanted to start with the
basics. So I called Kathryn Clancy
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anthropologist at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, whose
research examines the biology and culture around menstruation
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pregnancy, and sexual harassment—topics all founded on a scientific
understanding of sex and the differences between us.

_This interview has been edited and condensed._

LET’S START WITH A STRAIGHTFORWARD QUESTION: HOW DO SCIENTISTS
DEFINE SEX?

There is no one definition of sex. For scientists, the way you might
choose to define it can and should vary based on your research
question. Some people will define sex around gamete size—do we
produce larger gametes [eggs] versus smaller gametes [sperm]? That
means there are more than two groups, because where do we put people
who don’t produce gametes?

Then there are sex chromosomes. It’s not just XX and XY. There are
a whole bunch of categories
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Another one that people look at is neurotypicality. [Some] say
there’s such a thing as a male brain and a female brain
[[link removed].],
and you’re going to get way different boundaries on those sex
categories. One definition that is starting to shift right now is
around typical hormone ranges. [For instance, people with] polycystic
ovary syndrome
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end up having androgen levels that are very different from those of
most people that we might put in the sex category of female.

Genitals aren’t one of the common ways of defining sex. But the
problem we come across is we often collect information on sex with a
little form that says, “What sex are you?” What that’s typically
asking a person is not “What’s your gamete size? What sex
chromosomes do you have? What hormone levels are typical for you?”
It’s asking about sex assigned at birth—a completely different way
to measure sex that is based on baby genitals.

OKAY, SO HOW GOOD A PROXY ARE BABY GENITALS FOR ALL THESE OTHER WAYS
OF MEASURING SEX?

It doesn’t work for lots of people. If I had to hazard a guess, I
would say several
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intersex conditions that, because of some developmental differences or
chromosomal differences, a person’s genitals might appear very
clearly within the realm of what we’d call female genitalia or male
genitalia, and that person might have other sex categories that
don’t fit.

AS YOU KNOW, THE NEW EXECUTIVE ORDER DEFINES TWO TYPES OF PEOPLE,
FEMALE AND MALE, BY WHETHER, AT CONCEPTION, THEY WILL PRODUCE A SPERM
OR AN EGG. DOES THIS MEAN THEY’VE PICKED ONE OF THE
MEASURES—GAMETE SIZE—AS _THE_ WAY TO MEASURE SEX?

Yes. But the way it’s worded is really confusing, because you’re
not producing any gametes yet at conception.

SO HOW WOULD ANYONE KNOW WHETHER AN EMBRYO BELONGS TO A SEX THAT
PRODUCES EGGS OR SPERM AT CONCEPTION?

Anti-abortion rhetoric defines conception as happening at
fertilization. [The American College of Obstetricians and
Gynecologists, the leading US authority on reproductive
health, defines “conception
[[link removed](11)02223-X/fulltext]” as
happening when a fertilized egg implants in the uterus.] We’re not
even a multicelled embryo yet at fertilization. At that moment, does
an embryo have sexed chromosomes? Yes. Are they knowable with our
current technology? No. In IVF, for people who do pre-implantation
genetic testing, we typically wait until at least day three, if not
day five, until the sex chromosomes are even measurable. And is it a
point at which the embryo is even producing gametes? No. That’s
still months away.

BUT THE EXECUTIVE ORDER SAYS THESE DEFINITIONS SHOULD BE USED TO
DETERMINE WHICH SEX MARKER SHOULD GO ON A PASSPORT OR WHETHER A
PRISONER SHOULD BE INCARCERATED IN A MEN’S OR A WOMEN’S PRISON.

This is what’s so stupid about it, but also what’s so dangerous.
What is the enforcement plan? Are we going to test people’s gonads
to see what type of gametes they produce? Because if the obsession is
at the level of gametes, the tests are much more invasive than a sex
chromosome test.

Nor will there be an actual way to logically enforce it, because
it’s an illogical order. I think what will happen is it will be
basically about punishing people in the worst way possible, treating
people as poorly as possible, and creating as much discord and mayhem
as possible.

“I think what will happen is it will be basically about punishing
people in the worst way possible, treating people as poorly as
possible, and creating as much discord and mayhem as possible.”

This is mostly going to be around one sex category: the female sex
category. They will only be doing this toward anybody who might fall
into the woman category or might self-report as being in the woman
category. I think Trump, in whatever terrible language is available to
him, is trying to control women and control people he perceives to be
in the woman category. A lot of this is keeping the category of women
“pure”—and also, obviously, about doing immense harm to trans
people.

There’s also a very racial, white supremacist thing going on here
with this “defending women.” It’s a very old idea—it appears
in travelogues, early writings of Europeans, as well as in the United
States when they started encountering North American Indigenous folks,
and the way that they thought about enslaved peoples. There was this
belief that in the “lower races,” men and women were less
different, and that in the “higher races,” there were more
differences between women and men. This was about saying men and women
are differentiated, clear, nonoverlapping categories because that
makes us a more evolved people.

THE TITLE OF THE EXECUTIVE ORDER DESCRIBES IT AS “RESTORING
BIOLOGICAL TRUTH TO THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT.” THE IDEA SEEMS TO BE
THAT IF WE COULD JUST LOOK AT SOMEONE’S PHYSIOLOGY OR THEIR CELLS,
WE CAN PUT THEM IN THE MALE OR FEMALE BUCKET, AND THAT’S WHAT
MATTERS FOR POLICY PURPOSES. BUT THE WAY YOU’RE DESCRIBING THE REAL
“BIOLOGICAL TRUTH” SOUNDS WAY MORE COMPLICATED.

It is. That’s not to mention the fact that most people are at least
a little mosaic, meaning that when we’re formed as embryos, we often
have some funky cells in there, and some of them persist. Depending on
how someone collects cells from you, they could get different DNA and
sometimes even different sex chromosomes. [Some people are] chimeric,
which is when you have the cells of another person: either a vanishing
twin or your own offspring. If you have ever been pregnant, DNA from
the embryo or fetus breaks off and enters our circulation and embeds
in our tissues all over our body for the rest of our lives.

HANG ON, SO SOMEONE WHO GIVES BIRTH TO A CHILD WITH XY CHROMOSOMES
WILL HAVE XY CELLS IN THEIR BODY THAT SHOW UP IN TESTING?

They’re in your blood during the pregnancy. Then for the rest of
your life, they go and find cool places to hang out. They live in your
brain. They live in your liver. They’ve been found in every tissue
in your body.

YOU WROTE IN _AMERICAN SCIENTIST
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MANY SCHOLARS HAVE DITCHED A SEX CLASSIFICATION SYSTEM BASED PRIMARILY
ON GAMETES. WHY IS THAT?

Some people will never produce a gamete. Intersex people are one clear
example. There are some intersex conditions where, developmentally,
you are not making organs that are going to lead to gamete production.
So what is the sex category of a person who does not have organs, does
not have gonads, that will lead to any type of gamete production?

Another example is infertility. The reason I know so much about IVF is
my husband is a two-time cancer survivor. He doesn’t make sperm, and
he probably hasn’t since he had radiation when he was 1—which is
not even when you’re making sperm yet. His sex category, I’m
pretty sure, would be comfortably considered male across a couple of
different axes. But no gametes. So what sex category does he fall
into?

REPORTING ON THE RISE OF ANTI-TRANS POLITICS, ONE OF THE ARGUMENTS I
OFTEN HEAR FROM CONSERVATIVES IS THAT INTERSEX PEOPLE CAN JUST BE
CONSIDERED MALE OR FEMALE, PART OF THE BINARY, JUST WITH SOMETHING
GONE “WRONG.”

I think it’s weird and unfortunate that we’d call these
developmental and chromosomal differences “wrong,” as opposed to
interesting and beautiful human variability. A lot of people talk
about the social construction of gender, but sex is also socially
constructed. We’re seeing it take place right now with these
executive orders, where they are trying to impose their own
definition—an ahistorical, ascientific definition of supposedly a
scientific phenomenon. You see the same thing with “intersex.”
Folks who we now put in that category have always existed, but we
didn’t always have a name for that category.

AS A BIOLOGICAL ANTHROPOLOGIST—SOMEONE WHO CONSIDERS NOT JUST
PHYSIOLOGY, BUT THE MEANING WE MAKE OF IT—WHAT WAS YOUR REACTION TO
THE EXECUTIVE ORDER DEFINING MALE AND FEMALE?

The scientist in me is in disbelief at how stupid it is. How can you
so fully misunderstand basic human biology and then legislate about
it?

My next reaction is just incredible distress. There are some very
intentional wordings here that are completely untethered from reality
but clearly are signaling particular things: protecting the
“purity” of the female category and trying to lay claim to
personhood and sex as early in the existence of a human as possible.
That really says something about how big a step this executive order
is trying to take—they’re trying to make it as all-encompassing
and as absolutely draconian as possible.

THE WORD I KEEP THINKING OF IS “CONSTRICTING.” WE HAVE ALL THIS
VARIETY, ALL THIS DIVERSITY, WHETHER IT’S IN OUR HORMONES,
CHROMOSOMES, GENITALIA, GAMETES—AND YET IT’S ALL SORT OF SHOVED
INTO ONE BUCKET OR ANOTHER. AND OUR DESTINY IS BASED ON THAT BUCKET.

When you try to define a person at the stage of a fertilized egg, and
you think you’re doing them a favor by defining their personhood and
sex early, what you’re actually doing is stripping them of all the
potential and possibility of what their life might be.

There’s this term in life history theory called the “reaction
norm.” Take height, for example. Your height is at least 50 percent
heritable, and then there are all sorts of things that are going to
happen in your life, choices—exposures, eating, exercising—that
then play a role in what your final height is. The reaction norm is
that full range of variability, the full possibility of what your
adult height may end up being. What they’re trying to say is, “No,
I’ve already said your adult height is 5’10”.”

Maybe for height that doesn’t matter so much, but when it comes to
gender or gender expression or sex, or any number of other categories
that vary over time and have all sorts of different political and
personal meanings, to be prescriptive that early is to rob them of the
chance to learn enough about themselves, to decide who it is they want
to be, and where they are going to fit along that full range of who
they might turn out to be.

_Madison Pauly [[link removed]] is
a reporter at Mother Jones. Reach her at [email protected]._

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