Oops, Donald Trump’s anti-trans executive order means every American is now legally female

Donald Trump marched into the White House with a vow to return to traditional patriarchal values and promote conservative notions of gender. So it was a matter of minutes before his signature was on the “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government” order, decreeing that from now on the U.S. government only recognizes people as male or female.

More specifically, the order says that “sex shall refer to an individual’s immutable biological classification as either male or female.” It goes on to specifically define what male and female mean. Male is “a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the small reproductive cell” and female is “a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell.”

But whoever’s drafting this stuff didn’t pay attention in biology class. As has been widely pointed out on social media, sex is not decided “at conception.” For the first six to seven weeks after conception all fetuses are female, with male testes developing if the Y chromosome is present and expresses itself. If this does not happen, female genitalia will develop.

Regardless, Trump’s order makes no mention of chromosomes whatsoever and divides sexes between those who produce “the small reproductive cell” (the sperm) and “the large reproductive cell” (the egg). As at conception the embryo is by default female, then congratulations — America is now fully female and Trump is our first female president! Congratulations, Madam President, smash that glass ceiling. Slay kween. Let’s go, girls! And so on.

The counter-argument is that — despite not mentioning chromosomes — Trump’s order seeks to determine sex via the chromosome of the sperm that successfully fertilizes the egg. However, relying on chromosomes in this manner is a dangerous way to determine gender, as a person can be born presenting female, go through puberty without incident, and even give birth while having XY chromosomes.

IC4e — the Intersex Campaign for Equality — points out that statistics from 1955 claiming .05% of the population are intersex are based on the rate of corrective genital surgery at birth rather than genetic testing. Even if that were the case it’d still be around 170,000 Americans, but their analysis suggests the true rate “may be as high as 2% of live births,” or around 6.5 million people. This means that however you interpret Trump’s executive order and even at a low estimate, there are now millions of people who are now legally not the gender they believe themselves to be. Which I guess… means millions more trans people?

The reaction on social media to this order has been bemusement, with many pointing out that technically, Trump has ruled that men do not exist and this is a huge win for feminists everywhere:

Petition to officially rename America “Barbieland”:

We also didn’t see this coming:

This is an important lesson in why laws affecting literally every single American shouldn’t be casually dashed off in a matter of hours by people with limited scientific education. Inevitably the specific wording will be challenged in court at some point though, arguably, the real effect is a grim warning to the transgender community that their lives are about to get a lot more difficult.

So laugh at the incompetent drafting of these laws if you will (and believe me, we need to find some chuckles in this nightmare), but never forget they’re grounded in hate, intended to sow division, and that cruelty is baked into them by design.