In what Trump's administration has branded a "common sense" order, the government will recognise only two sexes, ending all federal funding or recognition of gender identities.
I always find it weird that conservatives think this is some kind of gotcha for binary trans people. Like, okay, this is a shitty thing to say to nonbinary or intersex people and is both untrue and cruel. But how is this relevant to me, a binary trans woman?
Like… hello my gender isn’t ‘trans’, it’s ‘woman’. Idiots.
And even then, it goes beyond gender. Even the idea that you can’t change your sex is laughable. “Sex,” despite what some TERFs insist, is not traditionally or in practice today determined by DNA. We’ve learned that chromosomes play a primary factor in determining sex, but your sex isn’t your DNA. A blueprint isn’t a house; a house is a house. The blueprint just tells you how to build a house.
Physical sex is really about primary and secondary sex characteristics. If a trans woman undergoes SRS for example, her sex is literally female. She has the same anatomy as an infertile woman, or woman whose had a hysterectomy.
And this is the traditional way of defining sex. We referred to people’s “sex” for generations prior to discovering DNA. And even today, we sex infants entirely based on their genitalia. Actual genetic screening is incredibly rare.
Bigots just latch onto “sex==genetics” because it allows them an easy cudgel. But in reality, if your primary and secondary sex characteristics are of a certain sex, you are that sex. Does the initial cellular blueprint indicate a different sex? Assuming you’re not intersex, sure. But again, DNA is just a blueprint.
The example I always like is the house/boat example. Imagine you owned a wooden boat. That boat was made by a particularly prideful boat builder, and every plank of the boat is stamped, “Smith’s shipbuilding co.” One day you get tired of sailing the waves, so you take your boat, disassemble it, and use the planks to build a house. You now live in a house where every board is stamped “Smith’s shipbuilding co.”
Imagine the absurdity of someone coming to your home and telling you, “you live in a boat! Every board clearly labels this building as a boat. Therefore, you must live in a boat.”
That is the fallacy of relying on genetics to define sex. Chromosomes are just the initial blueprints or the equivalent of the “Smith shipbuilding co.” stamp.
In fairness part of the decree is that it also can’t be changed, so definitely still an impact to both binary and nonbinary trans folks. Also love the downplay of enby impacts, if it doesn’t impact you it doesn’t matter?
How does your post contradict what they said? You asked how it impacts a binary trans person, and they explained that the part about it being unchangeable is supposed to target y’all (and all trans people).
I know a lot of us, probably most of us, haven’t changed so much as taken ownership of who we always were. So yeah I guess technically this order isn’t a “gotcha”, but unfortunately that’s not how transphobes see it. :(
I always find it weird that conservatives think this is some kind of gotcha for binary trans people. Like, okay, this is a shitty thing to say to nonbinary or intersex people and is both untrue and cruel. But how is this relevant to me, a binary trans woman?
Like… hello my gender isn’t ‘trans’, it’s ‘woman’. Idiots.
And even then, it goes beyond gender. Even the idea that you can’t change your sex is laughable. “Sex,” despite what some TERFs insist, is not traditionally or in practice today determined by DNA. We’ve learned that chromosomes play a primary factor in determining sex, but your sex isn’t your DNA. A blueprint isn’t a house; a house is a house. The blueprint just tells you how to build a house.
Physical sex is really about primary and secondary sex characteristics. If a trans woman undergoes SRS for example, her sex is literally female. She has the same anatomy as an infertile woman, or woman whose had a hysterectomy.
And this is the traditional way of defining sex. We referred to people’s “sex” for generations prior to discovering DNA. And even today, we sex infants entirely based on their genitalia. Actual genetic screening is incredibly rare.
Bigots just latch onto “sex==genetics” because it allows them an easy cudgel. But in reality, if your primary and secondary sex characteristics are of a certain sex, you are that sex. Does the initial cellular blueprint indicate a different sex? Assuming you’re not intersex, sure. But again, DNA is just a blueprint.
The example I always like is the house/boat example. Imagine you owned a wooden boat. That boat was made by a particularly prideful boat builder, and every plank of the boat is stamped, “Smith’s shipbuilding co.” One day you get tired of sailing the waves, so you take your boat, disassemble it, and use the planks to build a house. You now live in a house where every board is stamped “Smith’s shipbuilding co.”
Imagine the absurdity of someone coming to your home and telling you, “you live in a boat! Every board clearly labels this building as a boat. Therefore, you must live in a boat.”
That is the fallacy of relying on genetics to define sex. Chromosomes are just the initial blueprints or the equivalent of the “Smith shipbuilding co.” stamp.
It’s only shitty to intersex people, non-binary is a gender not a sex.
First they came for the enbies
In fairness part of the decree is that it also can’t be changed, so definitely still an impact to both binary and nonbinary trans folks. Also love the downplay of enby impacts, if it doesn’t impact you it doesn’t matter?
Read my post before you reply to it. Thanks.
How does your post contradict what they said? You asked how it impacts a binary trans person, and they explained that the part about it being unchangeable is supposed to target y’all (and all trans people).
I know a lot of us, probably most of us, haven’t changed so much as taken ownership of who we always were. So yeah I guess technically this order isn’t a “gotcha”, but unfortunately that’s not how transphobes see it. :(
They did and you’re being unnecessarily rude.
From the article:
What did you say your gender was?
Well nobody is born with sperm so…
There are no males.
Accidental utopia.
True Feminism means acknowledging that women can be just as fallible as men.
As a lesbian I always hear from straight women “I wish I could be gay like you it must be so much better!” Like nope women are equally shitty!!
Not sure I’d call a world made up of breeders, the undesirable, and Elon’s sperm bank, much of an utopia.
How do they confirm that? Surgery?