Biological Truth? WTF? (Part 1.5)
Bio-Battle: the Judges Rule
I’m so old that I wrote my first book on a typewriter. Those were NOT the good old days. Making manuscript changes was messy and involved repeatedly starting from scratch. Today, if I have a list, or a series and I want to stick something new or something I forgot in the middle, I can just do it. I subtitled Part 1 of this series analyzing the Executive Order (EO) on sex and gender identity “On sex, gender, men, women, identity, ideology, science and truth”, put it out there, and went on to Part 2. But Uh-oh! The world of sex, gender and identity is moving so fast right now, that while I was writing Part 2, all sorts of news pertaining to Part 1 poured in over the transom. So before moving on to Part 3, which will discuss gender ideology, I need to slip a new Part, Part 1.5 in between 1 and 2. Later I can pretend I planned it this way all along. Such is the wonder of digital writing
The EO and various government officials are declaring the “truth” about sex with—shall I say it—gay abandon. RFK, for example, announced that he would bring the truth about sex to the Department of Health and Human Services and restore the biological truth to the federal government. Following his master, he called on the egg and sperm (actual or potential) to accomplish the job. This put our premier health agency at odds with the American Academy of Pediatrics an organization that continues to see and accept real life variation in sex, gender, and gender identity.
Saying there are two, and only two sexes doesn’t make it so. Here are two examples, one from Montana and the other from Washington, DC. A recently passed Montana law defined male and female as the right combination of chromosomes and reproductive cells (RC) (XX + large RC or XY and small RC). The bill further held that “"sex" means the organization of the body parts and gametes for reproduction in human beings and other organisms. (Of course it can mean that, if, for example, you are at an IVF clinic). In human beings, there are exactly two sexes, male and female, with two corresponding types of gametes.” On Wed. 2/19/25, however, a Montana Judge struck down the bill that declared sex to be binary. Ruling in favor of the plaintiffs—including transgender, intersex and Two-Spirit Montanans—the judge wrote “By declaring as a matter of law that a human being can only be ‘exactly’ one of two, sexes, SB 458 explicitly excludes [two plaintiffs] from the definition of human beings, causing immediate harm” by preventing their right to equal protection under Montana law. The judge also held that the bill, by making it impossible for non-binary people to exist, interfered with individualized health care and thus violated the Montana State Constitution’s right to privacy.
Meanwhile, in Washington DC, a federal judge practically ripped a U.S. Justice Department attorney a new one when he insisted on an XX-XY definition of sex. For background, on order from the 47th President, the new head of the Defense Department told the military to stop recruiting trans Americans and to pause all affirmative health care for current members of the military. Two organizations, representing 6 active duty military, immediately sued. In the resulting courtroom confrontation the judge took the “two sexes” executive order to task. ““I’m telling you that there are people who are neither male or female,” she said. “The premise of the executive order is just incorrect,” as she went on the school the government lawyer about chromosome variation. “There are anywhere near 30 intersex examples. Anyone who doesn’t have XX or XY chromosomes is not just male or female, they’re intersex.”“If I’m intersex, where am I allowed to go?”. Sadly, since that ruling the head of the military has ordered the dismissal of all transgender service personel, a move I expect will also be litigated.,
Finally, there’s been a sex/gender/identity tussel at the Center for Disease Control (CDC) and the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) both subsidiaries of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). First, these agencies took down their websites after the Office of Personnel Management ordered the romoval of materials that “inculcated or promoted gender ideology”. In practice this meant removing pages such as a “social vulnerability index”. Or at the FDA “GUIDANCE DOCUMENT for the Study of Sex Differences in the Clinical Evaluation of Medical Products”1 or at the CDC a “youth risk behavior surveillance system” . (If this information is important for you I strongly recommend you download it now. It will not last on this website)
Following a lawsuit launched by an organization called Doctors for America, Federal Judge John D. Bates (District of Columbia) ordered the websites reinstated. And the government complied, sort of. The “offending” documents are are back but each of the above pages (and others) has the following disclaimer:
We are in a struggle to see who owns the definition of sex. On the one hand are pages written by scientists who use current best practices to get information on the topic. On the other hand, an undocumented assertion that there are two sexes, no more, no less. In Part 3 of this series I will address the rest of the Executive Order which focuses on gender ideology.
It looks as if they have already started to rewrite this one to make it conform to the Executive Order, but it is currently amixed mess. Download it now, as it will certainly disappear or become unrecognizeable.