In one of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.\u2019s first moves as secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services, the agency released guidance Wednesday for the US government, external partners and the public that offers a narrower definition of sex than the ones used by many scientists and that aligns with a January executive order signed by President Donald Trump. <\/p>\n
The department also launched a website promoting these definitions and created a <\/strong>video defending a ban on transgender women participating in women\u2019s sports. <\/p>\n HHS says the action was prompted by Trump\u2019s January 20 executive order titled \u201cDefending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government,\u201d which required the agency to provide \u201cclear guidance expanding on the sex-based definitions set forth in the order\u201d within 30 days. <\/p>\n Wednesday\u2019s publication furthers the Trump administration\u2019s efforts to deny the existence of people who identify as transgender, nonbinary or intersex, a sharp departure from the Biden administration\u2019s attempts to create more inclusive health policy and research. <\/p>\n The executive order and the new HHS document provide similar narrow definitions of words like \u201csex,\u201d \u201cfemale,\u201d \u201cwoman,\u201d \u201cgirl,\u201d male,\u201d \u201cman\u201d and \u201cboy.\u201d HHS adds definitions like the term \u201cfather,\u201d described as a male parent, and \u201cmother,\u201d a female parent. <\/p>\n There were slight variations in the definition of \u201cmale\u201d and \u201cfemale.\u201d Trump\u2019s executive order, for instance, said a male is a \u201cperson belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the small reproductive cell.\u201d HHS\u2019s definition explains that a male \u201cis a person of the sex characterized by a reproductive system with the biological function of producing sperm.\u201d <\/p>\n The HHS news release defines sex using Trump\u2019s language, saying it is \u201ca person\u2019s immutable biological classification as either male or female.\u201d However, it skips a sentence in Trump\u2019s executive order that read, \u201c\u2019Sex\u2019 is not a synonym for and does not include the concept of \u2018gender identity.\u2019\u201d Gender is not a focus of the HHS document. <\/p>\n Previously, the federal government has defined \u201csex\u201d in much broader terms. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one of HHS\u2019s agencies, defined it as \u201can individual\u2019s biological status as male, female, or something else. Sex is assigned at birth and associated with physical attributes, such as anatomy and chromosomes.\u201d Gender had been defined as something separate but inter-related to sex as \u201cthe cultural roles, behaviors, activities, and attributes expected of people based on their sex.\u201d <\/p>\n Within days of his inauguration, the Trump administration removed the CDC website with the definitions along with hundreds of others that were more gender-inclusive. After organizations sued, a judge ordered the administration to restore them. The pages now carry a disclaimer that says \u201cany information on this page promoting gender ideology is extremely inaccurate and disconnected from the immutable biological reality that there are two sexes, male and female.\u201d <\/p>\n Kennedy said Wednesday that the narrower sex-based definitions restore \u201cbiological truth to the federal government.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cThe prior administration\u2019s policy of trying to engineer gender ideology into every aspect of public life is over,\u201d he said in a news release. <\/p>\n Some legal experts were sharply critical of the new definitions. <\/p>\n Michele Bratcher Goodwin, a health law professor at Georgetown and the co-faculty director of the O\u2019Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law, said that the definitions ignore science and that the executive order that demanded them was deeply problematic. <\/p>\n \u201cWhat we\u2019ve seen coming from the Trump administration is to proffer matters that are unconstitutional, that are blatantly illegal, that have been shut down by an array of federal judges,\u201d Bratcher Goodwin said. <\/p>\n The new definitions aren\u2019t just rhetoric, she said; they will have <\/strong>real consequences for health and science, and for how doctors treat patients. Narrow definitions can limit research, for example, such as surveys that once captured information about children who identify as transgender. <\/p>\n HHS would typically rely on peer-reviewed science to offer such guidance, but Wednesday\u2019s publication \u201ccompletely ignores the complexity of human experience,\u201d said health law expert Omar Gonzalez with Lambda Legal, an LGBTQ+ civil rights organization. <\/p>\n \u201cThis is just showmanship,\u201d Gonzalez said. \u201cIt\u2019s pure smoke and mirrors. It\u2019s a website that links to the very executive orders that we\u2019ve already challenged and even gotten some of them enjoined in court.\u201d <\/p>\n On February 4, a judge granted a temporary restraining order related to the executive order as it pertained to where transgender prisoners should be housed. <\/p>\n Bratcher Goodwin points out that the new definitions fail to account for people such as those who identify as intersex. <\/p>\n People who are intersex, who are not acknowledged in either document, have sexual or reproductive anatomy that doesn\u2019t fit the male\/female binary. By some estimates, up to 2% of the US population is born intersex. <\/p>\n Intersex people \u201chave been documented for millennia. It\u2019s nothing new. It\u2019s not as if the president could say, \u2018oh, this is some new trend, some fad,\u2019 \u201c Bratcher Goodwin said. \u201cWhat the president\u2019s executive order and also this guidance suggests is that they\u2019re invisible. That these individuals don\u2019t exist. It\u2019s sophistry.\u201d <\/p>\n Cait Smith, director of LGBTQI+ policy at the Center for American Progress, a public policy research and advocacy organization, called the new definitions \u201cmean-spirited\u201d and \u201cunscientific.\u201d <\/p>\n Smith said the language is \u201ccopy-paste\u201d from anti-transgender bills that Smith\u2019s organization has fought in state legislatures for years. <\/p>\n \u201cThe law today is no different than the law was yesterday. The law still protects trans folks from discrimination, so that is the reason that we\u2019re seeing a lot of these PR stunts like this announcement,\u201d Smith said. \u201cI think it\u2019s still unclear if they can do more than this at this point without courts intervening like they are.\u201d <\/p>\n Smith and members of other civil rights organizations said they are working to help schools and medical groups interpret such announcements while suing to stop policies they consider discriminatory. <\/p>\n \u201cUnfortunately, this will probably be a problem for a while,\u201d Smith said. \u201cAttempting to sow confusion, that\u2019s easier than actually passing policy.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/p>\n In one of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.\u2019s first moves as secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services, the agency released guidance Wednesday for the US government, external partners and the public that offers a narrower definition of sex than the ones used by many scientists and that aligns with a January executive …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2046,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"loftocean_post_primary_category":0,"loftocean_post_format_gallery":"","loftocean_post_format_gallery_ids":"","loftocean_post_format_gallery_urls":"","loftocean_post_format_video_id":0,"loftocean_post_format_video_url":"","loftocean_post_format_video_type":"","loftocean_post_format_video":"","loftocean_post_format_audio_type":"","loftocean_post_format_audio_url":"","loftocean_post_format_audio_id":0,"loftocean_post_format_audio":"","loftocean-featured-post":"","loftocean-like-count":0,"loftocean-view-count":448,"tinysalt_single_post_intro_label":"","tinysalt_single_post_intro_description":"","tinysalt_hide_post_featured_image":"","tinysalt_post_featured_media_position":"","tinysalt_single_site_header_source":"","tinysalt_single_custom_site_header":"0","tinysalt_single_custom_sticky_site_header":"0","tinysalt_single_custom_sticky_site_header_style":"sticky-scroll-up","tinysalt_single_site_footer_source":"","tinysalt_single_custom_site_footer":"0","footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2045","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2045","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2045"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2045\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2046"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2045"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2045"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2045"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}