Here’s how the U.S. government is defining ‘biological sex’

U.S. President Donald Trump’s government continues to jump through hoops in its attempts to establish firm binary definitions of “male” and “female.” 

A new document put out this week by the Department of Health & Human Services—-now led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—tries to explain why, in the Trump administration’s words, there are “only two sexes.” But in seeking to define “biological sex” by a person’s “biological function to produce eggs or sperm,” the Trump administration raises a whole host of new questions and challenges that don’t hold up to established scientific evidence. 

Senior editor Mel Woods breaks down how these definitions are trying to force a made-up idea of a distinct gender binary onto an actual reality that is far from that, and why trying to draw firm lines around “biological sex” can be harmful to both trans and cis people alike.