Are Trans Women 'Biologically Male'? The Answer is Complicated

Bathroom Panic

In response to Mace's bill, U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York asked whether women will have to "drop trou" and let a government agent "inspect her genitals" in order to use the Capitol's restrooms.

Her comment was meant to be provocative, but there is no way for the House sergeant-at-arms to enforce a rule on biological sex when there is no commonly understood definition of that term.

Which brings us back to McBride.

In public comments, Mace claims she wants to keep "junk" (genitals) and "balls" (gonads) out of women's restrooms. Of course, many transgender women do not possess these characteristics. If, for Nancy Mace, genitals and gonads make someone "biologically male," then not all transgender women are the threat to women's "safety and dignity" that she fears.

But Mace's Republican colleagues are pushing a stricter definition of sex. Some legislators want to rewrite federal law to declare that sex is the "body structures (phenotypes) that, in normal development, correspond to one or the other gamete – sperm for males and ova for females."

If that sentence seems strange, perhaps it is because the majority of Americans understand that "male" and "female" are defined by "sex assigned at birth," which commonly occurs through genital inspection – not based on one's hidden internal ability to produce eggs or sperm.

So why are Republicans seeking to rewrite "sex" in federal law to refer to gamete production, rather than maintain familiar notions of sex that have endured for centuries, such as genitals or gonads?

For once, the answer isn't complicated: The gamete definition of "sex" will ensure that transgender women are always classified as "male" no matter how much they change their bodies. Federal bills defining sex do this by declaring that a woman is someone "who naturally has, had, will have, or would have" the reproductive capacity to produce eggs – something a transgender woman can never do.

But what do sperm and ova have to do with using the bathroom?

For most of modern history, scientists, doctors and judges have agreed that humans can change sex – they just haven't agreed on how it can be accomplished. To change the definition now is to invite heightened government scrutiny into the private medical records of all women. It remains to be seen whether most Americans will agree with this new definition.

G. Samantha Rosenthal, Visiting Assistant Professor of American History, Washington and Lee University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.