The Trump Administration is considering defining a person's gender as their biological sex at birth, according to a memo received by the New York Times.
If this is accomplished, transgender people throughout the country would no longer be legally recognized as the gender they identify with, nor would they be recognized by anti-discrimination laws created under the Obama administration, which define gender as an individual's choice.
The memo from the Department of Health and Human services calls for a clear legal definition of sex under Title lX that bans gender discrimination in education programs that receive government financial assistance.
“Sex means a person’s status as male or female based on immutable biological traits identifiable by or before birth,” the memo said.
Art Caplan, medical ethicist and the director of the Division of Medical Ethics at NYU Langone Medical Center, told Boston Public Radio Monday that it would be ethically and medically wrong to define gender by biological traits.
“Who we are sexually is a mix of many factors. The Trump administration is wrong,” said Caplan. “It is basically saying your gender is determined by your genes, end of story.”
Caplan said he believes this is a narrow-minded, reductionist view of gender and attempts to invalidate the identity of transgender people.
