Is Trump the first female president?
Has the moment we’ve all been waiting for arrived? After both Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris failed to break the biggest glass ceiling, has a woman finally ascended to the highest office in America? Legally speaking, is Donald J Trump the first female president?
There was a flurry of commentary this week suggesting that, by the Trump administration’s own definition, this could very well be the case. On Monday, you see, Trump kicked off his second term by signing a barrage of executive orders, including one stating that sex starts at the moment of conception – at which point, Trumpian science decrees, you are female or male and that’s it.
“‘Female’ means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell,” reads the order. “‘Male’ means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the small reproductive cell.”
Despite Trump’s decree that sex is “immutable”, the wording of his executive order left some room for interpretation. Indeed, some critics noted that because the undifferentiated genitalia that males and females share very early in fetal development are “phenotypically female”, you could argue he just made everyone legally female.
“[Trump] just declared everyone a woman from conception, based on the language of the executive order,” Delaware representative Sarah McBride, the first openly transgender person elected to the US House of Representatives, told the Independent, for example.
“Did Trump’s executive order just make everyone in the US female?” Mashable similarly asked. The piece added: “All Americans are now AFBT (assigned female by Trump).”
So, is that a correct assessment? Did Trump accidentally declare himself the first female president?
It would be extremely satisfying if the answer to that question was an unequivocal yes. But the more accurate answer is: No, although there is room to argue that the executive order decrees all humans, including Trump, are non-binary. Still, you can see why so many people came to the conclusion that the executive order was assigning everyone as female. The confusing and vague executive order underscores just how complex sex is.
Most scientists now reject the idea that sex is strictly binary. The likes of Nature, possibly one of the most prestigious scientific journals in the world, has noted that “the research and medical community now sees sex as more complex than male and female”. And there’s a huge amount of disagreement as to how these categories should be described. “Scientists ourselves cannot agree on how to define the two sexes,” Rachel Levin, a Pomona College neuroscientist who studies the development of sex, told me over the phone. “To say that sex is simple and easily defined – and defined at conception – is factually incorrect.”
There are lots of factors that contribute to how we think about sex, including physical characteristics, hormone levels, gamete size (larger gametes are eggs while smaller gametes are sperm), sex chromosomes, etc. Trump’s executive order seems to tie sex to just gamete size at conception. This is despite the fact that a lot of academics have moved away from a sex-classification system based primarily on gametes because some people will never produce a gamete. And, while it’s true that most people inherit either XX (typically female) or XY (typically male) chromosomes at conception, declaring that sex is determined so early is overly simplistic. “Most of us develop along a certain fairly common pathway, but a lot of us do not,” Levin notes. “One really important thing for the public to realize is that the president declaring something to be the case doesn’t make it true.
What all this boils down to, in short, is that sex is a hell of a lot more complicated than Trump’s executive order would have you believe. Shocking, I know. Who would have thought that the guy who suggested “nuking hurricanes” to stop them hitting America wouldn’t be the most trustworthy scientific voice?
I’ll tell you what is clear, though: Trump’s executive order has absolutely nothing to do with its stated intention of “defending women”. Rather, abortion-rights supporters are warning that its focus on sex being determined at “conception” seems to point to Trump’s embrace of “fetal personhood”: the idea that life begins at conception and that embryos and fetuses deserve full legal rights and protections.
“I think this was an intentional way to continue to normalize the idea that embryos are people,” said Dana Sussman, senior vice-president of Pregnancy Justice, told the Guardian. “This is yet another attempt to codify it in one form or another.”
And these attempts to give embryos full legal rights – which could result in miscarriages being treated as manslaughter – are only going to continue. We’ve only had a week of Trump and, I don’t know about you, but I’m already exhausted.
Mississippi lawmaker introduces ‘Contraception Begins at Erection’ act
The bill, introduced by a Democrat, would make it unlawful for “a person to discharge genetic material without the intent to fertilize an embryo”. No ejaculation without procreation, basically. There have been a lot of these satirical bills in the past; nobody expects them to pass but they’re supposed to provoke a conversation about the man’s role in pregnancy. In 2017, for example, a Houston Democrat filed a bill that would have fined men $100 for masturbating. In 2021, a Pennsylvania Democrat introduced “legislation that will require all inseminators to undergo vasectomies within six weeks from having their third child or 40th birthday, whichever comes first”. While these stunts are funny, I don’t know how effective they are. Anti-abortion extremists are zealots who aren’t exactly swayed by satire.
ICC chief prosecutor seeks arrest warrants for Taliban leaders over persecution of women
This is apparently the first time the prosecutor has built a case around systemic crimes against women and girls.
Woman who refuses sex is not ‘at fault’ in divorce in France, court rules
A French court found that a woman who had stopped having sex with her abusive husband to be “at fault” in the divorce. (Yes, really.) The woman had to take her case to the European Court of Human Rights, who ruled against France and said any concept of marital duties needed to take into account “consent” as the basis for sexual relations.
Bishop who angered Trump with call for mercy says she will not apologize
Trump declared that Mariann Edgar Budde owes “the public an apology” for urging him to “have mercy upon” immigrants and LGBTQ+ people. You can read her full sermon here.
Sudanese women face rape and abuse in Libya
More than 210,000 Sudanese refugees are now in Libya and many of them are facing a “living hell”.
Outrage as Iraqi law allows child marriage
The new law abolishes a previous ban on the marriage of children under the age of 18 in place since the 1950s.
13-year-old in Gaza allegedly shot by the Israeli military during the ceasefire
Zakariya Barbakh was apparently shot by a sniper less than 24 hours after the ceasefire went into effect, CNN reports.
Men got taller and heavier at twice the rate of women over the past century, study shows
Researchers think this is down to sexual selection. “[W]omen tend to prefer taller men,” one of the study’s co-authors told CNN, while, “in contrast, women’s height isn’t so important”. He added that: “This is one of the first studies to make a connection between the evolution of humankind as driven by sexual selection in combination with the effects of environment on ultimately our phenotype.”
The week in pawtriarchy
A Maine Coon cat called Mittens was accidentally forgotten in a plane’s cargo hold and ended up making three trips in 24 hours between New Zealand and Australia. Mittens seems to have been in a forgiving mood after the trip, however; her family have said the normally aloof feline is “the cuddliest she’s ever been”. After all that travel, I hope the airline gave Mittens enough frequent flyer points to fly fur-st class on her next trip.