A classroom of young men eager to learn about sex, gender and empathy stands in stark contrast to a president who weaponizes ignorance to justify discrimination.
I walk between desks and give out printouts of male and female reproductive systems, asking my students to label the parts. Prostates become hearts. Fallopian tubes turn into flannel tubes. Labia are marked as vaginas. Cervixes are nonexistent.
I teach gender studies at Wabash, an all-male college. Our elective introductory course is always waitlisted. The students, mostly from the Midwest where sex ed is virtually nonexistent in public schools, are eager to study the biology and sociology of sex.
I mention the reproductive charts not to shame my students who, after all, signed up to learn and should be commended for their curiosity. I write about this because some men like them—without knowledge about chromosomal sex, hormonal sex, gonadal sex, or intersex conditions—go on to legislate human bodies, define what is “natural,” and punish doctors who professionally advise patients on the best healthcare options for their well-being.
This year, our reading about the pathways from chromosomal sex through fetal hormonal sex and genital sex to adult gender identity coincided with President Donald Trump’s anti-trans executive order, incongruously titled “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.”
Despite the wealth of scientific publications and educational sources describing complex fetal development, the White House reduced the definition of female to, “a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell” and male to, “a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the small reproductive cell.”
This ill-informed and harmful order allegedly aims to protect women from men who, “self-identify as women and gain access to intimate single-sex spaces and activities designed for women, from women’s domestic abuse shelters to women’s workplace showers.” This feigned desire comes from a president with sexual assault allegations, a history of public misogyny, and a recorded admission that he grabbed women’s genitals. His proclamation of protection follows him being found guilty of sexually abusing advice columnist E. Jean Carroll, peeping at Miss Teen USA contestants’ naked bodies, and constructing a Cabinet with several members accused of sexual misconduct.
Had Trump learned about human anatomy in school, he would know where menstruation originates. He would also know that at conception, a zygote is not yet sexually differentiated, that it transforms into a blastocyst, and by week five becomes an embryo whose cells begin to multiply and change. The sex of the chromosomes is not apparent until week six . By week 11, genitals begin to grow. Therefore, it seems Trump has just defined us all as female. But even if he had been informed, perhaps he would not have thought to apply that knowledge.
I am not convinced that learning the basics of human biology would change the language of the executive order because its aim is not accuracy, and it is not protection. The order is a vindictive attack on some of our society’s most vulnerable populations. As writer Amanda Montei pointed out in November, the GOP’s anti-trans rhetoric reflects “mass hysteria, manufactured crisis, moral panic … [and] psychological projection.”
Luckily, along with learning about human biology, my students’ education is paired with courses in philosophy, art and literature—a breadth of educational experiences required in the liberal arts college where I teach. By learning science alongside critical narratives about people different from them, my students develop the necessary knowledge and empathy so lacking in Trump’s executive order.
It may be too late for Trump, but I have hope for the young men whose curious minds and open hearts may one day overcome these hateful and ignorant orders.