Republicans are seeking to define ‘sex’ in federal law. But after centuries of debate, doctors, scientists and judges haven’t come to a clear consensus on what the definition of sex should be.

OP Opinion: I don’t like the article title.

TLDR: What does focusing on DNA have to do with bathrooms? An academic & too polite “use your brains dumb asses”

Samantha Rosenthal is Associate Professor of History at Roanoke College in Salem, Virginia, and Visiting Assistant Professor of American History at Washington & Lee University in Lexington, Virginia. She is the author of two books, most recently Living Queer History: Remembrance and Belonging in a Southern City. She is co-founder of the Southwest Virginia LGBTQ+ History Project, a nationally recognized queer public history initiative. Her work has received recognition from the National Council on Public History, the Oral History Association, the Committee on LGBT History, the American Society for Environmental History, and the Working Class Studies Association.

  • @[email protected]
    6•9 days ago

    This is an issue that’s really only made complicated by people competing to try to ensure that the concept accommodates their prejudices.

    The simple reality is that the only way in which people are fixedly and simplistically one or the other is in the arrangement of their plumbing, and that’s really only relevant to things like a nurse charged with installing a catheter.

    All the rest is an enormously complex combination of chemistry, environment, socialization and self-image that includes everything from the plumbing of one paired with full identification with that one to the plumbing of one with full identification with the other and includes every possible combination between the two, so insisting on absolutism is foolish at best.