Mick Hartley

How predictable. Presidents of three US evolution and ecology societies (The Society for the Study of Evolution, American Society of Naturalists, and the Society of Systematic Biologists) have written a letter to Trump: Policy: Letter to the US President and Congress on the Scientific Understanding of Sex and Gender.

Dear President Trump and Members of the US Congress,

As scientists, we write to express our concerns about the Executive Order “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism And Restoring Biological Truth To The Federal Government”. That Order states first, that “there are two sexes…[which] are not changeable”. The Order goes on to state that sex is determined at conception and is based on the size of the gamete that the resulting individual will produce. These statements are contradicted by extensive scientific evidence.

Scientific consensus defines sex in humans as a biological construct that relies on a combination of chromosomes, hormonal balances, and the resulting expression of gonads, external genitalia and secondary sex characteristics….

And so on.

No, the statements in the Executive Order are not contradicted by extensive scientific evidence, and no, scientific consensus certainly does not define sex in humans as a biological construct. The sex binary is one of the fundamental facts of mammalian – of animal – biology.

Jerry Coyne demolishes the letter at length here. His conclusion:

In the end, what we see here is three prominent organismal-biology societies having been ideologically captured to the point where they will twist and misrepresent scientific fact to buttress an ideologically-based view that sex is a spectrum.  These societies and their Presidents should be ashamed of themselves.  Scientific truth is not determined by pronouncements of the presidents of scientific societies, however notable these presidents may be.  The UBD [Universal Biological Definition] is one of the great (and few) generalizations in evolutionary biology, a definition that’s been immensely fruitful in understanding things like sexual selection. It’s a great pity that these societies are trying to scupper the UBD simply to buttress an evanescent form of gender ideology.

It's quite extraordinary – embarrassing -  to see Trump standing up as the representative of real science and women's rights, against the ideologically-driven nonsense of these members of the American scientific elite. The gender rot has deep roots…