Why does the Administration Feel the Need to attack Transgender Americans?

Sometimes you can’t figure out just what Donal Trump is thinking. When the administration stays on point, they have accomplished big wins with the economy and produced solid gains in places like Syria and North Korea. Ivanka Trump, with her work on the workforce training and education front, has emerged as a superstar. So, why would they feel the need to enter into a lose/lose battle over transgenderism?

A new report that the Trump administration hopes to legally define a person’s sex at birth — an unchangeable condition determined by genitalia — has prompted an outcry among the transgender community.

Policy change could ultimately mean the end of civil rights protections for transgender people.

According to a memo obtained by the New York Times, the Department of Health and Human Services is spearheading the effort to come up with a legal definition of sex “on a biological basis that is clear, grounded in science, objective and administrable.”

Defining a person’s sex at birth is at odds with biologists’ research findings.1 in 1,500 to 1 in 2,000 newborns have atypical genitals, according to the Intersex Society of North America. “But a lot more people than that are born with subtler forms of sex anatomy variations,” INA says, “some of which won’t show up until later in life.”Researchers who study sex, gender identity, note that it is not helpful or accurate to narrowly define sex as a fixed condition based on a person’s genitalia or genetic makeup.

Human embryos start out with a set of gonads that have the potential to become testes or ovaries. At about eight weeks gestation, a single gene on the Y chromosome, called SRY, activates and sends a message to the gonads to become testes. In the absence of that functional SRY gene, an embryo develops ovaries, which don’t crank out hormones until puberty.

But the presence — or absence — of those hormones and their effect on the budding brain and genitals mean that they can develop independently of one another.

There are a number of steps that can lead to genitalia and bodies that don’t fall into either of two sharply delineated categories. If the Y chromosome lacks a functional SRY gene, the individual is genetically male but physiologically female.

Some babies born with male genitalia have an extra X chromosome, a condition that is known as Klinefelter syndrome. And in androgen insensitivity syndrome, a person has XY chromosomes but does not develop androgen receptors that bind to androgens. A baby with AIS might be born with a short vagina without a cervix, but undescended or partially descended testes.

Dr. Sari Reisner, an epidemiologist and professor at Harvard Medical School and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, expressed concern that discounting a person’s gender identity or gender expression could exacerbate existing health disparities among transgender and non-binary people.“By not accounting for someone’s gender, outside of biological binary, you’re missing a whole component of their health,” he said.“If you just go by sex, you’re not going to accurately capture health disparities,” he added. “That has implications for interventions and for health care delivery.”

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