This past week has proved challenging in many ways, and the leak of a newly proposed policy to narrowly define gender as a binary was yet another stunning blow to our scientific understanding of gender. As quoted in Nature on October 30:
This is not the first time that the administration has attacked legal protections for transgender and non-binary people. Last year, Trump declared that transgender people would no longer be allowed to serve in the US military, and rescinded guidelines suggesting that schools should let pupils use the lavatory of their choice. An October 2017 memo from the US Department of Justice stated that laws prohibiting employment discrimination should not apply to gender identity.
Instituting a policy with a narrow definition of sex or gender and no basis in science would be a major step backwards for the United States in gender-identity issues. Sadly, the move is only the latest in a series of proposals that misuse and ignore science and harm marginalized groups as part of a quest to score cheap political points.