I wrote Threads of Connection as a positive view on a challenging future. I could have written dystopia, but that's not the future I want to engender.  However...talking about gender...and dystopia...

Chris's sister Lindie shared this letter with me. She got it from a relative in the USA. My first question, and hers, was, "Is this real?" That's the right question to ask when you encounter something on the internet that seems downright weird. I headed off into the internet to investigate and came up with the conclusion that, yes, this is real.

The letter was sent by Erin Twamley, who the internet documents as a real author with a number of childrens' books to her name on renewable energy, climate change and women in science careers. Some of these books can no longer be loaned by libraries as they do not meet gender idealogy guidelines as mandated in Executive Order 14168.

Executive Order 14168 is titled, 'Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government'. It was issued by Donald Trump on January 20, 2025, the day of his second inaguration as president of the United States. This order is part of a broad effort to erase protection and recognition for transgender people. It requires federal departments to recognise gender as an immutable male-female binary, determined by biological sex at conception. The order defines the concept of "gender ideology" (in its title) as "replacing the [binary] biological category of sex with an ever-shifting concept of self-assessed gender identity."

The problem is, gender is not that simple. And the language in the Executive Order is plain rubbish. The Executive Order defines 'female and 'male', respectively, as "a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell" and "a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the small reproductive cell" . But at conception (the uniting of sperm and egg), the resultant zygote has no ability to produce any reproductive cells. Nor can the morula (the cluster of cells formed in the 4 days after fertilisation of the egg) . Here's the pathway to creation of reproductive cells:

• The cells in the embryo that will eventually become reproductive cells are called 'primordial germ cells' and are formed around 3 weeks after fertilisation.
• Primordial germ cells differentiate into other types of cell, including embryonic germ cells, 5-9 weeks after fertilisation. Embryonic germ cells migrate to the gonads (the organs that produce reproductive cells and secrete hormones), which start to develop 4-5 weeks after fertilisation.
• The gonads don't differentiate in terms of gender until around 8 weeks after fertilisation. At that point, if the gene known as SRY is present (noting genes are segments of DNA and chromosomes are made up of many genes), it codes a specific protein (the 'sex-determining region Y' protein). The sex-determining region Y protein binds to specific regions of DNA, controlling the activity of genes which code for other proteins which trigger gonads to begin maturing as testes and prevent them maturing as ovaries.
• Sperm and eggs aren't produced until puberty, quite a while after fertilisation!

Now here's a confusing bit, we usually think about women vs men in terms of whether they have X chromosomes or Y chromosomes. That's because the SRY gene – that determines whether a particular human has male or female gonads – is usually located on the Y chromosome. However, copying of genetic information in an organism can go wrong. The SRY gene can end up on the X chromosome, or it can be missed out of chromosomes entirely. As a result, a human could have a Y chromosome (thought of as the male chromosome) with no SRY gene and therefore have female genitals. Or a human could have no Y chromosome but have SRY on their X chromosome, therefore have male genitals (but no male chromosome). Biology is so complicated! 

Even more complicated, some people can have both types of genitals and/or both types of internal sexual organs. They can also have external organs that don't match the 'sex' of their internal organs.

In short, you can't define people as male or female based on their chromosomes, or their sexual organs, or their reproductive cells in the embyro.

You could try defining people as one sex or the other based on whether they can bear children, that's the general gist of the executive order. You could try, but it wouldn't work. There are plenty of people with female sexual organs who never manage to conceive, or birth, a child. If you went down this path, only people with female sexual organs who have successfully delivered a baby would be considered female i.e. your sex can't be determined until post-puberty at the earliest, and post-menopause at the latest. That's not a very useful definition as concerns around who can use which toilet has mostly died down by the time people are in their fifties.

The basic problem Executive Order 14168  faces is that sex doesn't come in binary categories which are set in DNA from conception. Sex is a spectrum. Therefore 'gender', the socially constructed roles, behaviours, expressions and identities of the breadth of humankind in relation to their perceived and self-assessed sex, also doesn't come in binary categories. The world in a terrifying spectrum of shades of grey (or blue, brown, red and black if you are participating in the Handmaid's Tale).

Demagogues, like Trump, aren't interested in spectra. Demagogues like making definite statements because those definite statements are what people in general want to hear. The uncertainty of spectra makes people nervous. People like certainty. And, the more uncertain the world, the more certainty people seek, and the more they are likely to believe people making definite statements, no matter how untrue those statements are.

In the meantime, while lawyers make huge amounts of money challenging Executive Order 14168 (and my cynical view of the law is that too many lawyers want cases to be complex and never ending because that's the best way to make money), the Information Specialists in Federal Departments will be weeding out the books on gender idealogy that don't suit the current gender idealogy and putting them in 'professional collections' for 'evaluation'. I wonder if evaluation includes burning. It's probably a spectrum...