OVERWORKING A WORD.

Sex is binary, personality is a continuum.  Our President, in his attempt either to score culture-war points or to force the culture-studies types to acknowledge there are coherent beliefs, gets it about half right.

In an effort to "defend women's rights" against "efforts to eradicate the biological reality of sex," the order—titled "Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government"—seeks with the force of federal law to establish men and women as distinct and immutable categories.

"It is the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female," which "are not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality," the order states. It defines "sex" as "an individual's immutable biological classification as either male or female" and notes that the term is "not a synonym for and does not include the concept of 'gender identity,'" which the order says "does not provide a meaningful basis for identification and cannot be recognized as a replacement for sex."

Perhaps ironically, supporters of transgender equality might agree with parts of this characterization. "Sex is a label—male or female—that you're assigned by a doctor at birth based on the genitals you're born with and the chromosomes you have. It goes on your birth certificate," according to Planned Parenthood. Gender identity, on the other hand, "is how you feel inside and how you express your gender through clothing, behavior, and personal appearance. It's a feeling that begins very early in life."

I forget when the overworking of "gender" as a euphemism for "sex" began.  Years ago, when I was helping construct Divisia indices of labor quality, which, these days, might have to be prefaced with an apology for "neoclassical economics" and insufficient "decolonisation," I recall something like a five-way classification of workers by sex, age, experience, industry, and occupation.  My own research focused on location problems in heavy industry, and some years into that work, all those dummy variables for "sex" became dummy variables for "gender."  I suppose that's also a problem for Reason's Joe Lancaster.

The order tautologically defines "sex" in terms of "male" and "female," which are then defined in terms of "sex."

But by ruling so starkly, the order completely writes intersex people out of existence.

"People who are intersex have genitals, chromosomes or reproductive organs that don't fit into a male/female sex binary," according to the Cleveland Clinic. "Some people who are intersex consider their gender to be intersex. Others identify as female, male, nonbinary or a different gender." In this case, a person's professed gender may change from the one assigned at birth because they literally have biological markers of both. The clinic further notes that one in 100 Americans is estimated to be intersex.

The executive order criticizes "gender ideology," which it says "replaces the biological category of sex with an ever-shifting concept of self-assessed gender identity" and "diminishes sex as an identifiable or useful category but nevertheless maintains that it is possible for a person to be born in the wrong sexed body." But intersex people literally are born in the wrong sexed body, at least as defined by the executive order, which says everyone is either all male or all female.

I don't recall that being an issue in assessing the quality of labor, although in those days dealing with the lingering effects of Jim Crow was where the research action, and the grant money, was.  And I worry, a bit, about that Planned Parenthood conception of "gender identity."  Should Charles Schultz have done a series of panels on Peppermint Patty's sex-change operation?

American Mind contributor Daniel Mahoney, fortunately, calls attention to the overworking of "gender" implicit in all the culture-warring.

Trump pledged that “it will henceforth be the official policy of the United States government that there are only two genders: male and female.” That liberating pledge, and the executive orders that followed from it later that day, are most welcome, indeed.

But it was a mistake to reject gender ideology while using the faux categories of gender ideology itself. Until 1975 or so, “gender” was simply a grammatical category. “Socially constructed” genders have nothing to do with the primordial truth that God (and nature) created both male and female in his own image, in the language of the Book of Genesis. We can only overcome the ubiquity of gender categories in the culture (and in our politics) if we stop using it as a synonym for “sex.” It is not and never will be. It is a fictive category.

We could dial back the extreme form of gender ideology, too.  Note that Peppermint Patty strikes Charlie Brown out on three pitches, and tells Marcie, "Stop calling me sir!"  An Inside Higher Ed report on the executive order recognizes that phenomenon at work.

In addition to defining “sex” and other terms, the order outlines a plan to combat “gender ideology,” which the Trump administration defines as replacing “the biological category of sex with an ever-shifting concept of self-assessed gender identity, permitting the false claim that males can identify as and thus become women and vice versa.”

Federal officials were told to remove any internal or external documents that “inculcate gender ideology” and take “any necessary steps to end the federal funding of gender ideology.” Additionally, agencies will now only use the term “sex” instead of “gender” in all applicable federal policies and documents, according to the order.

Perhaps, if the Allegedly Smart People in higher education would dial back the "identify as" and let people express themselves, to the greatest extent practicable, without tagging an "identity" let alone a "protected status" on that expression, the set of troubles the order attempts to address will be much diminished.