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.
But beyond the political implications — and fears that any such change could ultimately mean the end of civil rights protections for transgender people — the proposal raises fundamental questions about something else: biology.
The proposal is “highly inaccurate and just an insult to science. Basic science,” said Rachel Levin, a Pomona College neuroscientist who studies the development of sex.
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