Debunking Mainstream Media Lies About Biological Sex

No amount of rhetorical gymnastics or ideological rebranding will change the fundamental truth that there are only two sexes.

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About the Author

Dr. Colin Wright is the CEO/Editor-in-Chief of Reality’s Last Stand, an evolutionary biology PhD, and Manhattan Institute Fellow. His writing has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Times, the New York Post, Newsweek, City Journal, Quillette, Queer Majority, and other major news outlets and peer-reviewed journals.

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On January 20, 2025, President Trump signed an executive order affirming the binary nature of sex in federal law, a move that was solidified a month later by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) with a scientifically robust definition of sex and the sexes: male and female. This reaffirmation of biological reality sent left-wing media into a frenzy, unleashing a flood of articles attempting to deconstruct and redefine sex through the lens of progressive queer ideology.

The Society for the Study of Evolution quickly issued a statement, purportedly on behalf of all 3,500 of its members, claiming that the executive order’s recognition of the sex binary “is contradicted by extensive scientific evidence,” and, remarkably, even invoked the subjective “lived experience of people” as part of their counterargument. The Washington Post followed suit on February 19 with an article titled, “Trump says there are ‘two sexes.’ Experts and science say it’s not binary.” A piece in The Hill this week accused the executive order and HHS guidelines of containing “profound scientific inaccuracies,” while Science News proclaimed that “sex is messy” and that “choosing any single definer of sex is bound to sow confusion.” Similar articles challenging the definitions outlined in Trump’s executive order and the HHS guidance have also appeared in Time Magazine, The Boston Globe, Scientific American, The Guardian, and numerous other outlets.

These responses have come in waves, with new attempts to muddy the waters appearing weekly. But one recent article from NPR—“How is sex determined? Scientists say it’s complicated”—encapsulates virtually every fallacious argument and pseudoscientific distortion used in the others. As such, it serves as the ideal target to be used for a collective rebuttal.

Before even addressing the article’s claims, it is worth noting that the section headings themselves—such as “How is sex determined using chromosomes?”, “How is sex determined using chemicals?”, and “How are physical characteristics used to determine sex?”—immediately reveal a fundamental misunderstanding of the term “determine.” The authors seem to believe that “determine” means something akin to “ascertain” or “identify,” but in developmental biology, “sex determination” is a precise technical term referring to the biological mechanisms that trigger and direct an embryo to develop into either a male or a female organism. In other words, sex determination is about causation, not observation. Right from the outset, the authors expose their ignorance of a basic concept in biology, undermining their credibility in discussing this topic.

Now for the article’s claims.