Factcheck.org may be the best of the fact-checking websites that recently saw their influence decline when Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg decided to break up with them. However, a nearly 3,000-word SciCheck essay from Catalina Jaramillo on Monday proved that is still not good enough to justify the previous partnership, as she took aim at a series of transgender-related executive orders from President Donald Trump.
First, Jaramillo focused on the executive order that declared there to be only two sexes. The order defined female as “the sex that produces the large reproductive cell” and male as “the sex that produces the small reproductive cell.”
Jaramillo got super pedantic. She admitted that the definition is accurate, but argued it can be expanded upon, “Scientists told us that although biological sex can be defined by the size of a person’s reproductive cells, or gametes, that definition doesn’t always work given there are multiple factors that define sex in humans.” Such factors “include external genitalia, secondary sex characteristics, gonads, chromosomes, and hormones.”
That is like saying "Snowflakes are ice crystals formed in clouds and fall to the ground, but experts say they are also white."
Still, Jaramillo did the traditional thing of pointing to the existence of intersex people, “The definition in the executive order ‘should not and cannot apply’ to people with a [Differences of Sex Development], according to a statement from the [Pediatric Endocrine Society]. That’s because some people with a DSD, which is also called intersex, don’t produce sperm or eggs, produce both of them, or produce a reproductive cell that doesn’t match their biological sex development.”
The order was about recognizing that Homo sapiens is a two-sex species, which is true. Inter literally means "between," so intersex is "between sexes," not a unique third sex.
Moving onto “Medical Gender Transition Treatments,” Jaramillo noted another executive order “later defined children as 'individuals under 19 years of age.’”
She then reached for the common non-sequitur, “But experts have told us that gender-affirming surgeries typically take place after age 18, the legal age of adulthood in most states, and after a case-by-case assessment by a medical team.”
Of course, something being rare is not the same thing as it being nonexistent. Still, Jaramillo seemed to contradict herself as she made an unconvincing argument that surgery should be treated differently than hormone treatment, “Puberty blockers, or medications that delay the beginning of puberty, are the first medical intervention and are typically offered between ages 8 to 13 for girls and 9 to 14 for boys. Gender-affirming hormone therapy is typically offered around age 16, when adolescents are capable of making an informed decision that weighs the potential risks and benefits.”
While hyping the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Endocrine Society and the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, Jaramillo ignored that countries such as the United Kingdom and Sweden—not exactly run by U.S.-style religious right types—paused such “treatments.”
Again, Jaramillo confused “rare” with “never,” writing, “A separate study by some of the same Harvard researchers, published in JAMA Pediatrics in January, used insurance claims data and found that less than 0.1% of minors ages 8 to 17 with private insurance are transgender or gender diverse and received puberty blockers or hormones between 2018 and 2022.”
During COVID, we were constantly told that mandates and restrictions were necessary because a small percentage of a very big number is still a big number. However, fact-checkers and journalists alike seem uninterested in applying that same standard to minors receiving gender-altering care while also trying to torture the definition of sex into something else.
