Nebraska’s Republican Gov. Jim Pillen on Wednesday signed an executive order strictly defining a person’s sex.

The order notably does not use the term “transgender,” although it appears directed at limiting transgender access to certain public spaces. It orders state agencies to define “female” and “male” as a person’s sex assigned at birth.

“It is common sense that men do not belong in women’s only spaces,” Pillen said in a statement. “As Governor, it is my duty to protect our kids and women’s athletics, which means providing single-sex spaces for women’s sports, bathrooms, and changing rooms.”

  • BOMBS@lemmy.world
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    I still don’t understand what business the government has defining sex. How is that in any way the government’s job?? If anything, it could be up to medical organizations, such as the AMA, if they had sound arguments. But, the government? I really try to at least understand everyone’s logic even if I don’t agree with them, but this is just so insane. I don’t get it.

    • cmbabul@lemmy.world
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      That’s because there is no logic, the people that want the government to define sex have a purely emotional reaction to the very existence of trans people… and most things that don’t align with their narrow life experience and worldview

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        There’s no logic?

        Just because you’re ignorant of the difference between sex and gender are doesn’t mean there isn’t logic…

        Sex is very important for the single biggest thing that affects all of our lives, healthcare. Standardizing it literally saves lives.

        • candybrie@lemmy.world
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          Except the healthcare needs of trans gender people who have medically transitioned to any degree are often closer to their gender than their sex assigned at birth. The body chemistry differences between men and women are primarily affected by hormones. Unless you’re specifically looking at the organs that are different, you probably need to go by gender.

        • BOMBS@lemmy.world
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          Again, why is the government involved instead of a letting a leading medical body. Did physicians have a large protest over the lack of a legal definition that is forced outside of medical settings, and the government heard their concerns based on rational logic and ethical medical standards? Does the government define eye color, cancer, gingivitis, premature birth, high IQ, major depressive disorder, and how organizations outside of the medical system can use those terms?

      • expr@programming.dev
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        It’s because they want to incentivize long-term, stable relationships and households because doing so statistically leads to better outcomes for society. The barrier to entry for getting divorced is quite high, so in general people tend to stay together more often if they are married than if they are not.

        That all being said, the system is far from perfect for sure. Incentivizing marriages also incentivizes people to stay in bad marriages, among other issues

    • ayaya@lemdro.id
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      Not that I agree with what is happening but they are defining it in legal terms, which is absolutely their job. A simple example might be killing someone is just killing someone, and the government defines what is murder and what is manslaughter.

      • BOMBS@lemmy.world
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        I understand the point of defining a criminal act, but being a sex isn’t criminal. It’s being a human.

        • ayaya@lemdro.id
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          Maybe that was a bad example to use, that is my bad. It was just the first thing I thought of. The government needs to define all sorts of things, not just criminal acts. You say it’s being human. They even define what a human is.. Laws have to be written in such a way as to include explicit definitons so they can be enforced without loopholes. (Or in some cases create loopholes like with the rich and taxes)

    • douglasg14b@lemmy.world
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      ITT: Everyone conflating sex for gender…

      It’s actually quite important. Your sex are what your chromosomes are, your gender is what you identify as.

      Your sex doesn’t change, your gender does.

      That’s literally the definition of it.

      This is important especially for medical purposes, medication, surgery, emergency care…etc all has variations based on your sex, because different sexes are predisposed to different classes of problems and interactions. This also applies to REPORTING, reporting that a medication affects someone born female different than someone born male is an extremely important distinction.

      Incorrect reporting literally costs lives.

      It should to be standardized, just like everything else that has significant consequences on well being.

      Politics are ruining what should be completed apolitical.

      • The Octonaut@mander.xyz
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        There’s like 8 comments in this topic my straw-chewing friend. You don’t need to copy and paste yours again as if trying to get every iota of value out of typing so much pointless tired Facebook wrap-around sunglasses rhetoric.

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    Just a reminder if you are worried about your children being ogled by trans people in the “wrong” restroom: There are ten gays for every one trans person, so the likelihood of being ogled by people in the “right restroom” should be ten times higher. The solution is not to police who uses what restroom, but to design restrooms that don’t allow for ogling!

    I swear, the only proof of a grand gay conspiracy I’ve ever found is the bathtub urinal. Walls, people, real walls, not plywood separators that have gaps between the doors and opening on the bottom.

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      That, and like, don’t flatter yourself (person who is afraid of getting hit on by a hypothetical gay guy in a bathroom). Most people, the vast majority, look like 20 lbs of birdshit.

      There’s better places to date and get asked out anyways, like a gay bar, or at a fun climbing gym. If you do get asked out (which won’t happen), take it as a compliment for not looking like hell and move on. xD

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      I think the main concern comes from females not wanting males in their bathroom.

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        Please hear me out – wouldn’t requiring females who identify as men and look like men, to use women’s washrooms, be virtually indistinguishable from a cis man using women’s washrooms? It seems like this law might actually result in more manly-looking folks in the women’s washroom, as all trans men would be required to.

        Also, how do you enforce that? Is there going to be someone checking ID at the door, but only if you look “manly?” In that case, wouldn’t a male who identified as a woman, and looks like a woman, be able to slip by undetected anyway, or is this “bathroom bouncer” going to check everyone’s IDs?

        Even if I agreed with the thesis that people born with penises shouldn’t be allowed in women’s washrooms (and I don’t), any implementation seems like it has far too many flaws to be remotely effective.

        Instead, how about bathrooms have actual, private rooms instead of stalls with doors you can see over, under, or around? Wouldn’t that be a more practical solution to the problem of bathroom privacy?

        Thanks for reading. I’m curious to hear your thoughts.

        • bobman@unilem.org
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          I actually agree with everything you say.

          Unisex bathrooms with actual rooms would be awesome.

          However, a significant amount of women will still have and voice their concerns over having trans women in their restrooms.

          I’m not saying they’re right. I actually think TERFs are some of the most deplorable people on the planet. But they do exist and are the driving force behind separation of bathrooms.

          Their main excuse is fear, but I actually think it’s sexism. They think men are dirty and barbaric and don’t belong around women in a restroom. I don’t think they’re genuine enough to admit this publicly.

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          I mean, no law is 100% effective.

          Are you saying we shouldn’t have laws against murder because people will still murder?

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            We already have laws against sexual assault and harassment. The purpose of this law is to harass trans people not to protect anyone.

            It will end up only hurting people, many of whom won’t even be trans. We’ve already seen masculine-looking women getting subjected to this kind of law in other states. It’s nothing more than the government abusing its own citizens.

            Trans people taking a dump aren’t hurting anyone.

          • HonoraryMancunian@lemmy.world
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            Murder is bad

            A woman having a shit in a stall (whilst having a Y chromosome) is pretty neutral

            Anyway, answer the FtM question

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              Ok, why are you telling me this?

              Tell it to the guy who thinks laws don’t work.

              • themeatbridge@lemmy.world
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                Because your argument is invalid either way. This law doesn’t protect women from bathroom predators. We have laws that protect women from bathroom predators, and if they are effective, we don’t need this law, and if they are ineffective, then we don’t need this law.

                The purpose of this law is to discriminate against transgender individuals. Any other justification is bullshit.

                • bobman@unilem.org
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                  The purpose of this law is to discriminate against transgender individuals.

                  Yes, which is effective. If it wasn’t, then why would people be getting upset?

          • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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            I would like a law that religious figure are no longer eligible to run tax free organizations if they meet at the White House

              • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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                I am fine with that. Tax them the way we do corporations. Same for any group that lobbies, like CATO. It is obnoxious how the wealthy are able to lobby can get jobs for their nephew by proxy tax avoidance schemes.

                Koch wants certain laws passed. Koch gives money to CATO so CATO can lobby for them. CATO is a non-profit.

      • prole@sh.itjust.works
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        Great point! This is exactly why we shouldn’t be forcing ftm trans people to use women’s restrooms.

        There are men that you’ve encountered, or even know personally, that were assigned female at birth and you would never have any fucking idea. These people are completely indistinguishable from cis men, and have zero business being in a women’s bathroom.

        But no, people like you ignore their existence because it’s inconvenient to the argument you’ve invented to try to justify being a piece of shit.

          • prole@sh.itjust.works
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            You are literally in here defending their reasoning and talking about it as if it’s logical and rational.

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          That’s nice, but most women would probably be more concerned with trans women in their restrooms.

          I’m not saying it’s okay. It’s just the world we live in.

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            Even if true I am not sure when “concerned” suddenly got veto power over my basic rights.

            If I could statistically demonstrate that most Western women were “concerned” about certain races using the bathroom I doubt you would be adapting this world-weary tone of “it is what the people want”.

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              Even if true I am not sure when “concerned” suddenly got veto power over my basic rights.

              Yeah, it shouldn’t.

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    Can’t wait for them to remember that trans men exist. There’s going to be a lot of shocked Pikachu Republicans when men who look like men show up in “women’s spaces” because they’re being forced to.

    Wish I could be a fly on the wall to see that fucking awesome scenario.

    And trans women are going to get harassed or worse for complying with this law. Fuck all this so much.

    Seriously, trans folks, you don’t deserve this bullshit and I hate that your existence is the controversy of the moment for Republicans. Be well and take care of yourselves <3.

      • jesuiscequejesuis@lemmy.world
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        There are more intersex people in the US than trans people.

        Most advocacy groups estimate that 1.7% percent of people are born intersex — the equivalent of about 5.6 million U.S. residents

        Polling by KFF and The Washington Post shows that there are nearly 2 million people nationwide who identify as transgender or trans, representing less than 1% of all adults

        Source: https://apnews.com/article/how-many-transgender-intersex-laws-0218b75a197f07d8c51620bb73495d55

      • prole@sh.itjust.works
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        What percent of the population do you think is trans? Genuinely curious.

        Oops, just saw the other reply. The one you ignored and didn’t respond to. Has a source and everything.

        Your “argument” here is bullshit, because intersex is less rare than trans. But you’d never know that based on the current political conversation, would you?

        • bobman@unilem.org
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          So it doesn’t apply to the vast majority of people affected by anti-trans legislation.

          • webadict@lemmy.world
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            Ah yes, just like Martin Niemöller’s poem:

            First they came the trans people, and that was totally okay because there was less of them, so it never affected me.

            • bobman@unilem.org
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              Because the vast majority of people affected by anti-trans legislation aren’t intersex.

              • webadict@lemmy.world
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                Most people aren’t trans, but anti-trans legislation still affects them. It doesn’t really matter who it affects more, because it is meant as a culture war, but also as a hate tactic to bully people. How do you check that someone is transgender? You really can’t. You could claim they are dressing a certain way that doesn’t match. You could claim they look like they have more of a hormonal type. You could claim they are acting a way that doesn’t match their assigned gender at birth.

                But that’s the point. You can pick and choose who to apply this to.

  • cmac@lemmy.world
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    Does this mean that if there’s a clerical error and your baby’s birth certificate lists the wrong sex, it’s illegal to get it corrected?

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    This reads a lot like the Indiana Pi Bill. Granted, that one never passed, but it’s a pretty old story: politicians think they know better than experts.

    • prole@sh.itjust.works
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      And now that our Supreme Court has thrown Chevron Deference out the window, that old story may have a different, much worse, ending.

      Look at how they just forced the EPA to stop protecting over 60% of wetlands in the US. Look at what they’re doing with the FDA and mifepristone.

      Bad times ahead.

  • douglasg14b@lemmy.world
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    ITT: Everyone conflating sex for gender…

    It’s actually quite important. Your sex are what your chromosomes are, your gender is what you identify as.

    Your sex doesn’t change, your gender does.

    That’s literally the definition of it.

    This is important especially for medical purposes, medication, surgery, emergency care…etc all has variations based on your sex, because different sexes are predisposed to different classes of problems and interactions. This also applies to REPORTING, reporting that a medication affects someone born female different than someone born male is an extremely important distinction.

    Incorrect reporting literally costs lives.

    It should to be standardized, just like everything else that has significant consequences on well being.

    Politics are ruining what should be completed apolitical…


    And it looks like lemmy is just Reddit again, except at least on Reddit you can find an informed opinion before the bottom of the thread. This thread is completely devoid of critical thinking…

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      Umm… I hate to tell you this but this is propagating some pretty harmful misinformation…

      The reactions to medications are actually more closely tied to the hormone balance and body fat distribution of a person than their sex. It’s a common issue in the trans community where birth certificates are non-updatable that a doctor will prescribe meds for a person’s birth sex but because they are fully transitioned through HRT they get the effects more common to their phenotype presentation. This means that treatment is more commonly in line with their gender identity because of their hormonal medication and other procedures like an orchiectomy that make a person more similar to where they transitioned to then where they transitioned from.

      With trans paitents by and large the safer way to behave is to go with the “if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck and talks like a duck… If you are in a pinch and can’t ask them for specifics because they can’t talk - treat them like a duck.” While a lot of doctors aren’t super well versed in trans specific healthcare it remains a huge problem inside the community for trans women particularly being dosed like cis men which often means they respond like cis women to a lot of different things which is on average a little more scary because meds often linger longer than is expected in trans women’s tissues just like cis women. Sometimes this causes some cascading problems.

      Pharmacology wise the way trans folks react to different medications is still a bit of a frontier science… But dollars to donuts “just treat em like their birth sex and call it a day” is way too simplistic a take. The lived experience and often physical nature of gender do not stay nicely behind a cordon marked “politics”. Trans ignorance in healthcare can be very scary for someone whose endocrinologist has informed them what they should be given and treated like and then some hotshot resident could just decide to not listen should the trans person in question be placed in a position where they are in extreme distress and have to self advocate and educate the person caring for them on what may be the worst day of their life.

    • 1609_kilometers@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      This is important especially for medical purposes, medication, surgery, emergency care… […] Incorrect reporting literally costs lives.

      Surely that was the intention 👀

      “It is common sense that men do not belong in women’s only spaces,” Pillen said in a statement. “As Governor, it is my duty to protect our kids and women’s athletics, which means providing single-sex spaces for women’s sports, bathrooms, and changing rooms.”

      The Nebraska and Oklahoma orders both include definitions for the words “man,” “boy,” “woman,” “girl,” “father” and “mother.”

      Also

      And it looks like lemmy is just Reddit again, except at least on Reddit you can find an informed opinion before the bottom of the thread. This thread is completely devoid of critical thinking…

      This is a really dismissive way to deal with disagreements (also peak reddit behavior, it’s only missing the “edit:”)

    • SkyeStarfall@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      Sex is far more complicated than just what is assigned at birth. Especially if you take stuff like hormones into consideration.

      Nature doesn’t work in discrete categories. Almost everything in nature is fluid and amorphous to some degree. Exceptions to every rule humans can think of.

      And if you talk about sex about purely what gametes you have, then that isn’t really very useful to talk about in practice outside of reproduction. When laymen talk about sex, they mean perceived sex more than anything else (and to prove the point, the article talks about sexed places and such…). Leave anything else to medical professionals.

    • prole@sh.itjust.works
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      Yes, and we all know that was the intention behind this order. To protect people from incorrect medical reporting 🙄.

      The people you’re seemingly mad at never wanted to make this political. Trans people are just people that want to exist. That’s it.

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      Your sex are what your chromosomes are

      So we need to genetically test all babies at birth?

      Otherwise, I don’t know how we would figure out the sex of the ones with Swyer Syndrome- XY but with female genitalia.

      And assigning their sex as male at birth doesn’t make much sense to me.

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      One thing that exacerbates the problem is the values for gender and sex are reused. ‘Male’ can mean ‘I identity as male gendered’ or ‘my chromosomes are XY’ (choose one or both). If sex were consistently represented with different values (maybe as chromosomes XX, XY, others?), that might provide some clarity in good faith discussions. Finally, I’m not in medicine so YMMV.

      Update: One thing I wanted to add: I also recognize that many discussions are ‘not’ in good faith and an informed participant will deliberately conflate the meanings of gender’s and sex’s values. Unfortunately, no recommendation can help a person whose mind is closed.

      Edit: Added “Update”. Adjusted original comment’s casing.

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      you’re making nothing but sense, but you’re getting a lot of hate for it. we should be able to talk about this stuff by now without having to combat an onslaught of angry commenters that didn’t read what you wrote.

      It’s literally a carbon copy of reddit. the weird outrage just deflates all common sense.

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    “assigned”? How can it be assigned when it’s a natural state of being? That’s like saying the kids also get assigned hair color or eye color at birth.

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      They’re trying to co-opt language “assigned at birth” is a trans phrase

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      Funny thing, both of those can change too. I was blond when I was a kid, now my hair is brown, and when I’m old it’ll be gray.

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        You’re missing the point. If a kid is born and has brown eyes does the doctor “assign” his eye color? As brown? Or does he observe the eye color as brown?

        Saying the doctor “assigns” the eye color could mean it’s up to the doctor to decide, when it really isn’t. The doctor can’t look at brown eyes on a newborn and say, “yup I’m going to assign that as blue”

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    Maybe someday, someone will successfully describe the difference between sex and gender to a conservative.

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    How is it that the US is moving backwards? I am struggling to understand this…

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    Why would anyone care what sex someone wants to be or is? Seriously, I don’t understand why someone has to be butt hurt over someone born a boy that wants to be a girl or a girl that wants to be a guy. What fucking business is it of yours to care? You really worried for the children? I know that’s an absolute load of bullshit when you’re not doing anything about these priests and pastors that ARE THE PROBLEM. If you’re bothered by trans, gay, whatever, from the bottom of my heart, FUCK YOU and I hope you slip and fall on a pile of steaming dog shit and it gets in your hair.