No one wants to write out S-E-X nowadays. A growing number of social media users — mostly young people on TikTok— are choosing to use the replacement terms” seggs” or” shmex” when they mean to say” sex” in response to online content moderation policies that disincentivize some words.
For the most part, it’s a funny ( if slightly Orwellian ) trend, but it also speaks to a different problem, one that has disastrous consequences for women’s rights: Because our culture acts like the word” sex” only has one meaning — namely, well, the birds and the bees ( which, naturally, no one wants to bring up in polite society ) — far too many people ignore the other meaning of the word” sex”, the categories of male and female, and use the word “gender” instead.
One issue with that:” Sexual” and “gender” are not identical.
While sex is a fixed type because mammals, including humans, are born either male or female and never change sexes, “gender” is a vague, social concept that describes the social characteristics of each sex.  ,
Of course, most people who confuse” intercourse” and “gender” would so sweetly, not knowing that they are conflating an unchangeable type with a constantly shifting and ill-defined strategy. However, this famous confusion around” sex” and “gender” has laid the groundwork for far-left activists to promote radical gender ideology, a theory that suggests males may become women, females may become men, and users of either sex may assume no sex or some other sex fully.
For an ideology may be medically absurd, but activists ‘ distortion of language, combined with the standard public’s everyday but false parlance, is part of what has allowed males who simply state that they identify as women ( even though this is biologically impossible ) to gain access to women’s sports, bathrooms, and prisons, among other intimate, single-sex spaces designed to protect people.
It seems almost absurd that today’s women must fight for their right to exclusive female spaces. Women are protected from discrimination based on sex by the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment and the 1964 Civil Rights Act, among other federal and state laws.  ,
This is why words matter. ” Sex” and “gender” are not synonyms, but because of a false ideology that has pretended they are, it has become necessary to clarify that there are only two sexes, male and female, and that women are biologically distinct from men.
Recently, Justice Alito exposed the danger of erroneously conflating” sex” and “gender” in U. S. v. Skrmetti, a pending landmark case considering the constitutionality of a Tennessee law that protects children from puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and other sex-trait modification procedures.
In posing the question of whether being transgender is an “immutable” trait, Justice Alito forced the American Civil Liberties Union attorney, who was arguing that Tennessee’s law was unconstitutional, to concede that “gender identity” isn’t immutable. An “immutable” characteristic is a legal term that describes whether a person’s identity is fundamental, unchanging, and thus protected by the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause. By its very definition, “gender”, unlike sex, cannot be immutable, which, logically, should close the door to the left’s attempt to treat “gender identity” as a protected class.
It’s President Trump’s cup of tea. He signed an executive order on day one aptly titled” Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government” and aptly titled” Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism.” It declared the United States will recognize there are only two sexes, male and female, in federal law and policy, stating,”‘ Sex’ is not a synonym for and does not include the concept of ‘ gender identity.'”
Even those of us who oppose transgender ideology had unwittingly succumbed to the left’s erasure of sex in the language we used, so it may seem silly to have the obvious stated in the form of an executive order.
The focus needs to shift to 1 ) Congress to codify these definitions so that a future administration cannot change them via an executive order, and 2 ) the states, where laws and regulations that do not distinguish between” sex” and “gender” have undermined the rights of women. President Trump has made a significant step in the right direction.
To accomplish this, we can begin to reverse our course by acknowledging reality and using language that reflects it, including the word” sex.”
At Independent Women’s Forum ( iwf ), Neeraja Deshpande is a policy analyst and coordinator of engagement. org ). Independent Women’s Law Center ( iwlc ) has a senior legal advisor named Beth Parlato. org ).
