Let's Talk About (Biological) Sex, Baby

Short Wave

NPR

Daily News, Nature, Life Sciences, Astronomy, Science, News

4.7 • 6K Ratings

🗓️ 12 March 2025

⏱️ 15 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Biological sex is all over the news lately. Whether it's via President Trump's executive order affecting passport policy, moving trans inmates between prisons or shifting the requirements for women in sports — appeals to "the biological reality of sex" are constant. In truth, biological sex, like a lot of scientific categories, is nuanced. It's defined by multiple criteria – including chromosomal, chemical and physical factors – that can, and do, change over a person's lifetime. And it's a reality that's definitely not limited to male and female.

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Transcript

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0:18.0	You're listening to Shortwave from NPR.
0:22.9	Hey, Short Waver is Regina Barber here with producer Hannah Chin.
0:26.4	Hey, Han.
0:27.0	Hey, Gina.
0:27.8	So today you're bringing us a story about sex?
0:31.4	Yeah, not like sex drugs and rock and roll.
0:34.0	Oh, okay, okay.
0:34.7	I'm here with a deep dive on biological sex.
0:38.4	Oh.
0:39.2	Which has been mentioned in the news a lot recently.
0:42.8	In the house, lawmakers are set to move forward with a bill defining biological sex.
0:46.8	Glim said the bill was about creating a definition for sex separate from gender.
0:50.5	Team prohibits college athletes from competing on a team opposite to their biological sex.
0:55.4	And their biological sex.
0:57.0	Biological sex.
0:58.9	Biological sex.
1:00.1	And just to be clear here, Gina, we're talking about sex here, not gender.
1:03.5	That's a whole other can of worms.
	...

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