In September of 2025, Melissa McCoul, a senior English instructor at Texas A&M, was fired for stating the scientific truth that gender and biological sex were not equivalent. This means that in our species, an individual’s biological sex and their gender behavior are not always concordant. This offended a student in her class, who claimed that the instructor’s claim violated President Trump’s Executive Order of January 20th, 2025, that stated there were only two genders: male and female. The student also claimed that the instructor was violating their religious beliefs. The exchange was filmed by students in the course and posted to the internet. This resulted in Republican legislators calling for the firing of the instructor, the department chair, and the Dean who was fired by the University’s President Mark Welsh. Later that month, Mark Welsh stepped down over pressure that he allowed “leftist diversity, equity, and inclusion and transgender indoctrination.”
In 2022, I summarized the modern science of gender in my book A Voice in the Wilderness. In short, gender and biological sex are not equivalent. For example, sex determination in different evolutionary lineages varies. While genes determine biological sex, sex determination systems vary widely, even within the same taxonomic groups. Some organisms have sex chromosomes. This means that the genes responsible for determining biological sex are routinely found on them (such as the X, Y system in humans). However, even in this case, genes on autosomal (non-sex) chromosomes are also involved. Some organisms display individuals that are hermaphroditic; others have an obligate separation between male and female individuals. However, even in those groups with the obligate distinction, individuals may change their biological sex under specific conditions. For example, the bluehead wrasse (Thalassoma bifasciatum, a reef fish) undergoes socially determined sex change by a set of somewhat complicated changes in gene expression via epigenetic modification. In this species, an individual can change from female to male in response to the death of the males. This change is most likely to occur in the remaining most dominant female. Sex change also occurs widely in amphibians. Reptiles vary between those with genetic sex determination and others with no specific sex determination chromosomes. In the latter, the temperature at which an egg is incubated determines whether it will be male or female.
Nor is biological sex determination in our species are simple as the White House wishes it to be. For example, in our species, sex determination is mediated by the X and Y chromosome system. The Y chromosome contains the major sex determining gene, testes determining factor, SRY. All human embryos start as female (which explains why adult males have nipples and breast tissue), but at about 6-7 weeks of development, SRY directs the embryo to develop testes. The testes then begin to produce testosterone, which usually results in the development of male characteristics.
Testosterone can only cause an embryo to become male if the individual’s cells have a receptor for the hormone. However, in our species, mutations exist that cause androgen insensitivity. These mutations are rare (7 individuals in 10,000 have this condition). However, someone with this mutation may have an XY chromosome combination but develop entirely as a female. This was the case for Maria Patiño, who was Spain’s top female hurdler, who was booted out of the Olympics for having a Y chromosome. She had the body of a woman and the gender identity of a woman. There are other “intersex” conditions that occur, in total, in about 1.7% of all individuals. Thus, these individuals deny the idea that biological sex and gender are binary.
Indeed, scientists who have seriously studied gender across the animal kingdom have shown that what we think of as gender is determined by the combination of genes, gonad composition, and brain structures. These combine in development to create a continuum of gender identity. This is the subject of a new documentary film that premiered in October, 2025 entitled Second Nature. It features the research of the nation’s top anthropologists, primatologists, and neuroscientists. I appear in the film discussing the evolution of sex. These scholars all agree that there is no gender binary.
The problem here is that an Executive Order from the White House, right-wing bigotry against the gender continuum, or someone’s religious beliefs, does not make the fluidity of gender in our species less real. In the same way, the Holy Inquisition and their religious beliefs of the 16th century did not make the Earth the center of the solar system.
This brings us back to the situation in Texas. No professor should be disciplined for presenting the state of the science on any subject, no matter how contentious. However, in the case of topics such as gender biology, evolution, vaccination, and climate change, the science is no longer contentious. Gender is fluid, life evolved, vaccinations save lives and do not cause autism, and human activity is driving climate change. If the university is no longer engaged in the search for and dissemination of truth, then it has become useless. Indeed, as Michael Mann and Peter Hotez describe in their new book Science Under Siege, a powerful and well-financed cabal is actively trying to destroy our universities by making them subservient to anti-scientific political agendas that, if they succeed, will destroy our democracy. We should be vigilant that the egregious violation of academic freedom that happened in Texas does not become the standard for the nation. Unfortunately, there is evidence that this trend is spreading across the nation in both the social and natural sciences.
In the same month that Jessica Coul was fired in Texas for challenging the gender binary, Jessica Adams, an instructor at Indiana University’s School of Social Work, was removed from a course entitled “Diversity, Human Rights, and Social Justice” for showing a diagram illustrating socially unacceptable and socially acceptable examples of white supremacy in the United States. It was claimed that she violated the state’s “intellectual diversity law” known as SEA 202. The law called on campuses to develop procedures to foster cultures of “free inquiry” and “intellectual diversity” in the classroom. However, it is hard to see how an instructor who asked students to question the character and implementation of white supremacy is preventing a culture of free inquiry. The assault on biological and social science that contradicts the current administration’s view of the world threatens to undermine all rational thought in this society. With its flawed view of gender, in March of 2025, the administration canceled millions of dollars of research that addressed the unique health concerns of gay and transgender individuals. Dismantling research based upon over half a century of sound biological science is not simply an academic issue. Without the science, or if you get the science wrong, people die.
References:
1. The White House, Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government; https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/defending-women-fro,m-gender-ideology-extremism-and-restoring-biological-truth-to-the-federal-government/
2. Graves JL. A Voice in the Wilderness: A Pioneering Biologist Explains How Evolution Can Help Us Solve Our Biggest Problems, (New York: Basic Books), 2022.
3. Todd EV, Ortega-Recalde O, Liu H, Lamm MS, Rutherford KM, Cross H, Black MA, Kardailsky O, Marshall Graves JA, Hore TA, Godwin JR, Gemmell NJ. Stress, novel sex genes, and epigenetic reprogramming orchestrate socially controlled sex change. Sci Adv. 2019 Jul 10; 5(7):eaaw7006. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.aaw7006. PMID: 31309157; PMCID: PMC6620101.
4. Wapstra E, Warner DA. Sex allocation and sex determination in squamate reptiles. Sex Dev. 2010; 4(1-2):110-8. doi: 10.1159/000272459. Epub 2009 Dec 29. PMID: 20051672.
5. Fausto-Sterling, A. Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality, (New York: Basic Books), 2000.
6. Second Nature Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cBlcMYye7E
7. Graves JL. Galileo Would Be Fired in Texas Too, Greensboro News & Record, September 28, 2025; https://greensboro.com/opinion/column/article_d7591b60-0647-4210-ac56-b8fdec314c3f.html
8. Mann M. Hotez P. Science Under Siege: How to Fight the Five Most Powerful Forces That Threaten Our World, (New York: Public Affairs), 2025.
9. Baiocchi A. An instructor showed a graphic on white supremacy. Did she break the law? The Chronicle of Higher Education, November 12, 2025; https://www.chronicle.com/article/an-instructor-showed-a-graphic-on-white-supremacy-did-she-break-the-law
10. Associated Press, Trump administration cancels at least 68 grants focused on LGBTQ health questions, CNN, March 24, 2025; https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/24/health/lgbtq-grants-canceled
