Kansas Attorney General Asserts Sex Cannot Change Under New Law While More Americans Identify as “Transgender”

While culture wars interject the legal system to preserve normative binaries of sex, how might synthetic chemicals found in food packaging & personal care products influence sexuality? (9 min read)

Photo by Dainis Graveris on Unsplash

Very often, if not always, media speculation and hype over a matter can outpace reality, particularly over dispassionate statistical facts.

For everyday Americans who consume their daily news over social media or television, some might believe that the mainstream media has placed a disproportionate emphasis on “transgenderism” as of late.

Or maybe not?

Is the United States experiencing an explosion in people who self-identify as the opposite sex, and undergoing surgery to physically change their appearance to closely resemble that of the opposite sex?

Asserting sex through the legal system

In late June, Attorney General of Kansas Kris Kobach affirmed that people identifying as “transgender” cannot change their sex on state records under a new Women’s Bill of Rights law.

Passed by Kansas Republicans, vetoed by Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly and ultimately overridden by the Republican-dominated Legislature, this new law requires the state Health Department to restore any birth certificate “previously modified,” as per Kobach’s legal opinion.

According to an article by The Hutch Post, the attorney general explained that anyone who changed their legal sex under a previous policy of Kelly, to include on driver’s licenses and birth certificates, would need to have those changes reversed “to reflect the person’s biological sex.”

“It’s kind of amazing that we even need a law like this, but that’s where we are as a country,” Kobach tweeted. “It simply states that, for all state recordkeeping and data that the state maintains, a man is someone who is a male at birth and a woman is a person who is a female at birth.”

The Democratic governor in Kansas, meanwhile, issued a directive to allow agencies under her control to defy Kobach’s legal opinion—for which the general called “nonsense” and stated, “We will see her in court.”

Kobach said in his statement: “The Governor doesn’t get to veto a bill and then ignore the legislature’s override.”

There is a saying: politics is downstream from culture, and that culture is downstream from religion or spirituality. The seeming battle between Kelly and Kobach, in preserving or changing what is accepted as normative through the legal system, reflects conflicting values in America about the very nature of men and women.

But seriously, how do Americans perceive themselves and what share of the nation identify as belonging to or desiring to be the opposite sex?

Personal observations

As someone who pays careful attention to the development and wellbeing of the youth, I will admit to having observed teenagers who appear to mimic the body mechanics, walking style and dress code of the opposite sex.

(And no, I am not referring to tomboys who are at peace with their female selves. Nor am I referring to the boys who exhibit effeminacy and typically accept their maleness.)

I wouldn’t have made this observation even five years ago.

Now it could be that the media hype is forcing my subconscious to pay attention to this seemingly growing “trend.” But when friends who have worked across schools, colleges and universities for over two, three and in some cases four decades begin pointing out those same observations—perhaps we need to explore survey data behind “transgenderism.”

Polls show more Americans are identify as “LGBT”

According to a Gallup poll conducted throughout 2020, around 5.6 percent of U.S. adults identify as “lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender” or “LGBT,” which is an increase of over 1 percent compared to data from 2017 and 11.3 percent of “LGBT” self-identify as “transgender.”

Nearly 16 percent of Generation Z, aged 18 to 23 in 2020, consider themselves “something other than heterosexual.” Such identification is lower in each older generation, with only 2 percent or less of Americans born before 1965. Of the Generation Z adults who identify as “LGBT,” nearly 72 percent said they were “bisexual,” and about 2 percent identified as “transgender.”

Gallup editor Jeffrey Jones said the noticeable difference likely reflects a greater willingness for younger Americans to be “open” about their identity. Yet he also said that people may understand “sexual orientation and gender identity differently.” For example, according to Jones, asking people if they consider themselves “transgender” would accumulate a different figure than asking about their biological sex and the “gender” they currently identify.

Over the last two decades, America has witnessed a bombardment of “LGBT” activism through institutions that drive culture—an aggressive push through academia, media, entertainment, and, not least, channelled through corporate industries. What is the likelihood of members of Generation Z, who identify as “bisexual,” actually entering a “same-sex relationship” because they secretly think it’s a “cool fad” or “trendy to be gay” while knowing they will probably marry someone of the opposite sex?

Aside from culture, how may a changing environment plagued by synthetic chemicals alter fetal brain development, and form the basis of baby boys and girls who grow up feeling sexually attracted to the same sex or even desiring to be the opposite sex?

Can chemicals in the environment influence behavior?

According to physician and neurobiologist Dick Swaab and neuroscientist Garcia-Falgueras, differences in brain structure that originate from hormones and genes interacting on a developing fetal brain primarily influence “sexual orientation,” which would include individuals who grow up feeling they are “trapped in the wrong body” or that “nature made a mistake.”

Hormones are chemical messengers that carry information and instructions from one group of cells in the body to another set of cells. The endocrine system produces, sends and regulates hormones into the bloodstream of our bodies, influencing nearly every cell and organ function, including growth and development, and reproduction.

Over the last two decades, evidence has shown that atrazine-contaminated ponds could femalize frogs who were male by interfering with endocrine hormones, where some went as far as to mate with other males and produce viable eggs—despite being genetically male. On this note, even humans might be susceptible to hormone disruptors in the endocrine system in ways resembling the effects on male frogs in polluted ponds. 

• One example involves pthalates in packaging plastics, pesticides, cosmetics, toys, cleaning products, paint and personal care.

• Another culprit is the contraceptive drug diethylstilbesterol—later revealed to have a masculinizing effect on females’ brain development in the womb, who, when born, matured to be more sexually attracted to other females.

Subsequent research indicates that endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) from pthalates—chemicals mimicking the female hormone estrogen—can have feminizing effects on the developing brain of male fetuses. When exposed to high levels of pthalates in the womb, baby boys were more likely to be born with small testicles, small penises, and less likely to play with cars, trains and guns or engage in games like playfighting.

Exploring the impact of phthalates

On this note, phthalates were first introduced in the 1920s to make plastics more durable; in the last twenty years, researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have found measurable levels of phthalate exposure in the U.S. population using data collected in the early noughties.

In 2017, the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSIA) banned the use of eight types of phthalates in children’s toys and childcare products, and prohibited the import and sale of such items containing over 0.1 percent of these phthalates.

However, there is no specific legislation regarding phthalates in vinyl plastics such as cling films, meat wraps, and everyday personal care products, including deodorants and shampoos. At present, any manufacturer’s decision to minimize phthalates remains a voluntary contribution.

In fact, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced in 2022 that it would not impose a complete ban on phthalates—25 to be exact—primarily found in food packaging. The agency argued that “most phthalates” had already been “abandoned by industry” in response to a 2018 petition filed by an environmental advocacy group.

Thus, the FDA will still allow nine phthalates in food contact applications after denying a separate food additive petition from multiple environmental groups requesting the agency revoke its food additive regulations, and ban the 23 phthalates and an extra five from having food contact.

Presuming that phthalate exposure continues to prevail in a wide array of consumer products, albeit in decreasing trends, let us explore another poll that examines changes in how the youth perceive themselves after the last two decades of “LGBT” activism.

Zooming into the younger generations

A study published in 2022 estimates that over 1.6 million Americans identify as “transgender,” or around 0.6 percent of people aged 13 or above in the United States.

The study was conducted by researchers at the Williams Institute, a think tank at the University of California, Los Angeles’ Law School, which focuses on “gender identity” public policy.

The publication analyzes data collected between 2017 and 2020 from two surveys by the CDC, and estimates that among the U.S. youth alone, ages 13 to 17, around 1.4 percent identify as “transgender.”

For comparison purposes, around 0.5 percent of U.S. adults—nearly threefold lower than the youth—identify with the same label.

Furthermore, a 2017 Williams Institute report utilized data from the CDC’s Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) between 2014 and 2015, and estimated that 0.7 percent of youth in the same age group identify as “transgender.”

In other words, the share of 13 to 17-year-olds not identifying with their sex has doubled in the space of three to five years, i.e., between the periods of data collection of 2014-15 and 2017-2020.

Adults and youth who identify with this supposed “gender-affirming” label reside in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Now among ages 13 to 17, around 1.8 percent reside in the Northeast and 1.2 percent in the Midwest. At the state level, about 3.0 percent live in New York, while 0.6 percent are based in Wyoming.

But if two recent polls weren’t enough, a 2022 Pew Research Center survey finds that 1.6 percent of U.S. adults describe themselves as “transgender” or “nonbinary,” with around 5.1 percent of adults younger than 30 self-identifying with these terms.

Meanwhile, a rising share of Americans say they know someone “transgender” or “trans.” Around 44 percent say they personally know someone “trans,” and whether they are Democrat or Republican differs by only 6 percentage points. Furthermore, nearly one-in-ten adults say they know a “trans” person who is younger than 18 years old.

So while a relatively small percentage of Americans identify as “transgender,” this share has been growing among every new generation of youth, and this label has been gaining more visibility in the media and among the public consciousness over the last five years.

Knowledge can be a powerful tool in our lives, steering our actions towards making the right decision for our loved ones, including our present or future children.

Which way will it be?

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