Megan Cockett eagerly awaited their chance to walk across the stage. The transgender nonbinary University of Wyoming graduate had earned a bachelor’s in English, with specializations in creative writing and from the Honors College.

It had been hard work to reach this point, but the day was finally here. Cockett patiently waited among hundreds of other undergraduates in the university’s Arena Auditorium. UW President Ed Seidel introduced the next speaker, the Equality State’s first female senator.

Then Senator Cynthia Lummis took the stage.

“Lummis’ speech – before she even said the big “fundamental scientific fact of two sexes’ thing – was not very good,” Cockett said. “So the general vibe of the people I was sitting around was like, ‘Damn, this is really our keynote. This sucks.’”

The commencement address began predictably, with references to student achievement and an invitation for all gathered to remember this important time in their life.

“Wherever your lives take you from this day forward, know that your forever connection to this state is important to Wyoming’s rich tapestry of life,” Lummis said. “Please know that you are important to this Wyoming community. And while our numbers are few, our sense of belonging is strong. Wherever you wind up, remember the world needs more cowboys.”

But Cockett and others noticed a turn, when Lummis shifted away from advice for future parents and the complexities of a changing world to talk of Bitcoin — a cryptocurrency Lummis frequently promotes and defends.

“Look at the people in Venezuela, look at the people in Ukraine — they benefit daily from the existence of Bitcoin,” Lummis told the crowd, highlighting the decentralized digital currency’s ability to move across national borders with ease.

Disruptive forces other than Bitcoin, however, present threats to the American way of life, Lummis said.

“You woke up this morning with more individual freedom in the most creative, divinely inspired nation on earth,” she said. “The transformations and disruptions I alluded to are testing those very freedoms.”

She then criticized those in government who don’t believe rights come from a “creator,” the closing of churches during the early days of the pandemic, and government efforts to combat the spread of COVID-19 disinformation. (Pandemic-related disinformation about masks, vaccines and alternative treatments has contributed to the U.S.’s staggering death toll.)

But one grievance, in particular, saw the crowd booing Lummis so ferociously that she had to pause in her speech.

“Even fundamental scientific truths, such as the existence of two sexes, male and female, are subject to challenge these days,” Lummis said.

The crowd started booing, and Lummis started to say, “I … ” but stopped and waited for the booing to let up slightly.

“I’m not making a comment on the fact that there are those who transition between sexes,” she said, then quickly pivoted to other topics.

The problem with Lummis’ statement is two-fold, said those who booed and have since criticized her. First, the statement is factually inaccurate. Sex is more complicated than “male and female.” And Lummis’ statement about the alleged sex binary implies the existence of a gender binary, Cockett said, as many people still mistakenly think of the two concepts as one and the same.

“By saying that there’s biologically two sexes, she’s factually incorrect in front of a bunch of biology and chemistry majors who were graduating with bachelors of sciences,” Cockett said. “The School of Culture, Gender and Social Justice was there and they study the way gender is perceived in the world. And many of us were interdisciplinary, so we also know that this connection between sex and gender exists. But the way she spoke about it really implied that if there are two sexes, there are two genders.”

Cockett was far from the only transgender student graduating from UW that day. Another English major, Maple, said they saw Lummis’ comment in light of the larger struggle for trans rights.

“She's echoing the same kind of anti-trans rhetoric that's been driving a long and widespread legislative attack against us, as well as ignoring that intersex people exist and invalidating nonbinary gender identities,” Maple said. “Bigots have long weaponized misunderstood and/or outdated science, and this was no different.”

That’s no small matter. Issues and misconceptions surrounding the trans community have taken center stage in the cultural wars, and the community has faced a wave of anti-trans legislation as a result. Meanwhile, suicides remain high, especially for trans youth — and that suicide rate is driven by anti-trans bigotry and bullying. When trans youth feel accepted in their family and community, their likelihood of suicidal ideation drops significantly.

Maple said Lummis’ comments were worse than misinformed; they were an attack, using the same rhetoric “these bastards” have been using to craft anti-trans legislation.

“I've spent the past two years watching Republican legislators in states across this country launch relentless attacks against trans people,” Maple said. “Hell, I even spent a good bit of February organizing with my fellow LGBTQ+ students at UW to fight the bill they introduced here in Wyoming. I couldn't help but think, ‘Oh, she doesn't want me to exist.’”

The ‘fundamental scientific truth’ that wasn’t

Dr. Tess Kilwein is a local clinical psychologist specializing in transgender health. She said sex and gender are often conflated.

“In fact, gender identity, gender role or expression, and sex are all distinct concepts,” she said. “Gender identity refers to a person's internal sense of gender, such as male, female, transgender, or genderqueer. Gender role or expression refers to characteristics in personality, appearance, and behavior that in a given culture may be designated as more ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine,’ although most people are androgynous in that they incorporate both masculine and feminine characteristics into their daily lives. Finally, sex is assigned at birth as male or female, typically based on the appearance of external genitalia.”

Gender identity, gender role or expression, and sex often correlate, but they don’t always. And it’s worth noting that they are all, to some degree, social constructs that exist on a spectrum. (“Social construct” does not mean “fake,” but rather, literally socially constructed, or real only because we agree on its realness — money and limited liability companies are also social constructs.)

Sex is frequently thought of as a binary because a sex binary is culturally enforced. From kindergarten to high school biology classes, students are often taught that male and female are the only two sexes. But the cultural enforcement actually begins much earlier, when some percentage of babies are born with intersex features and — at least in the U.S. — are pushed toward traditionally male or traditionally female.

“The fields of medicine and science have long identified sex development as far more diverse than this binary,” Kilwein said. “Sex includes a range of components outside of external genitalia, including internal genitalia and both chromosomal and hormonal sex.”

Kilwein said there are a range of situations in which a person can be born with reproductive or sexual anatomy that is outside of the binary.

“For example, intersex people can have discrepancies between external and internal genitalia or combinations of chromosomes that are different than XY (typically associated with male) and XX (typically associated with female), such as XXY,” Kilwein said. “It is simply medically inaccurate to state that there are only two sexes. At its most basic level, statements like this reject the very existence of intersex people who live and thrive in our society just like everyone else.”

Much of the time, a sex binary is imposed on babies in the United States with cosmetic surgery that alters the genitals to look more “male” or “female.” Human Rights Watch has even called out the U.S. specifically for this practice, labeling the surgeries “medically unnecessary” and highlighting how they can cause physical or psychological damage.

And sharing misinformation, while calling it a ‘fundamental scientific truth,’ has wider ramifications for society, Kilwein said.

“Medically inaccurate statements as a whole contribute to the growing mistrust of science and medicine — fields necessary to ensure the health and well-being of our communities,” she said. “These statements also contribute to a growing misunderstanding about and simplification of the range of sexual, gender, and relationship identities that have always existed in our society.”

Kilwein said this misunderstanding leads to discriminatory legislation, such as Texas’ push to reclassify transgender care as “child abuse,” and Wyoming’s attempted ban on transgender girls and women in high school sports.

Lummis’ comments involved sex, not gender, but given the common conflation of the those two concepts, Kilwein says an uninformed pronouncement on one can lead to misunderstanding about the other.

“Ultimately, when you target and reject a community that has been historically excluded from legal protections and access to community life, that impact is felt equally as deep by every identity that has experienced historical exclusion and wonders if they will be next,” she said.

The university response

The day after Lummis’ commencement speech, UW President Ed Seidel sent a campus-wide email, addressing the event he witnessed personally.

“One of our speakers made remarks regarding biological sex that many on campus take issue with,” Seidel writes in the email. “While we respect the right of all to express their views, from students to elected officials, we unequivocally state that UW is an institution that supports and celebrates its diverse communities that collectively make us the wonderful place that we are.”

On Monday, two days after the commencement speech, the campus received a lengthier email — this time from campus leaders in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, the School of Culture, Gender and Social Justice and Multicultural Affairs, and the Dean of Students. This email, unlike the first, named Lummis specifically and included her direct quote about sex.

“Our faculty, staff and students know that is not the scientific truth,” the email’s authors write. “In accordance with the American Medical Association and the American Psychological Association, we affirm that humans may comprise various chromosomal variations, and not every person is strictly born female or male. Intersex members of our community who have diverse chromosomal makeup should be seen and recognized. Regardless of biological sex, gender has a wide variety of expression.”

The email went on to invite members of the campus community to host “educational conversations regarding this matter,” and offered assistance in setting those up.

Lummis herself walked back the “two sexes” line of her commencement speech.

“My reference to the existence of two sexes was intended to highlight the times in which we find ourselves, times in which the metric of biological sex is under debate with potential implications for the shared Wyoming value of equality,” Lummis said via a statement, according to Oil City News. “I share the fundamental belief that women and men are equal, but also acknowledge that there are biological differences and circumstances in which these differences need to be recognized. That being said, it was never my intention to make anyone feel un-welcomed or disrespected, and for that I apologize. I have appreciated hearing from members of the University of Wyoming community on this issue, and I look forward to continuing this dialogue.”

Lummis did not admit that her statement was inaccurate.

Maple said President Seidel’s statement, in particular, felt hollow and “boilerplate.” And none of the apologies offered have impressed Cockett.

“Everything I’ve seen from both the university and Lummis herself has not been an apology. It’s been, ‘I’m sorry if you felt offended,’ ‘I’m sorry that this was not vetted,’ etc.,” Cockett said. “But that’s not saying, ‘I’m sorry that this happened and you were hurt.’ Because that modifier ‘If you felt’ puts the blame on us as students, as transgender people, for feeling offended at this thing she said.’”

Ultimately, Cockett was left with a feeling of disappointment that their graduation ceremony was used as a partisan platform.

“It wasn’t congratulatory, it wasn’t celebratory, it wasn’t inspiring,” they said. “It really just seemed like she got up there to be contradictory. We were all kind of joking about how we had to go buy Bitcoin because she told us to. Even people who aren’t trans, who I talked to in the audience, were offended that she took over the commencement address of our graduation — we’ve all put in this work to get our bachelor’s degree, hundreds of us — and she made it all about politics and all about her.”

Subscribe now

Share

The Laramie Reporter

‘She made it all about politics and all about…