Oklahoma – Amanda Salisbury

On August 1, 2023, Governor Stitt of Oklahoma signed Executive Order 2023-20 defining the words female, male, and a few others.

At first, I thought I might not exist under Oklahoma law.

A few moments after reading the Executive Order (EO), I suddenly felt that perhaps I had ceased to exist under Oklahoma law. I remembered from high school biology class that a biological female is born with all the eggs she will ever have. Which would mean that her reproductive system is not designed to produce eggs (they come preloaded on the typical base model). So when the EO defined “female” as a “person whose biological reproductive system is designed to produce ova,” the EO seemingly erased biological females from existence.

If females were erased from existence, so too were males by EO definition. The EO defined “male” as “a person whose biological reproductive system is designed to fertilize the ova of a female.” No females equals no ova of a female, which equals no person whose biological reproductive system is designed to fertilize the ova of a female.

The EO further defined some terms based on its own female/male definitions, effectively erasing “woman”, “girl”, “man”, “boy”, “mother”, and “father”. Intentionally or not, it seemed to me, Governor Stitt essentially eradicated biological gender for purposes of state government.

A few people more trained in biology than 10th grade informed me that an ovum (singular of ova) is a mature egg. Biological females are born with all the oocytes (egg cells) they will ever have. The oocytes stay dormant until puberty. Then the reproductive system matures the oocyte to an ovum. Perhaps it is fair to say that a female reproductive system is designed to produce ova.

Just when I thought my existence was safe, I remembered that my reproductive system is not designed to produce ova today.

When deciding whether a person is female, do we ask whether the reproductive system is designed to produce ova at some point in the life of the person, or is a person female only while her reproductive system is designed to produce ova?

Can a fetus be female? What about a pre-pubescent human? Clearly one could be female at some point during puberty and throughout child-bearing years. But what about a person who has undergone natural or surgical menopause? There are large portions of a human’s life when her reproductive system is designed to do things other than produce ova.

The female reproductive system consists of lots of pieces that perform various functions. Is it fair to say that the vulva is designed to produce ova? Yet it is the witness perception of a vulva that prompts the declaration, “It’s a girl!” In the male reproductive system, it is the witness perception of penis and scrotum that prompts the declaration, “It’s a boy!” The ova and its fertilization are not inspected (nor could be inspected) in determining biological sex assigned at birth.

“Designed” is a pretty loaded word in this context.

Does the EO mean intelligent design or Darwin’s acceptance that organisms are “designed” insofar as they are functionally organized?

Surely not even the ruling party in the state wants to argue this point. From an intelligent design perspective, the female reproductive system is designed to do many things. Among them, mature oocytes to ova, release the ova and implant or discard it, grow and birth offspring, and provide pleasure. In Darwinian terms, the female reproductive system is designed to ensure the survival of the species. Everything else it does serves that design function. From either perspective, saying a female reproductive system is designed to produce ova is a rather dim and narrow understanding of the design, the designer, and the functional organization.

Don’t know much about History
Don’t know much Biology
Don’t know much about a Science book
Don’t know much about the French I took
Sam Cooke, “Wonderful World”

Labels, language, and life are complicated.

The Executive Order (EO) pretends to be a safe haven for the sanctity of womanhood but fails to understand the intricacies of human biology, let alone language.

The EO’s preamble says, in part, “To settle the unfounded confusion surrounding such basic questions as ‘What is a woman?’, this Order is intended to provide clarity, certainty, and uniformity to administrative actions.”

My! How intentions can go awry!

Labeling is a cornerstone of language. Humans label everything. Why is a chair a chair? Someone said so and word traveled. Artists have dedicated great amounts of time and energy to push the conceptual boundaries of the chair. Human beings enter the world not knowing all the labels they’ll accumulate in a lifetime, not yet knowing language.

More complicated still, language is a mere facsimile of experience. A sort of shorthand. Hard to read. Harder still to learn to write. As such, language is ill suited to describe the width and depth of the human experience.

That’s why trying to codify the answer to the question, “What is a woman?”, will inevitably fall far short.

What is a woman? The EO responds that a woman is a natural person whose biological reproductive system is designed to produce ova.

How absurd to define “woman” by her internal biology! How would anyone go about proving womanhood? (And don’t think for a moment proof won’t be required.) Would we subject infants and new parents to invasive and unnecessary investigations of the internal reproductive system before declaring, “It’s a girl!”? Under this definition, what will be required of a person to prove basic human value or even existence in Oklahoma? What will be required of children to enter a school restroom? Who will judge the evidence?

A rose by any other name…

It’s no better to define “woman” by chromosomes. Hint: there are more combinations than just the two. It’s no better to define “woman” by her external genitalia. Perhaps, though, one could define “female” or “male” or “biological sex” by a person’s external genitalia. Hint: It’s the world we already have.

Definitions should closely resemble the world in which they function. No one says, “Congratulations! You have a baby capable of producing eggs!” Unless perhaps they are celebrating your new hen or platypus. They may well say, “Congratulations! You have a baby girl!” Where “girl” is used no more and no less than to imply the external genitalia that doctors, nurses, and parents perceive the baby to have at or soon after birth. Because we’ve never quite felt comfortable, as a society, saying things like, “Congratulations! You have a baby with a vulva!”

In this time and place we assign human biological sex at birth based on how we perceive external genitalia. It’s inexact. Perhaps it works as well as any other classification for a large majority of people. But there are those for whom external genitalia is ambiguous or otherwise not neatly fitted into one of two checkboxes. It stands to reason that if we want to classify people based on biological sex, we must 1) define it in a way that acknowledges actual determination of the classification and 2) name a third category. Because no one checks a baby’s reproductive system at birth. Because social value may be discovered in understanding how differing biologies impact humans differently. And because everyone exists.

At least one natural problem persists: What proof does society demand? How does one prove she had a vulva at birth? Or *didn’t* have a vulva at birth? It’s eye-witness testimony. Imagine if a huge piece of your life hinged on your length as measured at birth. Disastrous. Babies squirm. Methods of measurement vary. Records can be mistaken, lost, or destroyed. And no one in the present could possibly discern your length at birth.

The underlying problem festers.

It is the problem that warrior women and suffragettes and each wave of feminism has tried to solve. (Not to mention every civil rights movement since before there was such a thing as a civil rights movement. Not to mention plain old good humans doing good things.) Rather than reckon with the problem, our government spends its resources maintaining the festering wound.

The problem: Society uses an external indicator at birth as a deciding factor in power, politics, freedom, and welfare. A deciding factor in who someone can be, become, and love. You name it. If it’s a human feature discernible at or soon after birth, it’s been used to oppress some and advance others. The EO uses the thinnest veil of women’s rights as a cover for further entrenching the discriminatory systems that pervade all levels of society.

You don’t change an oppressive system by cobbling nonsensical definitions. Or by changing the facts as they are when they are. Change is so much harder: we must get the medicine to the site of the disease. We must, as a society, decide humans are. Humans are. No direct object necessary to the sentence but tons available to the individual.

Anything less serves only to further entrench the powerful.

A postscript: The EO extends to all of Oklahoma’s government, like schools and agencies. Those governmental entities that collect vital statistics are ordered to identify each person in a collected data set as either male or female “as defined in this Order.” Problematic. Must the entity investigate the internal reproductive capacity of a person to collect such statistics? And how skewed will we make statistics if we define male and female differently than common practice, federal law, or other states?

A post-postscript: The EO authorizes (but does not order) state agencies “to provide governmental services in single-sex environments where biology, privacy, and personal dignity are implicated.” Given that determining female and male status necessarily implicates biology, privacy, and personal dignity under the new definitions, we will apparently provide all governmental services in single-sex environments. Like something out of the oppressor’s handbook: make one’s existence difficult or impossible to prove then divide the masses.

But I do know that I love you
And I know that if you love me too
What a wonderful world this would be
Sam Cooke, “Wonderful World”

A thing I learned about pursuing discipline: stop when it makes sense because it makes sense.

I am a recovering quitter. Much of my life, I chronically wanted to quit things. I got bored sometimes, but usually I just freaked out. I felt like an imposter or incapable or just simply not enough. My mode in those years: apply, get accepted, do stuff, work hard, be on the cusp of something great-adjacent, freak out, want to quit, throw a fit. I finished plenty, though the fit and freak out were nearly always there. Like plagues. Plagues I created.

More recently, I’ve worked on finishing. Even if it was a slog. Even if nobody else thought it was necessary or important or useful. I did this in secret, the finishing. And it was not a wonderful antidote to quitting.

This year, studying discipline, I learned that there is actually a happy medium, just like my mama always said there was. I tend toward extremes. All or nothing. Recently, I pulled back from social media for 2018, and I joked to my husband that it was an all-or-nothing thing. It wasn’t. Not this time. My accounts still exist; I’ve chosen to not visit them in 2018.

I could have quit social media, which has taught me a ton about craft and the world and put me in contact with some amazing folks, when it started to resemble a trash fire most of the time. I could have punished my former quitter by staying and getting burned more often than not, especially as touches my depression and anxiety. Instead, I decided to step back.

Maybe after a year away, I’ll terminate the accounts and know it’s the right thing for me. Maybe I’ll be ready to wade back in and give someone else room to rest a while if they want. I don’t know.

In October, I packed all my stuff. My entire office and studio. But I kept out a few measly art supplies and started Inktober. It was fun! And then the move arrived, I packed the supplies, and I didn’t finish. Because that’s what made sense.

When we moved to Florida in summer, we expected it was relatively permanent. We did not set our sights on moving back or on moving elsewhere. We unpacked, started schools, sought out the best restaurants, did all the things you do when you relocate. Our house in Oklahoma was on the market. The move was real and solid. We were all in. During the hurricane, we evacuated to Oklahoma because we still had a house and Husband could work from a location there. School was out about two weeks; it made sense. When we returned, we returned. To work and school and life. The week after returning, the option to work from Oklahoma arose, and Husband and I discussed it.

For all the suffering of mid-spring – mine and my family’s because of mine – I had truly made peace with the move and the decision. I told Husband so. I told him that, for my part, the decision had been right and I was all-in. I also told him, “just because coming was the right decision when we made it, that doesn’t mean we have to stay either.” The opportunity to return to Oklahoma surprised us and saying yes would reverse our course, but that didn’t make it unworthy of consideration. For his part, Husband shared his own wisdom, but that’s his story.

This is not a conversation I could have had a year ago. I don’t know how it would have gone, but I’m certain this would not have been the way.

Discipline is going on green and stopping on red. [Yellow, of course, is a matter of your personal risk profile.] Discernment is knowing within yourself when the light changes in your situation. I find the two to be inescapably linked, discernment and discipline. I wish I had either (or both!) perfectly, but I don’t and never will. So I content myself to watch the lights change and do what is right when it’s right to the best of my ability.