Well first of all, she misquotes the memo, which the New York Times reported as coming from the Department of Health and Human Services — they say 'sex', not 'gender':

> “Sex means a person’s status as male or female based on immutable biological traits identifiable by or before birth,” the department proposed in the memo, which was drafted and has been circulating since last spring. “The sex listed on a person’s birth certificate, as originally issued, shall constitute definitive proof of a person’s sex unless rebutted by reliable genetic evidence.”

I'm not saying I agree with the memo. But there's a reason to use the word 'sex' instead of 'gender' — the former refers to ones biological sex, which in humans is essentially determined by whether the person has a Y chromosome.

There is NO strong body of evidence indicating that people who are trans are that way because of biological factors. There are a few small studies, but nothing that, quantitatively speaking, justifies her claim that "[...] false ideas about gender have been thoroughly debunked by science".

There is actually a great amount of contention in academia about gender. You really needn't look further than the debate over whether gender is a social construct — a notion popular with some feminists and in the social sciences. The fact that it's so strongly asserted by as many people in the social sciences as it is, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

A specific example: there's the "Social Role Hypothesis" which basically postulates a evening out of the distribution of men and women as a society becomes more industrialized and egalitarian [0]

However, a study [1] conducted by Armin Falk, an economics professor at the University of Bonn, and Johannes Hermle, a doctoral student in economics at the University of California, Berkeley of 80,000 people in 76 countries strongly disfavors that hypothesis.

The study supports quite the opposite — as life becomes less hard in a society, and as it makes progress in terms of gender equality, men and women tend to manifest MORE gender preferences.

What we have at the moment are deep divisions in academia, where certain topics are not being approached in an rational, intellectually honest, evidence-based way. Frankly, it approaches dogmatism.

When so much evidence suggests that biological sex and gender are very much _tightly_ interwoven — they are absolutely causally linked, and you still have people in academia claiming that they're not — even to the point of saying that gender has no biological basis — that's not "thoroughly debunked" by any stretch of the imagination.

I don't blame the author. She probably has sources that one would take as authoritative at first glance. The problem is that it's not backed by a thorough, honest, cross-disciplinary discourse. And sadly, for people like her and I, it won't be resolved until everyone puts their feelings aside and resolve to actually get to the bottom of it, regardless of whether the truth resembles what we wish were so.

[0] https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Mary_Kite/publication/2... [1] http://science.sciencemag.org/content/362/6412/eaas9899