As part of our coverage of Pride Month, we asked 10 members of the L.G.B.T.Q. community to reflect on their experiences. Here is one of their responses. Scroll down for more.

Most anti-discrimination policies intended to protect transgender people are centered on gender identity, a term that originated in the field of psychology and that has been used for over half a century to refer to individuals’ deeply held understanding of what gender they are. It may or may not align with the sex assigned at birth.

Opponents of transgender rights have increasingly worked to shift conversations and policy language away from gender and toward biological sex.

This effort can be seen in the commentary of anti-L.G.B.T.Q. groups, feminists who exclude trans women and recent Trump administration decisions designed to limit transgender people’s access to health care, homeless shelters and other accommodations.

As a trans woman, I find these developments distressing. But they also offend me as a scientist.

I was drawn to science as a child. I remember devouring books about dinosaurs, outer space, geology and evolution. In high school, I took extra science classes as electives. I majored in biology in college, went on to get my Ph.D. and spent 17 years doing research in developmental biology and genetics at the University of California, Berkeley.

Nonscientists sometimes equate the profession with the pursuit of cold, hard facts. But what actually makes science fascinating is that every answer we find inevitably leads to many more questions. And almost without fail, the more we learn about nature, the more complex it turns out to be.

Gravity seems pretty straightforward: If you drop your keys, they fall to the floor. But to truly understand gravity, you need Einstein’s theory of relativity, with all of its counterintuitive ramifications — like the bending of light and slowing down of time near black holes.

Similarly, sex also seems straightforward. Every person superficially appears either female or male. But once we look beneath the surface, things are far more complicated.

While there are tangible biological sex characteristics — chromosomes, reproductive organs, hormones and secondary sex characteristics — they do not always fit neatly into male or female classifications, or align with one another within the same individual, as is the case for intersex people.

Gender expression, gender identity and sexual orientation also vary within individuals across cultures and throughout history.

The Family Research Council, a conservative Christian activist group, recently published an article titled “Trump transgender policy is simple and scientific: ‘Sex’ means biological sex.” The article not only ignores current thinking in the field of biology, but it also falsely implies that science yields simple answers. History shows otherwise, as scientific research has repeatedly revealed nature to be far more diverse and complex than we initially believed.

I was drawn to science as a child because I was curious about how the world works and excited to have my previous presumptions called into question. Those who now invoke science in support of their biases and prejudices do it a grave disservice, and science-minded people everywhere must speak out against it.

Julia Serano is a writer, performer, trans-bi activist and biologist.

More Reflections on Life After Stonewall

Gavin Grimm: “It was a truth I had known since I was 5. I was a boy.”

I was 12 when I first heard the word “transgender.” I learned it through the internet and I knew immediately that it fit my experiences. But in 2012, there was not much in the way of trans media, and given the lack of affirmation or resources, I stepped away from that term. I was also in a conservative household in a conservative community, and already struggling with feelings of not fitting in. Keep reading >

Camille Perri: It’s Not a Bad Time to Be Queer, If You’re Rich and White

It wasn’t until I got to a private university in the late 1990s that I learned the phrase for the kind of poor my family was: not sleeping-on-the-street poor, but always-worrying-about-money poor. My-father-worked-two-jobs-poor, but my-mother-still-had-to-remove-items-from-our-shopping-cart-at-the-grocery-store poor. It was called “working class.” Before college, passing as “not poor” had been my way of life, much in the way that trying (and failing) to pass as “not gay” had been my way of life. Keep reading >

Barbara Smith: Why I Left the Mainstream Queer Rights Movement

I enthusiastically participated in the first National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights in 1979. About 100,000 of us were there from around the country, a good turnout but much smaller than subsequent marches — when being out and proud was less dangerous. At the second national march, in 1987, I was invited to be one of eight major speakers. It was exhilarating to speak before a crowd of nearly one million people. Three decades later, despite some genuine efforts to increase diversity, especially in progressive movement circles, exclusivity and elitism still divide us. Keep reading >

Julia Serano: The Science of Gender Is Rarely Simple

Most anti-discrimination policies intended to protect transgender people are centered on gender identity, a term that originated in the field of psychology and that has been used for over half a century to refer to individuals’ deeply held understanding of what gender they are. It may or may not align with the sex assigned at birth. Opponents of transgender rights have increasingly worked to shift conversations and policy language away from gender and toward biological sex. Keep reading >

Mandana Mofidi: Coming Out to Myself, for Myself

At 9 years old, I was unable to dodge a speeding car heading directly at me. The impact separated me from my bike and sent me flying in the air before landing face-first into concrete. My nose was broken and my four front teeth shattered, along with my jaw. But the pain and embarrassment of my new face — a crooked nose and a toothless smile — didn’t come close to what I felt when I discovered I was a lesbian at 13. Keep reading >

Cecilia Gentili: Did the ‘T’ Fall Off of ‘L.G.B.T.Q.’?

A short time ago during a meeting, I was asked by a gay man if we should keep the “T” in “L.G.B.T.Q.” I gagged and quickly asked him, why should we do that? I was then bombarded with an array of explanations — everything from “gender is different from sexuality” to “the needs of the ‘T’ community are different.” Add gasping to my gagging. Keep reading >

Carl Siciliano: Catholic, Queer and Homeless

As a young man, I spent several years as a member of the radical Catholic Worker Movement, founded by Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin. In 1986, I made my home with a handful of other volunteers and several dozen homeless people at Saint Joseph House in New York City, just off the Bowery, in the Lower East Side. Our community, which was dedicated to Jesus’s message of peace, nonviolence and love, engaged in resistance against President Ronald Reagan’s nuclear arms race and military interventions in Central America, and every day fed hundreds of homeless men. Keep reading >

Asia Kate Dillon: Stand Up for the Most Marginalized

I want to respectfully acknowledge that the land on which this essay was written is the occupied territory of the Lenape people. As I reflect on the 50th anniversary of Stonewall, I am drawn into remembrance of those who came before: Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera, all the trans women, femmes and people of color who started the queer revolution long before I was born. Keep reading >

Laura Bullard: One Closet, Two Secrets

At 22, I was the youngest regular at the local pub by 30 years. It had taken me close to a year to earn my seat, but Joe, the bartender, would see me walk in, cut an empty can in half with his pocketknife to make an ashtray, and place it on my table with a Pabst Blue Ribbon and a rocks glass of bourbon filled to the brim, no rocks. Keep reading >

Kate Bornstein: My Gender? Oh, It’s Nothing

In March I turned 71, and I have been analyzing gender since I was 4. In 1952, in my nursery school, we had to line up by gender, and the line for the boys looked like no fun at all. So off I toddled to the girls’ line, where I stood until the teacher gently made me line up with the “other little boys.” I spent the next three decades of my life studying boys and men and acting like them, all the while knowing I wasn’t male. Keep reading >

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