Defining Sex: The Mis/Use of Genomics and the Law

The law accords rights “on the basis of sex.” In order to do so, the law has to define what “sex” is and what it means. In recent years, dozens of laws proposed and passed define sex as binary, determined, and identifiable by chromosomes. This forum will examine the use of biological explanations in contemporary laws defining sex in order to contrast biology as a process of study and discovery with the way that such laws treat biological understanding as static and definitive. Dr. Elizabeth Dietz will explore these powerfully different approaches to understanding the complexity and contemporary importance of dialogue around sex categorization, as well as how differences in these approaches are not merely matters of scientific method (though will discuss the ways in which the prescriptiveness of many statutory definitions of sex is inconsistent with mainstream approaches in genetics and genomics). Through contrasting these approaches, Dr. Dietz will discuss consequential differences in underlying values about not only scientific and genetic understandings of sex, but of the role such understanding can and does play within the larger picture of society.
Dr. Elizabeth Dietz is a postdoctoral fellow in bioethics and the history of genomics at the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), and holds a PhD from Arizona State University. Their work, which focuses on bioethics as it pertains to disability rights and LGBTQ issues, examines how the social processes by which fundamental concepts like “sex” and “informed consent” and “medical necessity” come to be important in varied contexts and to varied ends. Their book project, No Choice But to Choose, examines how informed consent is used (sometimes simultaneously) to hold individuals responsible for structural problems, ensure autonomy, define personhood, and call specific accounts of justice into being.