A federal government agency dedicated to “science” is funding programs to teach students that there are more than two sexes and genders. The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) has granted a combined total of nearly one million taxpayer dollars to Colorado State University, Florida International University, and the University of Minnesota to fund a study entitled “Collaborative Research: A qualitative inquiry into sex/gender narratives in undergraduate biology and their impacts on transgender, non-binary, and gender non-conforming students.” The award abstract claims that “biology courses often inaccurately categorize sex and gender as binary.” This, the NSF says, “can make biology classrooms particularly challenging” for students who identify as transgender, non-binary, or gender-nonconforming.
The program’s specific goals are not to study the currently-hotly-debated topic of biological sex and affirm a scientifically-grounded understanding of it, but rather to examine how teaching that there are only two sexes impacts “classroom climate and belonging” for students who identify as transgender, non-binary, or gender-nonconforming, and to “characterize the current efforts of biology instructors to create a more inclusive climate” for those students, classified as “TNG” in the award abstract.
The study’s sample “will include TNG students with diverse racial/ethnic and social identities along with biology instructors recruited from a variety of institutions,” and collected data will be analyzed using “[f]eminist phenomenology, qualitative content analysis, and document analysis…” The program was initially funded in June of 2022 and is expected to continue being funded through August of 2025.
The NSF touts its diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) programs as “a high priority.” The agency has four employee groups under the DEIA banner, including an “LGBTQ+ and Allies” group, which “[s]eeks to promote a culture of diversity and inclusion by addressing the needs of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer employees and their friends and allies. The LGBTQ+ and Allies [group] seeks to advance the understanding and inclusion of all employee orientations, gender identities, and gender expressions.”
Under the Biden administration, the federal government has repeatedly used taxpayer dollars to promote transgenderism and denigrate the realities of biological sex. The U.S. State Department has funneled millions of dollars into advocating the LGBT agenda abroad since Biden assumed office in 2021, including financing “LGBTQI+ ally” training programs, drag shows, and pornographic film festivals. Biden’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has vociferously promoted transgenderism, especially for children. Like the State Department, HHS has dumped millions of dollars into LGBT programs in hospitals, universities, seminars, and conferences. Of note, HHS Assistant Secretary Rachel Levine (a biological man who identifies as transgender) recently provided a single two-page PDF to support promoting gender transition procedures.
So far, the NSF has spent over a half a million dollars on “A qualitative inquiry into sex/gender narratives in undergraduate biology and their impacts on transgender, non-binary, and gender non-conforming students.” The agency was founded by Congress in 1950 “to promote the progress of science; to advance the national health, prosperity, and welfare; to secure the national defense.”
The Washington Stand asked the NSF if it promotes the theory that there are more than two biological sexes. An NSF spokesperson said that the agency is “going to decline official comment on this.”
S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.
