Report: W.H.O. Guidance Claims ‘Sex Not Limited to Male or Female’

The World Health Organization (W.H.O.) is set to release radical “gender identity” guidance, in which it claims “sex is not limited to male or female,” the Daily Mail reported Tuesday.

The organization is reportedly in the process of changing its 2011 “gender guidance” and is the gathering and feedback stage, “with a final version due to be rolled out sometime next month.” While the actual contents of the W.H.O.’s updated advice is unknown, the organization explained on its website that it would go “beyond non-binary approaches to gender and health to recognize gender and sexual diversity or the concepts that gender identity exists on a continuum…”

The W.H.O. is also looking to expand “the concept of intersectionality, which looks at how gender power dynamics interact with other hierarchies of privilege or disadvantage, resulting in inequality and differential health outcomes for different people.”

“Intersecting factors include sex, ethnicity, race, age, class, socioeconomic status, religion, language, geographical location, disability status, migration status, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation and political situation,” the W.H.O. explains. 

Professor Jenny Gamble, a midwifery expert from Coventry University told the outlet the organization’s change is a “mistake” because “biology is a key determinant of health and illness.” 

“Not being clear about basic biology opens the door to a range of problems, including very poor health communication but also distorted data,” Gamble said. 

Dr. Karleen Gribble, an expert in nursing and midwifery from Western Sydney University, told the outlet the W.H.O.s’ guidance is “unscientific.” 

“The website says that the handbook is being updated “in light of new scientific evidence and conceptual progress on gender, health and development. However, there is no new scientific evidence suggesting there are more than two sexes,” Gribble said. “Rather, the idea that there are more than two sexes, is a postmodern, unscientific understanding that should not be supported by the WHO.”

Moreover, Gribble said the attention to “gender identity” instead of biology will take away focus from women and girls’ health issues around the world. 

“If this occurs, this will almost certainly dilute focus on the severe health disadvantage that women and girls face in many countries because they are female which can only be a bad thing,” she said.