TL;DR
- Texas Tech chancellor orders faculty to recognize only two sexes in teaching.
- Policy follows a new Texas law and Trump’s executive order.
- Intersex individuals are excluded from being recognized as a “third sex.”
- LGBTQ advocates warn this will erase trans lives and harm students.
- Move echoes Texas A&M firing of professor over gender identity lesson.
Texas Tech Tells Professors: Only Two Sexes Allowed
Texas Tech University just made its classrooms the latest battlefield in America’s culture wars. The system’s chancellor, Tedd L. Mitchell, has ordered professors at all five of its universities to recognize only “two human sexes” in classroom instruction—male and female. The directive follows a new Texas law requiring government records to reflect “immutable” birth sex, plus a January executive order from Donald Trump that restricted federal recognition to those same binaries.
Faculty across the system—more than 60,000 students strong—were told to scrub their materials of anything that acknowledges gender identity or lived experience outside of the male-female binary. “Compliance with the law is required,” Mitchell wrote in his memo, noting that while personal beliefs are protected by the First Amendment, professors’ classrooms are not.
The memo leaves some thorny questions hanging. Texas law grudgingly admits intersex people exist but insists they don’t constitute a “third sex.” Instead, it vaguely offers “accommodations” with no roadmap for medical or educational institutions to follow. That vagueness leaves Texas Tech’s health and nursing programs in the awkward position of teaching about real human biology while pretending diversity in sex development doesn’t challenge the law’s simplistic framing.
Backlash From LGBTQ Advocates
Brad Pritchett, interim CEO of Equality Texas, didn’t mince words. “We cannot stand idly by while the lives of our trans neighbors are erased from the history books,” he said, blasting the mandate as an attack on free speech and academic integrity. He argued that forcing professors to censor themselves undermines Texas’ reputation for innovation and diversity. “Freedom cannot exist in a state where even our ideas are policed.”
The directive is also a chilling echo of what happened just weeks earlier at Texas A&M. There, a professor was fired after a student objected to a lecture on gender identity. The fallout toppled the head of the English department, a dean, and even led to the resignation of the university’s president. Texas Tech’s memo shows administrators statewide are racing to avoid becoming the next flashpoint.
The LGBTQ Impact
For LGBTQ students, the message is clear: their existence is up for legislative erasure. Trans and nonbinary students will sit in classrooms where their identities are ignored, dismissed, or outright forbidden from being acknowledged. Intersex students will be treated as medical exceptions instead of people with valid lived realities.
This isn’t just policy—it’s pedagogy turned political weapon. Students pursuing education in medicine, social sciences, or even literature will be denied honest instruction about gender and sexuality. Professors forced to comply will be teaching sanitized versions of reality, stripped of nuance, diversity, and human truth.
The move marks another step in the broader national campaign to erase LGBTQ identities from public life. From bathrooms to school libraries, and now to the lecture hall, conservative leaders are tightening the screws on what young people are allowed to see, hear, and believe.
Bottom Line
Texas Tech’s binary-only classroom edict doesn’t just insult academic freedom—it endangers LGBTQ students who already face higher risks of harassment, dropout, and mental health struggles when their identities are denied. The LGBTQ community isn’t going anywhere, no matter how many memos say otherwise. Professors may be bound by law, but students will keep demanding the truth.
This fight isn’t about biology—it’s about dignity. And dignity is something no legislature or university chancellor has the power to erase.