In April 2017, as a debate over the role of science in the United States continued in the wake of the international March for Science, an image appeared purportedly showing a still from an old episode of Bill Nye the Science Guy along with a caption stating "Gender is determined by your chromosomes":
This meme gained popularity shortly after the debut of Nye's new show, Bill Nye Saves the World, which featured an episode entitled "The Sexual Spectrum."
Here's how Nye opened the episode in question — not by saying that "gender is determined by your chromosomes," but by discussing that the genetic basis of sex determination through chromosomes is more complicated than usually presented:
These are human chromosomes. They contain all the genes you need to make a human person. This one is called an X chromosome and this one down there, that's a Y chromosome. They are sex chromosomes. Females usually have two Xs and males usually have an X and a Y. But it turns out, about 1 in every 400 pregnancies have a different number of sex chromosomes. Some people only have one sex chromosome, some people have 3, 4 or even 5. For me, I usually feel like I have a lot.
But using science, we know that sex and every aspect of human sexuality, well, it's a little complicated ...
The world is wonderfully diverse. As scientists we use the scientific method to try and understand that diversity. That is what is happening with the study of human sex and sexuality. Right now, biologists, sociologists, anthropologists, they all are trying to figure this out. And they are finding out that human sexuality is on a spectrum.
Conservative outlets criticized Nye for contributing to "transgender insanity," and social media users shared memes insinuating that Nye's science had been irrevocably tainted by liberal politics:
