WASHINGTON, D.C. — Interstellar peace talks broke down Wednesday after Pentagon officials were unable to adequately explain the intricacies of all 437 Earth genders to aliens from outer space.

"Okay, for the last time," said Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin during the third hour of talks with extraterrestrials. "Demigender are people who identify partially with one gender at the same time as another. This is totally different from Bigender, which is when a person identifies as two genders and can switch between them. Do you understand now?"

"This isn't at all confusing."

The aliens spoke via telepathy, communicating easily without the hindrance of language barriers, yet were still unable to understand why their human counterparts kept derailing talks about joining an alliance of free planets to argue that sex and gender are two different things — or even that a developmental condition such as autism can be a gender.

"Everything is gender," SecDef Austin explained. "Even this table is gender."

President Biden was present at the meeting but was unable to communicate due to a failure by alien lifeforms to create a telepathic link to his brain.

[Is this man even alive?] asked Xylor Sieth IV. [Is corpse a gender?]

"It can be," SecDef Austin answered. "You're catching on!"

Pentagon spokesperson Jean Tangerine told reporters, "Honestly, this is a big part of why the government has kept alien life a secret for so long. They're super bigoted and not ready for the public."

At publishing time, Xylor Sieth IV had asked to speak to Tucker Carlson instead.

World, meet Travis. Travis, meet the world. In this first episode of our new show Travis Interviews the World, we interview some guy named Jordan Peterson.