Dear InterConnect Community

 

Statement on Executive Order 14166

As an organization that is run by and provides community support to intersex individuals and their families, InterConnect recognizes attempts to conflate human sex variation and binary understandings of gender, including the recently issued Executive Order 14166, as scientifically inaccurate, discriminatory, and broadly harmful. 

As a community of intersex individuals and family members of intersex individuals, including medical and scientific experts, we fundamentally refute these misleading, scientifically inaccurate claims about sex and gender. Executive Order 14166 makes multiple biologically false claims, including statements about human sex being determined by gamete production at conception. In reality, developmental processes that create gonadal tissue needed to produce ova and sperm do not begin until 6-7 weeks after conception. Defining and assessing sex by the presence of reproductive cells is impractical and disregards the lived realities of intersex individuals and the well-established biological reality of sex trait variations. For example, some intersex people do not produce ova or sperm at all and some intersex individuals are forcibly sterilized in infancy or early childhood, thus robbing them of reproductive potential. Intersex individuals with internal testes may not become aware of the nature of their gonads until adolescence or later. These are just a few of the many ways in which intersex variations defy the presumption of a sex binary. Previous attempts to legislate and categorize human bodies based on a binary sex model, such as sex verification in elite sports, have consistently been shown to be confusing, ineffective, and ultimately futile due to the unignorable biodiversity within human populations. 

While Executive Order 14166 claims to be based in “immutable biological reality,” its easily disprovable claims about human biology attempt to enforce the erasure of and discrimination against transgender, nonbinary, and intersex individuals. As an organization that has supported intersex individuals and their families for 30 years, we have seen firsthand the physical and emotional impacts of such stigmatizing framings of intersex bodies. 

The specific impacts of this executive order on laws and policies have not yet been fully determined, and many aspects of it will likely face legal challenges. Executive Order 14166 is understandably alarming to our community and we are here to offer ongoing peer and community support spaces during this time of distress and uncertainty. Through these difficult times, InterConnect will continue to support our intersex community and indisputably affirm the lived experiences of intersex people and their families. The false claims and biological fallacies of Executive Order 14166 do not change the realities of transgender and intersex individuals, all of whom deserve equal rights, accurate recognition, and respect for our humanity.