In his Day One “gender ideology” executive order, President Trump declared the existence of only two “immutable” sexes, male and female.

Another order issued a week later, “Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation,” denied federal funds to institutions providing gender-affirming care to transgender minors.

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This man learned he was intersex in a surprising way. He’s now taking on Trump’s “two sexes” order.
“It felt like someone had walked up behind me and walloped me over the head with a phone book.”

Combined, the two orders led hospitals across the country to end healthcare for trans people under 19.

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But when it comes to infants and toddlers who are identified as intersex at birth, the surgeries continue.

In many cases, the same healthcare providers that have stopped gender-affirming care have also largely continued to perform controversial sex-altering operations in the form of intersex pediatric surgeries, according to InterACT, an intersex rights group.

It’s been “striking” to see those same institutions continue non-consensual intersex surgeries, Sylvan Fraser Anthony, legal and policy director for InterAct, told the 19th.

“Hospitals have been so reluctant — flat out refusing or taking years before issuing some partial policy about whether they’re going to be changing practices related to these non-consensual surgeries on intersex children… Whereas they’re responding within a matter of days and weeks to this executive order when no one is making them — rushing to make policy moves that harm trans patients.”

Intersex advocate Marisa Adams said both of Trump’s executive orders fail scientifically, particularly in relation to intersex people.

The “gender ideology” order “fails to acknowledge that intersex people can have any gender,” Adams said. “So there’s intersex women, there’s intersex men, there’s intersex nonbinary people. I’m an intersex woman, and that executive order certainly does nothing for me.”

Intersex surgeries have been performed since the 1960s as a way to align a child’s anatomy with their sex assigned at birth. They have been condemned by organizations including the United Nations, the World Health Organization, and Amnesty International.

InterAct said over a dozen hospitals across the United States are involved in studies in which infant patients undergo intersex surgeries, which can include reshaping or removing genital tissue and internal reproductive organs. 

It’s estimated that about 1.7 percent of the population is born intersex. No state or federal laws prohibit intersex surgeries.

“This whole system of non-consensual interventions on intersex bodies exists because our natural existence contradicts the idea that all people are born male or female,” said Emory Hufbauer, an intersex person in Kentucky.

Hufbauer and other intersex individuals are now suffering from inadequate healthcare because the providers equipped to treat them as adults are shutting down access over Trump’s gender-affirming healthcare ban for minors.

It’s reached “a crisis point,” Hufbauer said.

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