RFK Jr. is Ill-Informed About Biology and Heads The HHS

RFK Jr. is the new head of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and is showing just how ignorant, hateful, and bigoted he is. Trump nominated RFK Jr., the same man who claimed that Black people are more immune to disease while also calling them “Blacks.” I wish I was joking. This is the guy who is in charge of the U.S. healthcare decisions. He is currently making quick work of attacking, you guessed it, trans and intersex people by declaring human sex to be on an unchangeable “strict binary.”

The HHS has released a document to federal employees “defining sex” and claiming, “Human sex “is determined genetically at conception (fertilization),” and that human sex is “unchangeable and determined by objective biology.” This document was released in accordance with Trump’s executive order titled, “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government,” that seeks to eliminate trans and intersex people’s identities. The HHS document refers to intersex people as individuals with “(r)are disorders of sexual development” because it tries to define “male” and “female” by a person’s ability to produce eggs or sperm.

interACT, an intersex advocacy group, released a press statement in opposition to this “guidance” released by the HHS. The statement says that the HHS document, “attempts to push an unscientific agenda rather than reflect any biological reality. It aims instead to erase the existence of transgender and intersex people.” The group also says, “If sex was a strict binary, surely HHS could offer a binary definition of sex that all people could fit neatly into. Any attempt to define biological sex as a clear-cut binary will fail, because sex is a spectrum, and not all bodies fall neatly into boxes.”

I mean, do I even have to say it? This is the same white supremacist, transphobic, racist, ignorant person (Trump) appointing people who are just like him (all of his appointees) to do his white supremacist bidding. This document from the United States Department of Health and Human Services is denying a large and increasing number of trans people in this country an identity because of hate. They are making statements about “biology” that are not rooted in fact and define things based on how they feel science should be. The HHS document uses words like “gamete” to sound scientific and says that it aims to “protect women” but they don’t know what they’re talking about. If their aim was really to protect women, it would include ALL women, that means trans women too. If their claims were really based in science then the nearly 2% of the population who are intersex, so roughly 160 million people, would be considered valid and not brushed off as just “rare.” Sex is a spectrum. Gender is made up and can be whatever we choose. Trans people exist and always will. Intersex people exist and always will. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is a white supremacist and so is Donald J. Trump.