interACT: Advocates for Intersex Youth

interACT works to empower intersex youth and advance the rights of all people with innate variations in their physical sex characteristics through advocacy, public engagement and community connection.

interACT—formerly known as Advocates for Informed Choice (AIC)—was founded by attorney Anne Tamar-Mattis with an Equal Justice Works fellowship on September 4, 2006, and continued with an Echoing Green fellowship in 2008, with a focused mission of ending harmful medical interventions on intersex children. We began our operations with a national advisory board, including doctors, lawyers, mental health experts, and leaders of many different intersex organizations to establish our goals.

From the very beginning, interACT has recognized that with so much at stake for the individuals and families involved, we must consider not only medical outcomes, but also the civil and human rights of children born with intersex traits. As always, interACT remains committed to advancing this discussion with a sense of respect and compassion for the children, parents, doctors and intersex adults involved. interACT also acknowledges the legacy of trauma endured by people with variations in their sex characteristics, whether or not they identify as intersex. We are committed to taking traumainformed and healing-centered approaches in our work. We strive to be a part of breaking the cycle of trauma by promoting and participating in open, compassionate dialogue, and individual and collective healing and reconciliation.

When interACT was founded, other organizations already existed that focused on peer support for parents and/or intersex adults, on political activism and awareness-building, on promoting research, and on advocacy in the medical community. Awareness of the legal questions surrounding children with intersex traits was beginning to grow, but no organization had undertaken legal advocacy on behalf of these children. Recognizing the importance and power of young people engaged in self-advocacy, and with seed money from the Ms. Foundation in 2011, AIC also started “inter/ACT” - a youth-led advocacy program for intersex teens and twenty-somethings to come together, share experiences, and raise intersex awareness. Very quickly the group began to have an impact on social media and even television growing into the first successful intersex youth advocacy group in the world. 

Today, interACT remains the steward of the only intersex-youth-dedicated legal advocacy program and youth leadership development program in the United States. We also built a media and public engagement program dedicated to ensuring intersex youth are visible, empowered to speak for themselves, and represented in affirming and appropriate ways in the public discourse. Our effort is to center the voices of intersex youth in everything we do to further intersex justice in the United States and globally.