Cookies in use
The Human Rights Campaign uses cookies to improve your site experience. By using this site, you agree to our use of cookies. To learn more, please read our Privacy Policy.
9
days left to the 2024 election! Your ballot is your power, and when we show up, equality wins. Click here to visit our 2024 Voting Center!
LGBTQ+ Equality Means Intersex People, Too
by Guest Contributors •
This blog was written by Maddie Moran (they/them), interACT Director of Communications, and Kathryn Smith (she/they), HRC Assistant Press Secretary.
InterACT: Advocates for Intersex Youth 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.
The intersex movement started with a protest.
Intersex Awareness Day is October 26th. The exact date matters, because on this day, nearly thirty years ago in 1996, was the first protest in the US by intersex people speaking out against medical abuse faced by the community. Before this demonstration, the community existed through newsletters and message boards. After becoming visible, the community never turned back.
Those brave protestors spoke out against the medical discrimination they faced, including surgeries forced upon them as babies because doctors didn’t think their bodies looked the way they expected male and female bodies to look. The protesters were supported by transgender activists who also believed in people’s rights to bodily autonomy. The fight for transgender and intersex rights has always been linked by the right to make their own decisions about their own bodies.
Our movement is still in its infancy relative to many other movements for human rights. Shame and stigma kept people quiet, and from finding and forming a community.
In recent decades, doctors kept diagnoses and even procedures at birth hidden from their patients — only recently have practices begun to shift.
Many intersex people have been told by doctors they are incredibly rare and would never meet anyone else like them in their whole lives; but those doctors are wrong.
Intersex isn’t rare, and it isn’t a problem to be fixed.
Being intersex is far from rare — it is estimated that nearly 1 in every 50 people is intersex. There are many different ways to be intersex: There are over 40 different intersex variations, and more are discovered all the time with advancements in genetics.
Intersex people may have variations in their chromosomes, hormones, or reproductive anatomy (or all of the above!). We simply vary from what people expect “male” or “female” bodies to develop. Like others whose bodies and appearance don’t conform to stereotypes, the intersex community has faced serious harm.
Many doctors also hold stereotypical beliefs, such as the idea that a parent’s comfort with the appearance of their child's body is more important than what the child might want, and they have the power to act on them.
Many still believe intersex people are medical problems to be fixed — which often looks like performing nonconsensual, medically unnecessary surgeries on babies for cosmetic reasons and a fear of difference.
These intersex kids grow up into intersex adults with medical complications and trauma caused by nonconsensual surgeries, and a feeling that they lack ownership over their own bodies.
One recent study shows over 40% of intersex people have PTSD. Some intersex people had been forcibly sterilized, either in early childhood or adolescence, after being lied to about the real reason for various medical procedures.
Some struggled with gender dysphoria after being forcibly reassigned an incorrect sex—depending on the variation, this risk can be as high as 40%. Yet these surgeries are still legal and practiced in the US today.
Intersex rights are LGBTQ+ rights.
Intersex people exist under the LGBTQI+ umbrella because our lives are marked by the same goal: for our existences to be celebrated, and our differences respected. We are all affected by beliefs about how we are allowed to love, and who we are allowed to be based on narrow-minded standards of what “men” and “women” should be.
While intersex people have their own unique struggles, interphobia(bias against intersex people) has always been tied to transphobia and homophobia. Misconceptions that intersex variations made someone gay justified surgeries to “save” them from the “threat” of homosexuality.
Intersex people were targeted in the courts alongside other transgender and nonbinary people who were perceived as dressing or presenting “wrong” for their gender. Both intersex and transgender women and girls in sports have faced accusations of being “actually male” for the last century. Some were deprived of the right to participate in athletics at all, and others were forced to alter their bodies to conform to societal expectations of women’s bodies.
While politicians loudly fearmonger about transgender people, the anti-trans bans emerging across the US quietly target intersex people, too. Today, restrictions on restrooms, locker rooms and sports result in fear for anyone whose body is not perceived to fit an expected gender mold. Intersex people have a hard time accessing proper ID documentation and are at risk of having the wrong sex legally documented due to new bills attempting to define sex in the law, in ways intersex people don’t neatly fit into.
The bans on gender-affirming care hold an even greater threat: an “intersex exception” that explicitly permits nonconsensual surgeries on intersex babies while restricting consensual medical care for transgender teens. These so-called “exceptions” exist in over 80% of the gender-affirming care bans.
Only by supporting each other can we all access equality.
Transgender and intersex people all have the right to have our pronouns respected. We deserve the right to play sports and basic human needs like using the bathroom just like anyone else. We also all deserve affirming medical care when we can enthusiastically give informed consent to what we want for our bodies.
Today we see movements like #TransIntersexSolidarity carry on the practice of showing up for the most marginalized of us all. Celebrities like Queer Eye’s Jonathan Van Ness and Pose actor Indya Moore use their platforms to advocate for intersex people. There is no LGBTQ+ equality without intersex rights, and there are no intersex rights without freedom for people of all sexualities and genders.
Educate yourself and others around you.
So what can you, as an LGBTQ+ person or ally, do to support intersex people?
Check your assumptions about people’s bodies — what do you expect them to look, sound, and identify as? Think about how you can question those assumptions and instead, approach people as people. Remember to be respectful and before you ask a question think: “would I want someone to ask me this?” Intersex people aren’t asking you about your genitals, you don’t need to ask us about ours.
Consider intersex people in the language you use. Not all men’s and women’s bodies are the same, and body parts have no gender. There is much more to men than being defined by genitals, and XY chromosomes aren’t “male chromosomes” when a woman has them.
Advocate publicly for intersex rights.
Don’t be shy just because you aren’t intersex yourself. We need allies to win.
Where do you have the power to affect change? Include intersex people in your activism. Research the unique ways intersex people are impacted by the issues you care about and include intersex voices. Include the “I” in the LGBTQI+ umbrella — it’s an easy way to show that intersex people are welcome in your community and your life.
Raise awareness, on social media and among friends and family. Follow intersex groups on social media, such as interACT, InterConnect and the Intersex Justice Project. Intersex Awareness Day is a great opportunity if you aren’t sure how to introduce awareness to people around you.
Show up for intersex people’s human rights: pressure hospitals and support legislation to ban nonconsensual intersex surgeries. You can share resources about intersex people—leave interACT’s brochures and resources in hospitals, clinics, in your school or your local LGBTQI+ organization. Lastly, advocate for equality for transgender and intersex people from antidiscrimination to affirming medical care. Raise your voice in local politics and legislation. Or in your own life—who could you convince to introduce inclusive bathroom or sports policies?
Celebrate Intersex Awareness Day!
You’ve already taken the first step by learning about intersex people, history and our human rights issues. This Intersex Awareness Day, pick one more step for advocacy and take it.
Love conquers hate.
Image: