By Marissa Adams
Twelve years ago, at the age twenty, I tracked down the medical records from my childhood, which detailed the medical secrets of my past that I did not know. It was not immediately that I could accept my intersex self. Less than a year later—October 2013— I was invited by the then interACT Youth Program Coordinator, Pidgeon Pagonis, to join a Google Meet call with several other intersex young people. I was hesitant because Pidgeon seemed confident and knowledgeable of intersex variations and the community, and I wasn’t. Pidgeon’s reassurance and confidence were precisely the encouragement and inspiration I needed.
This Intersex Day of Remembrance and Solidarity, I am reflecting on the 11 years since that day, and the trailblazers who inspired me to become the intersex advocate I am today.
This was my first burst of courage. I joined the interACT Youth Program–the pathway to my work in intersex advocacy and peer support. Writing has always been my favorite creative outlet and indeed, interACT’s former Director of Communications Hans Lindahl assisted me in the writing of my first blog on the intersection of my intersex experience and eating disorder.
Acceptance of my true self did not come easy. In early 2015, I was grappling with the painful reality of the medical procedures I was subjected to before I could form a memory. One night, I came across a recording on YouTube of the Oprah Winfrey Show featuring several intersex advocates, including Dr. Katie Dalke and her mother Dr. Arlene Baratz and Lynnell Stephani Long. Their courage to talk about intimate aspects of their lives on live TV lifted my spirits.
Several months later, I had a life-changing experience. I attended InterConnect’s (at the time called AIS-DSD Support Group) longstanding annual support group conference and got to connect with the beautiful intersex people and allies I had admired for years on Facebook. That conference was where I first met Georgiann Davis, InterConnect’s President who is an intersex advocate and author of the book Contesting Intersex. Georgiann was among the many people I met that weekend who taught me that despite the trauma and secrecy many intersex people feel about their intersex traits and medical experiences, I could turn the anger and fear I felt outward by advocating for myself and others.
On the last day of the conference, I attended a meeting with interACT’s staff and youth. I did not talk in that meeting because I didn’t need to — I felt empowered just listening to people from interACT and InterConnect, like Kimberly Zieselman and the Youth Program Coordinator, Emily Quinn. In the meeting, I listened carefully to the leaders of interACT (and other youth program members) discuss interACT’s history, our hopes for interACT’s future, and the important intersection of advocacy and peer support. I got to be part of the youth program started by Jim Ambrose, not knowing I’d later support hundreds of intersex youth in the program after me. The conference quickly became one of the most influential events in my life.
Shortly after the InterConnect conference, I watched the documentary Intersexion, presented by activist Mani Mitchell, New Zealand’s first “out” intersex person and founder of Intersex Aotearoa. In the film, Mani both describes their intersex story and elegantly narrates the film. The documentary describes clearly, and through direct experience, the now debunked “optimal gender theory,” which purported a child’s gender is “malleable.” In the case of intersex people, this theory suggests that sex-normalizing intersex surgeries would supposedly erase a child’s intersex traits and set them up to be socially conditioned into a binary gender.
Intersexion also featured the legendary Bo Laurent, the founder of the Intersex Society of North America. Bo described her experience with childhood surgeries and how discovering it for herself years later was traumatic. Bo’s story and their anger, trauma, and brief associated with those experiences were raw and so relatable. For better or worse, I felt less alone with my experiences.
Dr. Katie Dalke, Dr. Arlene Baratz, Lynnell, Pigeon, Hans, Emily, Kimberly, and Bo are among the most influential intersex people and advocates along my journey with acceptance and advocacy. They were guiding stars that helped me through my initial experience of feeling like an oddity and deeply traumatized by the medical system to a place where I value intersex traits. Because of the intersex people I met, I now see the importance of medical, legal, social, and theological acceptance of intersex traits as a natural and beautiful example of bodily diversity.