What you can do to be an ally to intersex people

When not to bring us up

Kind of odd as a first point of how to be an ally, but to be perfectly honest probably 99% of the time I see intersex people getting a mention it’s to use our existence to justify why trans people are valid when talking to TERFs. This doesn’t help us, it doesn’t even help trans people, and I very often see misinformation being used here to push points. There is a relatively fine line here though, because it can make sense to bring us up when a statement or law is inconsistent with our existence, however often the underlying motivation has nothing to do with raising awareness about intersex people. If we’re used as a “gotcha” it doesn’t really help us, but if you point out laws that define sex strictly by XX or XY chromosomes will harm many of us that is actually raising awareness. We are people, not a justification.

Understand our underlying struggles

One of the most common issues that intersex people face is non-consensual modifications to our bodies. This can take the form of intersex genital mutilation at birth or shortly after, later surgeries, or forced hormone treatment to ensure that we develop in a fashion typical of a perisex person of our assigned gender. The fight for bodily autonomy is one that both intersex and trans people share, but both from a different angle. It is a similar fight though, and they are not contradictory as I’ve seen many TERFs argue. We also face high levels of medical neglect, gaslighting, and abuse. Being lied to about our records, refused necessary procedures or tests, and coerced into unnecessary or harmful medical procedures.

Many of our other struggles stem from these underlying issues. The need for everyone to fit into strict binary sex boxes leads to further discrimination when we don’t, and forced medical procedures can lead to complications later in life or permanent treatment requirements.

Use inclusive terminology

This one is especially targeted at anyone who does any form of medical messaging, but it’s generally useful for everyone to understand. The terms “AMAB” (Assigned Male at Birth) and “AFAB” (Assigned Female at Birth) are widely misused in a way that can exclude and even medically harm intersex people.

There’s been a semi-recent trend of medical organizations to start using AFAB/AMAB terminology in medical messaging for inclusivity. For example, the International Association for Premenstrual Disorders (IAPMD) uses the term “women and AFAB individuals” when it refers to those who suffer from PMDD (Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder) or PME (Premenstrual Exacerbation). For perisex people this might work out okay, but for intersex people it won’t always. Whether someone can suffer from a premenstrual condition isn’t related to what a doctor decided to write down on a piece of paper when they were born, it’s related to whether they menstruate. Intersex individuals who were assigned male at birth can have the necessary anatomy and hormone conditions to menstruate, and therefore can suffer from these conditions.

In medical settings like mentioned above this problem can be actually dangerous, as it draws a link between assigned sex and medical needs rather than someone’s actual anatomy. Referring to the people who can suffer from a medical condition by the relevant factor resolves these issues and continues being inclusive to trans people. For example, using “people who menstruate” rather than “AFAB individuals” when referring to menstrual conditions such as PMDD is not only more inclusive, it's also vastly more medically accurate. It ensures that everyone who can be affected by the condition is included, and ensures that anyone who isn’t going to be affected by the condition isn’t. The same can be said for anything, such as testicular cancer risk. Medical messaging of “people assigned male at birth” for testicular cancer is incorrect, as not all people who were AMAB have testicular tissue, and not all people who have testicular tissue were AMAB. Many intersex people who were AFAB have testicular tissue and are very much at risk of testicular cancer.

Aside from medical situations though, the terms have started popping up to describe social or bodily experiences. These will of course also differ for intersex people and might not even be accurate for people who were assigned the mentioned sex at birth. I’ve even seen people refer to boy scouts experiences as “AMAB experiences”, when they seemed to be experiences very unique to American children who attended boy scouts (which isn’t even gender-segregated anymore). There is literally no reason to not use “boy scouts experiences” over “AMAB experiences” when talking about this. The terms AMAB & AFAB are starting to become ways to misgender people in social conversation while still appearing exclusive, by othering trans and intersex people from their actual gender by ascribing innate traits to assigned sex rather than actual experiences. Unless the conversation is actually about the sex assigned at birth, there really isn’t a reason to use those terms, they’re not politically correct stand-in terms for male and female.

Respect our boundaries

Something I see too often is people having debates or discussions around what a specific intersex person’s body looks like, or how their genitals have formed and function. This also extends to debates over what condition someone has, or why they haven’t elaborated to clarify specific aspects of their bodies. Just because we’re intersex it doesn’t mean we don’t have a right to privacy around private parts of our bodies and our medical histories. It’s generally not considered acceptable to speculate on what a perisex person’s genitals look like or how they function, but it seems to be fairly common with intersex people. It’s also generally not acceptable to demand or speculate over a perisex person’s medical history but given how closely tied that can be to our intersex conditions it’s also become normalized. If you see a discussion like this going on, either try to point out it’s invasive or just don’t engage. If someone wants to provide you this information that’s perfectly okay, but they do not owe it.

Another common trend along these lines I’ve experienced, is people trying to explain to us what sex that they believe we are. Many people have different definitions of biological sex, a common one I see TERFs use is which gamete the body was “designed” to produce. As these are fairly nebulous and don’t always work cleanly for intersex people, it’s not uncommon for people to ask invasive questions so that they can know what sex they consider us under their definition. This is obviously very invasive and not acceptable to do.

Further Reading

If you do want to learn more, IHRA (Intersex Human Rights Australia) has put together a similar page available here that covers a wider range of issues and describes a lot of background context.

Conclusion

As stated earlier, this is mostly what I’m most passionate about, but these are issues that can affect many if not all intersex people. Intersex people are not all the same however, and there are many issues that I haven’t covered here that others will experience. It’s important to understand the wide diversity of intersex people, and that we can present in many ways. Not all intersex people have the same struggles, not all intersex people with the same condition will even have the same struggles. It’s important to listen to a wide variety of intersex people, especially those with markedly different conditions to me. At its core, allyship is about learning from and not speaking over people of that demographic. So, if you’re going out of your way to read posts like this, or the post from IHRA that I linked above, you’re definitely already doing more than most.