Can Intersex People be Included in Pride Month?
Yes everyone, it’s that time of year again, the time of year where everyone wants to know if intersex people should be included in pride. Everyone always wants to know if intersex people are LGBTQ+, or even if we are “inherently queer” and I, gracefully, will be giving you a clear cut answer.
That’s a lie, because there is no clear cut answer. Intersex people and the LGBTQ+ community have a very long, very complex, and often times very depressing history together. For a long time as a marginalized group, we were forcefully considered to be queer (and I mean queer as in a negative lens by our shared oppressors, not a reclaimed and liberating label that we were allowed to choose) because of our bodies. A lot of our medical trauma is enforced by the idea there is a perfect cisgender heterosexual body.
You could say that this makes us inherently LGBTQ+, or you could not. An intersex person might say that because we have been forced into this category, they would rather us build up our own community and resources and rather us be separate communities that support and uplift each other. A cisgender heterosexual intersex person who has never felt any kind of connection to being LGBTQ+ could just not relate to our struggles at all, maybe said intersex person goes their whole life without knowing they’re intersex and never thinks about it.
The reality is that not all intersex people are inherently LGBTQ+. The reality also is that some of us have no choice but to be LGBTQ+. This is not a black and white situation, and there could be so many reasons not listed above as to why an intersex person has the opinion that they have.
Your takeaway as a dyadic person should be: it’s none of your business.
Intersex people, whether we are considered to be inherently LGBTQ+, we deserve to have pride and to engage in pride month if we want to. We are allowed to spread awareness, positivity, wear our flags and colors, want to be acknowledged for everything we have done for and with the LGBTQ+ community. The only thing inherent about us in this sense is that we are allowed to celebrate and be visible if we so choose. If that doesn’t answer your question, you are probably missing the point and it shows your lack of education on intersex issues and activism.
I’ll end on the note of happy pride and solidarity to all intersex people. For some of us this month might not be easy, I’m still hoping that you get the chance to feel like something good is happening for us.