Intersex Affirmation

The original form of this post appeared in Queersletter Issue #2.

You deserve your place in the queer community alongside more often talked about identities.

You are not a birth defect. You are human just like perisex people are.

You deserve people who understand your unique needs and experiences.

You deserve to have bigotry against you spoken about, loudly and clearly. Interphobia and perinormativity are unacceptable inside and outside the queer community.

You deserve to be sought out and compensated fairly for your expertise.

You deserve people who will stand with you and fight for you.

You deserve to be more than just The Intersex Person to others.

You deserve genuine greetings, not “ma’am, sir, ma’am” and “sir, ma’am, sir”.

You deserve to be listened to even when there is no highly publicized bigotry happening to you or other intersex people at the moment.

You deserve fellow queer people to be excited about the incorporation of the intersex flag into the progress flag. Perisex queer people should be enthusiastically including you in discussions of queerness and queer liberation, not whining that you’re “kicking out the gays”.

You do not need anything else to be queer. Intersex people are queer, period!