Tweet for Visibility & Education

The intersex community needs visibility and inclusion more than most, as our long-standing social erasure facilitates our medical erasure, and vice-versa.

Please help by tweeting/re-tweeting intersex articles, videos, and posts from this site and others with the hashtags #intersex and #lgbtqia.

For Media Professionals, Journalists and Allies:

1. Please use “LGBTQIA”

We support the use of “LGBTQIA” as it promotes intersex inclusion in human rights efforts for those who face discrimination based on non-adherence to heteronormative standards, which all intersex people do. The frequent use of “LGBT”/”LGBTQ”/”LGBTQ+”–even in articles specifically about the intersex community or about issues directly pertaining to our community–erases us from the conversation and this erasure is harmful.

2. Please do not use headlines or titles such as :
“What it’s like to be intersex,” or,
“What being intersex is really about…”

We’ve seen countless articles using “what being intersex is really about” titles, which is innately harmful as it promotes one identity/experience while erasing others–and often those which are more marginalized within the community. All intersex people are different and have different lived experiences other than having been born with bodies that are not typically male or female.

Some intersex people experience the issues listed below, and others do not:
— racism .
— white privilege
— sexism
— male privilege
— nonconsensual medical procedures or “treatments”
— living in visibly non-binary bodies
— living in bodies that look male or female
— transphobia
— gender conforming privilege
— homophobia/queerphobia
— heterosexual privilege
— classism and/or poverty
— class privilege and//or economic privilege
— discrimination based on disability
— able bodied-ness
— health issues
— great health
— and so on and so on….

3. Please stop saying the “I” stands for “invisible”

Some people have been saying that the “I” in “LGBTQIA” stands for “invisible” –as one journalist recently did in an article featuring a quote from our E.D.. While people use this phrase to draw attention to the fact that intersex people are often not equally acknowledged or included within the LGBTQIA community, doing so verbally amplifies what we don’t want, which is not an effective strategy for positive change.
Intersex people are here and visible, and becoming more so every day:let’s focus on that.

Thanks everyone!