By Kimberly ZieselmanOctober 26^th is Intersex Awareness Day – marking the 20^th anniversary of intersex protests outside the annual American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) conference in Boston. That protest is considered the beginning of intersex activism in the U.S. and the beginning of a movement.Intersex – the “I” in LGBTQIA – is an umbrella term for people born with a biological sex characteristics that are not strictly ‘male’ or ‘female’. As common as red hair, nearly two percent of the population is born with reproductive or sexual anatomy and/or a chromosomal pattern that does not seem to fit the typical male/female binary notion of sex.For example an intersex person could be born with XY, or typically “male” sex chromosomes, internal testes, and no uterus but have typically female genitals and secondary sex characteristics. A trait referred to as “androgen insensitivity”. Or a person may have typically “female” XX chromosomes and internal reproductive organs but have external genitals that are perceived to be atypical such as an enlarged clitoris. Intersex people are not really that rare; they have just been mostly invisible due to stigma and shame imposed on them by society and specifically some in the medical community.Many have not even heard of intersex traits because until recently it has not been widely discussed. Doctors have attempted to surgically erase variations of sex anatomy attempting to make intersex bodies “normal”. Since the 1950s, intersex children have been routinely subjected to irreversible, harmful, and unnecessary surgeries and other medical interventions in an attempt to ‘normalize’ or ‘fix’ their bodies. But intersex bodies aren’t broken. In fact, in the overwhelming majority of cases there is no medically necessity associated with these irreversible and unconsented “treatments”.These so-called “normalization” surgeries are simply cosmetic, and can result in loss of genital sensation and sexual function, sterility, scarring, ongoing pain, incontinence, loss of reproductive capacity, depression, and PTSD. Families are often told to keep these experiences a secret, sometimes even from the children themselves. Sometimes doctors did not fully inform the parents or the children about the procedures that they performed.Since the 1990s, intersex people around the world have been stepping forward to speak out against the medical treatment they received in childhood. Many have disclosed that the secrecy surrounding their experiences led to traumatizing feelings of shame and stigma and had a profound negative impact on their lives. Leaders of the intersex community started calling for an end to unnecessary surgeries, and for children with intersex traits to have a voice in in the treatment of their own bodies!Today, interACT, a national organization based in the Greater Boston area, is the only organization fighting to promote legal and human rights of intersex youth, as well as working to raise awareness of intersex issues in the media and empowering intersex youth advocates. Some of interACT Youth’s recent projects include a viral Buzzfeed Video entitled, “What it’s like to be intersex,” as well as consulting with MTV to create the first intersex main character on the popular teen show Faking it! interACT also uses innovative advocacy strategies on the state, federal and international levels to impact law and policy in favor of intersex rights.The LGBTQA community and the intersex movement are fighting some of the same societal constraints associated with not fitting into narrow understandings about bodies and identities. Most intersex people share the common experiences of discrimination, stigma and shame based on non-binary notions of sex, gender, and sexual orientation. Although intersex is not a sexual orientation, it can be an important identity that some have reclaimed and celebrated in the face of medical providers who’ve felt intersex is shameful and should be kept hidden.This intersex awareness day, please consider sharing this information with a friend who many not yet understand what the “I” in the alphabet soup stands for. For more information, go to www.interACTadvovates.org.

Kimberly Zieselman, JD, is an intersex activist and Executive Director of interACT: Advocates for Intersex Youth, and lives in Sudbury, Massachusetts.

By George GrattanI’m sorry this is going to be rambling. Two years ago tomorrow I came out widely and publicly as bisexual, at work, online, and in other sectors of my life where I had been partially closeted for more than 20 years. As she has always been, Mary Benard was by my side through that process and the decisions leading up to it. I’ve been one of the lucky ones: I’ve received love and support from family and friends. I’ve become active with groups like the Bisexual Resource Center and, especially, SpeakOUT Boston. I’ve deepened my sense of connection to the larger LGBTQIA community. It was one of the best decisions I’ve made it my life; I’m only sorry I waited so long, but fear is a powerful, powerful thing.This weekend, I celebrated my 47th birthday and Boston Pride on the same day, spending it with Mary and a dear friend and spending some time at the SpeakOUT booth at the festival. We’d marched in the parade each of the last two years so this was our year to be spectators and get a larger sense of it; I'm glad we did. Over the course of the long day, we went to four different queer-friendly establishments. We laughed, danced, hugged, waved our flags, and came together with the diverse greater Boston queer community. It was wonderful.And then we awoke Sunday to the news about the shooting at a queer nightclub, Pulse, in Orlando. Like every other decent human being, we were sickened at the loss of life, outraged once again at living in a country where the laws and culture around guns and gun control make such things so common, and dismayed to once again learn about the radicalization of someone into something so broken, so inhuman, as to be able to distort Islam and commit atrocities in its name.And, of course, there was also the cold sweat realization: that could have been us. The night before. Any number of nights.Please understand this: queer-friendly spaces are sanctuaries. If you’ve never been called faggot or dyke or queer-as-a-slur or any number of other insults because of who you are, I’m genuinely happy for you. If you’ve never been physically threatened because of your identity or how you present it in public, great. But many of us have, and those scars run deep. Safe spaces like Pulse in Orlando are where we can go and be ourselves in the expectation of reasonable safety. This killing spree was as much about striking at that idea as it was about taking individual lives.I’ve never been to Orlando, so I’ve never been to Pulse. But I know who was in there Saturday night. Gay men, lesbians, bisexual men and women, transgender people, gender-queer or gender-fluid folks, people of many different ethnicities, and lots of others with lots of other labels of choice. I’m sure that many straight friends and allies were there as well, as is often wonderfully and increasingly the case in such spaces. Some people were there with their partners, whether married or not, whether monogamous or not. Some were single and alone. Some were there with friends. Some were there to talk, to flirt, to dance, to make friends, to hook up, to celebrate something, to drink, to eat, to simply be, like people at bars and nightclubs of all kinds are, everywhere. Some were out. Some were closeted in other parts of their lives.All of them, the dead, the wounded, the survivors, were beautiful, flawed, wonderful, imperfect, full-of-potential human beings. Yes, this is a human tragedy. And, YES, it matters that this act of violence was aimed at the queer community, in particular, queer people of color. If I can borrow a style from Lin Manuel Miranda’s wonderful Tony acceptance sonnet: it matters it matters it matters it matters it matters it matters.I don’t know how we move on from this as a queer community, or as a country. I do know that Pride will never feel the same. And neither will safe spaces. Just....love each other. It’s ultimately all we can do.

George Grattan, SpeakOUT's board president, has lived in the Boston area for more than 20 years and helps run a "Bi Guys Social Night" through the Bisexual Resource Center. He's been active with SpeakOUT since 2014. In his spare time he works in higher education marketing and communications, goes kayaking, and sits on his back porch.