By Jess FickI grew up in a conservative community in the midwest. I remember one year students in my high school participated in GLSEN’s Day of Silence. I also remember that there were other students who wore T-shirts that day that said, “God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.” My high school self thought that was pretty witty.When I went to college, I began to examine my belief system. I attended a very conservative Christian university in the south. When the Equality Ride came knocking at our doors, the university responded by setting up events to teach us why homosexuality was a sin and even had a person who ran a conversion therapy camp come and speak to us about how conversion therapy has helped so many people. It made me angry, so I did my own research. I decided that loving the people around me was the most important thing that I could do, no matter their sexual or gender identity. Obviously an evolution from when I thought the joke about Adam and Steve was funny.During my junior year of college, one of my best friends came out to me as a lesbian, and I realized that there was absolutely no way I could respond with anything but love and compassion for how she was feeling. She was obviously feeling out of place at our ultra-conservative university, and as though she couldn’t be herself. We had hours and hours of conversations late into the night, where we talked through her thoughts. She told me about when she knew she was gay (In kindergarten, she wrote a love note to another little girl, not yet knowing that was “outside” of social norms.), and we talked about the ways she was beginning to accept herself. At this time, I knew I needed to be a listener and a loving friend. However, it wasn’t until a few years after I graduated from college that I had a breakthrough in my understanding of true allyship. In my mid-20s, I dealt with a severe bout of depression. I spent a handful of years in therapy working through issues of self-worth. Since then, I have come out on the other side of it, not knowing where I stand on religion, but having realized that I am good (in fact, great) just the way that I am. Furthermore, if there is a God, they would never, ever want me or anyone to feel the way that I did for those few years. By extension, if there is a God, they would never, ever want any LGBTQIA person to feel like they weren’t great exactly as they are. Since then, I’ve learned a lot about what it means to be an ally. I was the opposite of an ally when I thought the whole “Adam and Steve” bit was funny. Although it was a step in the right direction, I was still not an ally when I began to believe that I should love instead of hate someone in the LGBTQIA community. I was beginning to become an ally when I began to listen, learn, and love, and when I had my personal realization about self-worth for all. I now know that to be an ally, it is not enough to simply show this love and compassion to your loved ones.I have learned that I cannot truly be an ally to my friends and loved ones if I am not also fighting against prejudice that impacts them and fighting for their equal rights to marry, have full custody of their children, and be treated without discrimination in the workplace, in hospitals, and in businesses as they go about their daily lives. I have learned that being an ally is not a state of being, but something you do. This is why I am on the board of directors of SpeakOUT. As an organization, we are focused on ending prejudice and discrimination against the LGBTQIA community through changing hearts and minds. As a board member, I support the smooth functioning of the organization, through supporting fundraising, board recruitment, and volunteer speaker trainings. I hope the actions that I am taking to be an ally, even though I am far away geographically from my loved ones, have helped them to feel empowered to more proudly be who they are.

Jess Fick is a transplant from Michigan and joined the SpeakOUT board in the fall of 2015.

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.

Being An Ally Is What You Do, Not Who You Are

It's Time to Understand the "I"