The Intersex Justice Framework
What is intersex justice?
Intersex justice is different than intersex rights. In 2021, Sean Saifa Wall co-created this definition of intersex justice with Dr. Mel Michelle Lewis:
Intersex justice is a decolonizing framework that affirms the labor of intersex people of color fighting for change across social justice movements. By definition, intersex justice affirms bodily integrity and bodily autonomy as the practice of liberation.
Intersex justice is intrinsically tied to other justice movements that center race, ability, gender identity & expression, migrant status, and access to sexual & reproductive healthcare. Intersex justice articulates a commitment to these movements as central to its intersectional analysis and praxis. Intersex justice acknowledges the trauma caused by medically unnecessary and non-consensual cosmetic genital surgeries and addresses the culture of shame, silence and stigma surrounding intersex variations that perpetuates further harm.
The marginalization of intersex people is rooted in colonization and white supremacy. Colonization created a taxonomy of human bodies that privileged typical white male and female bodies, prescribing a gender binary that would ultimately harm atypical Black and Indigenous bodies. As part of a liberation movement, intersex activists challenge not only the medical establishment, which is often the initial site of harm, but also governments, institutions, legal structures, and sociocultural norms that exclude intersex people. Intersex people should be allowed complete and uninhibited access to obtaining identity documents, exercising their birth and adoption rights, receiving unbiased healthcare, and securing education and employment opportunities that are free from harm and harassment.
Components of Intersex Justice
Any project designed around intersex justice should consider all seven of its components.
1 Legal Protections
Create laws to protect intersex people and allow them full inclusion in society.
2 Informed Consent
Shape consent around survivor accounts and deeper explanations of the lifelong considerations of any medical actions.
3 Reparations
If medical harms caused a physical, mental, or emotional disability, give intersex people financial compensation.
4 Accountability
Create consequences for doctors who act without an individual's informed consent.
5 Language
Remove intersex from the DSM and replace "disorder" with terms such as “variations in sex characteristics.”
6 Children's Rights
Avoid genital and/or gonadal surgery at all costs until a child is old enough to decide.
7 Patient-Centered Healthcare
Offer reproductive and hormone care options that respect each person's wishes and self expression.
Why is intersex justice important?
The issue of parents consenting to infant genital surgeries is especially complex when societies believe that children don’t have individual rights and that parents always act in a child's best interest. Parents who consent to medically unnecessary surgeries participate in a culture of shame, silence and stigma, perpetuated by doctors. Parents are often left to fend for themselves as they navigate shame and guilt.
Medical practitioners such as pediatricians, obstetricians, urologists, social workers, and endocrinologists all play a role in upholding institutions that harm children with intersex variations. Practitioners, in turn, are protected by hospitals and state laws that grant them immunity.
Only by defining and moving toward justice can affected adults, their families, and medical institutions heal.