In the 1990s, a small cir­cle of inter­sex peo­ple came to know one anoth­er. They met face-to-face and con­nect­ed over the inter­net (then a nov­el­ty). As they shared life expe­ri­ences, med­ical records, and per­spec­tives on the injuries and neglect they endured, a con­sen­sus quick­ly arose. They found shared strug­gles, caused not sole­ly by wide­spread igno­rance of ordi­nary human vari­ance in repro­duc­tive devel­op­ment, but also by the ways they were known over.

At worst, this know­ing over meant surg­eries and oth­er treat­ments car­ried out with lit­tle regard for their con­sent, then usu­al­ly con­cealed from them. Med­ical jar­gon and vague euphemism had been lay­ered along with scar tis­sue. The truth of their treat­ments was left impos­si­ble for inter­sex peo­ple to reach indi­vid­u­al­ly — but was eas­i­ly recog­nised when they gath­ered. Then, they could intu­itive­ly grasp the shared wound­ing and neglect that pre­vi­ous­ly iso­lat­ed inter­sex peo­ple (that had caused them to know them­selves only as med­ical freaks — best off cor­rect­ed and hid­den away — and not as their own cat­e­go­ry of human, who might under­stand themselves).

Inter­sex advo­cates first focused on dia­logue, both inter­nal and exter­nal, by rais­ing con­scious­ness at small com­mu­ni­ty meet­ings and on pur­pose-made web forums and devel­op­ing con­nec­tions with allies in fem­i­nist schol­ar­ship and the LGBTQ+ move­ment. Inter­sex advo­ca­cy of this era had an unmis­tak­able imprint of both the fem­i­nist and les­bian and gay move­ments. Inter­sex peo­ple drew slo­gans, strate­gies, insights, and approach­es from ear­li­er twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry coun­ter­cul­ture – and merg­ing with the pre­vail­ing provoca­tive style of ​’90s queer campaigners.

After just three years of under­ground con­scious­ness-rais­ing organ­i­sa­tion, inter­sex advo­ca­cy took to the streets (first in Boston in 1996, then quick­ly world­wide). Their first protest fea­tured signs read­ing ​“SILENCE = DEATH”. Just two inter­sex demon­stra­tors were flanked by trans­sex­u­als, hold­ing a flam­boy­ant pick­et to con­front doc­tors with ​“feed­back” from those who they’d harmed. From 1996 to today, advo­cates began con­fronting the pro­fes­sion­als respon­si­ble for the harms done to inter­sex chil­dren, with the hope that future gen­er­a­tions could be spared the devel­op­men­tal injuries that so many in the move­ment had endured.