Intersex Awareness Day

October 26, 1996 marks the anniversary of the first public demonstration by intersex people in the United States. Members of the now defunct Intersex Society of North America and their allies arrived in Boston, MA at the annual conference of the American Academy of Pediatrics. They demonstrated and shared their pain in a very public way, denouncing non-consensual infant genital surgeries and demanding the medical industry take notice. Doctors dismissed the activists as a vocal minority in a 1997 New York Times article covering the intersex action. The tides are slowly changing.

TODAY, intersex people and our allies are following in their footsteps, organizing in cities around the U.S., and around the world.