Collaborative Portraits for Intersex Justice

My name is Nthabiseng Mokoena. I am a Black intersex genderqueer feminist person in South Africa.When you are born as an intersex person you are isolated, lied to, and given the impression that you are the only person like that, and something needs to be done to “fix” you: You need to be “normalized.” We are born into a world that says, “You do not exist, you were not supposed to exist, you cannot exist.” We've been erased from public discourse and from societal existence where children are taught that only males and females exist. This has not always been the case. Intersex people haven't always been invisible in Africa, South Africa, and Southern Africa as a whole.I have met other intersex people with horrible stories that have made me realize that I'm not the only intersex person: there are thousands of us out there. The experiences are so similar, including the violations, violence, prejudice, stigma, and stereotyping, that it's scary at times. You realize how much social systems and structures are actually formed against intersex bodies.To the doctor that told my mother that surgery was necessary when I was an infant, to the doctor that told my parents that I was a mistake at thirteen, to the doctor that told me, while a university student, that I'm a “hermaphrodite” and he's excited that I'm part of his little “project”: I really want to say that here I am right now, still no surgery, still not sick, still healthy, still bouncy, still happy, still awesome. I am full and free. And I am normal. I did not need anybody to tell me what normal is. I am who I am, and who I am is what is best for me. I do not need anybody else to tell me otherwise. I couldn't let somebody else dictate who I am and who I was going to be because what they dictated was not healthy for me. I have the self-love and self-affirmation to say that I am a full intersex person. I am not what the world expected. But I exist. I am beautiful. I am awesome. I am great. And I have no regrets about any decision I have ever made.Edited text from Nthabiseng's words in the award-winning film Reclaiming Intersex while Black Feminist and Genderqueer in South Africa. Directed by Gabrielle Le Roux and Nthabiseng Mokoena, 2016.Nthabiseng Mokoena wrote on their portrait:Intersex; nonbinary, queerTo disrupt; to resist; to dismantle the lies because no body is shameful.This portrait is one of the ten portraits that make up the Proudly African & Transgender exhibition.I am the founder and director of the Support Initiative for People with Atypical Sex Development (SIPD), which is a grassroots nonprofit human rights organization in Uganda. Through community outreach and engagement we provide support for intersex Ugandans. We also provide reliable and objective information on the plight of persons with intersex conditions and gender-nonconforming characteristics in Uganda. Our website is www.sipd.webs.com.SIPD particularly addresses the need for organized medical and psychosocial support, public education, as well as advocacy for human rights protection of intersex children and adults.I am a fervent first-generation advocate for the human rights and dignity of intersex and gender nonbinary people in Uganda and Africa. I have facilitated several national, regional, and international workshops on the rights of intersex and gender-variant people. I also led the Uganda Civil Society Coalition on Human Rights and Constitutional law for the first phase of its existence and was at the forefront of the campaign against the Anti-Homosexuality Bill tabled in Uganda's parliament in October 2009. I testified before the US congress and did extensive advocacy in Uganda, Kenya, the United States, South Africa, and Europe on the human rights implications of the bill and was awarded the Human Rights First Award for this work in 2010.My decision to be an activist has forced me to confront some extremely painful experiences within the LGBT community. I went through a very difficult time and had to take some time off from the public scene and recover.My passion is to see a world where every human being is treated with dignity and without discrimination of any kind.Julius Kaggwa wrote on his portrait: I'm intersex, I'm transsexual, I'm a man, I'm Ugandan and proud of who I am. It has been a difficult journey but one I don't regret taking because I can only be who I am—a unique creation.We exist. With their scalpels, in the civilized places of science, they tried to erase our differences and leave us to dwell in silence and shame. The ones with loving intentions and fear in their puzzled gaze at the sight of our bodies, unintelligible to their minds, gave our bodies up to the white coats. Thus we were not meant to know who we were or who we could have been. But we exist. We are. We are like trees of a future world. We are seeds of hope. We are the flowers and snails from freedom's garden. We are also children of the human species. We dream. We desire. We love. We live.We survived the winter of the last century, and today we open our flower to the possibilities on the horizon. We now weave a language of our own, and we voice our words. We are the stories we rewrite by reaching out to each other.I am an intersex person from Mexico and advocate for the human rights of intersex people. I founded the Vivir y Ser Intersex project (vivirintersex.org), a space for critical thinking on intersex in Spanish. I have a degree in women's studies from UAM Xochimilco, and do research on intersex topics, such as lived experience, medical frameworks, and intersex narratives in the process of subjective and collective meaning making. I am also a writer who believes that words have the power to set us free from the silent prisons of shame, ignorance, and despair.The creative collaboration we are involved in is about shifting power dynamics, unsettling hierarchies, and radically challenging who and what is given value. Intersex people are the authorities on their own lives and the portraits on the preceding pages center them as teachers. While mainstream societies, media, and most governments cling to the patriarchal myth of a world divided neatly into two sexes and two genders that can unfailingly be classified by a person's genitals at birth, the people whose bodies and lives prove the opposite are denied their human rights. Endosex (nonintersex) privilege is just as binding, blinding, and unearned as cisgender, race, and class privilege and just as challenging, uncomfortable, and necessary to face and dismantle.The widespread ignorance about the existence of intersex people costs lives. Intersex activism comes at huge personal cost to activists. My collaborators invest the time and effort in our cocreation because they see it as a potentially useful extension of their work. This is as important to me as working with activists whose intersectional politics strongly resonates with mine and from whom I learn and who reshape my understanding of gender.My work stems from the conviction that we change each other's lives with our stories, and that is why the portrait is accompanied by my collaborator's first-person narrative. The portrait is a vehicle for the story. I don't believe in single-issue activism and find in the complexity of people's stories that the connections between issues are most visible, while the limitations of identity politics (useful as they are) emerge. I work with portraits drawn from life as a mark of respect, a way of honoring and celebrating people who are standing up for social justice, respect, and love. During the portrait process, when the drawing resonates for my collaborator, I invite them to write what they want to say directly onto it. I believe the energy, presence, focus, and shared intention that we put into the work together gives it a particular charge. It's not something I could do alone.I am particularly indebted to the work of Sally Gross, Julius Kaggwa, Nthabiseng Mokoena, Hana Aoi, Adiós Al Futuro, Laura Inter, Tebogo Makwati, Crystal Hendricks, Mauro Cabral, Sean Saifa Wall, Del LaGrace Volcano, Babalwa Mtshawu, Pidge Pagonis, Hans Lindahl, Mani Mitchell, Hida Viloria, and Joshua Sehoole

Art · Art history · Criminology · Economic Justice · Political science · Portrait · Sociology · Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health · African Sexualities and LGBTQ+ Issues · Law · LGBTQ Health, Identity, and Policy · Psychology