Our Mission to #EndIntersexSurgery

What We Do

We campaign to #EndIntersexSurgery.

We use direct action and other strategies to end surgeries to change the bodies of unconsenting young people, such as clitoral, vaginal, and testicular surgeries on infants.

We center Black and Brown liberation.

Our activism draws from history because medicine has always objected and exploited Black and Brown people. We demand that we be allowed to exist freely in the bodies we were born with.

We work alongside intersex activists in the Global South.

We form alliances and coalitions with other intersex people of color and NGO partners nationally and globally.

Fix your hearts, not our parts!

—IJP Protest Chant

How We Get There

We want to exist freely in our communities without scrutiny from the medical establishment. We also desire a world in which all intersex children are free from medical harm and make medical decisions in partnership with their parents and doctors.

Our mission to #EndIntersexSurgery is not an end point to liberation. We must coalesce with other movement groups, including but not limited to: reproductive justice, prison abolition, Black liberation, indigenous people’s rights and sovereignty, Latinx liberation, and other groups working toward freedom from oppression. These are our tactics:

1. Working with other intersex organizations in the United States and globally who are committed to ending intersex genital surgeries,
   
   
2. Educating the people about intersex human rights violations via empowering intersex people of color as leaders in this movement,
   
   
3. Clearly articulating our demands, in coalition with other groups, to protect the bodily sovereignty of intersex children and young adults,
   
   
4. Targeting hospitals that are performing these surgeries through direct action organizing with intersex groups and allies,
   
   
5. Developing media that is aligned with our interest as intersex people of color that represents our voices, our passions and our goals.

Our People

Sean Saifa Wall, Co-Founder and Strategist

Sean Saifa Wall (he/him) is an intersex activist, documentarian, and public health researcher.  Born and raised in the Bronx, Saifa attended Williams College and has since lived and worked in New York City, the San Francisco Bay Area, and Atlanta. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. with the INIA Project in England with his dog, Justice. Saifa is the former board president of interACT, a legal advocacy organization protecting the human rights of intersex young adults.

A seasoned community activist, Saifa made history by confronting the surgeon who performed his non-consensual surgeries on ABC News Nightline. His features include the Huffington Post, NBC, Afropunk: Solutions Sessions, Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation, Trans Bodies, Trans Selves, Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics, the Washington Blade, The Guardian, and The Remedy: Queer and Trans Voices on Health and Healthcare, and his TEDx talk “36 Revolutions of Change.”

Lynnell Stephani Long, Co-Founder

Lynnell Stephani Long (she/her) is an intersex activist, educator, photographer, and paramedic. Her passion for activism grew from being a long-term patient at a university hospital in her native Chicago. For the past 15 years the heart of Lynnell's advocacy has been in helping intersex children, preventing genital mutilation, and ending the unnecessary shame and secrecy suffered by intersex adults. Lynnell began speaking out as a volunteer with Intersex Society of North America's Speakers Bureau. Before long she was speaking on college campuses and educating medical professionals throughout the U.S. and Canada.

Lynnell has served as Vice President on the Board of Directors for interACT. She also served as a member of the Board of Directors for InterConnect Support Group and on InterConnect's Diversity Committee.

Lynnell has been featured in several documentaries, including Intersexion (2012) and One in 2000 (2006), and appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show and The Montel Williams Show. In 2015, her story was published by Narrative Inquiry of Bioethics.

Pidgeon Pagonis, Co-Founder and Former Organizer

Pidgeon Pagonis (they/them) has slowly, oftentimes not so quietly, risen to visibility as an activist on behalf of intersex people.

Whether advancing intersex advocacy as the co-founder of the Intersex Justice Project, producing informational videos that go viral on Buzzfeed, creating art that centers intersex voices, appearing on the cover of National Geographic “Gender Revolution” special issue or being honored as a LGBT Champion of Change in 2015 by the Obama White House, Pidgeon has staked out a place at the fore of debates on intersexuality and otherness.