Image Description: Illustration with multi-colored text "Protect Intersex Youth" above a starry black background. In the center is a Black intersex & transgender activist holding a Black intersex child. They are both dressed in white, smiling and radiant. On each side are multi-colored DNA-like strands. They rise out of the Atlantic ocean, held up by ancestor spirits.

Image Description: Illustration with multi-colored text "Protect Intersex Youth" above a starry black background. In the center is a Black intersex & transgender activist holding a Black intersex child. They are both dressed in white, smiling and radiant. On each side are multi-colored DNA-like strands. They rise out of the Atlantic ocean, held up by ancestor spirits.

This poster was created in June 2021 in collaboration with brilliant Black intersex and transgender activist Sean Saifa Wall, Co-Founder of the Intersex Justice Project. Here is his statement about the image:

So much of this work is ancestral.

Intersex justice demands that we avenge the suffering of our ancestors, while protecting future generations from harm. There is nothing more precious than holding a child who has not been hurt or violated by the surgeon’s scalpel. Everyday, doctors arbitrarily choose gender, but perform invasive, “corrective” surgeries on visibly intersex children and young adults. These surgeries are based in 1950’s ideology that dictates people assigned female at birth should have a “vagina” suitable for frontal penetration by their cis male partner and that people assigned male at birth should have a “penis” that penetrates a vagina.

The notions of “normal” and “gender” that exist in the medical establishment are harmful and limiting.

How can we be more expansive in our thinking and practice around sex and gender?

What does it look like when we allow intersex variations to flourish? What becomes possible?

Purchase this poster here or download it for free to print yourself. All sales of this poster support Intersex Justice Project.