WEBVTT

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- Hey everybody, my name\'s Pidgeon

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and you may know me as the person

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who likes to say that
intersex is beautiful.

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I was born with an intersex condition

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known as Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome.

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(blows raspberries) It\'s
harder than it looks.

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You YouTube people, y\'all
do amazing work out there.

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I don\'t know how you do this.

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As an intersex person,
my body is non-binary.

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Non-binary just simply means,

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two opposite opposing categories

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that are, supposedly,
completely different.

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My body did not fall into either one

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of these opposing categories
of male or female.

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It had some male characteristics

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and it had some female characteristics

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and then, it had it\'s own
intersex characteristics.

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The doctors did a test,

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discovered that I had internal testes.

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Being an intersex person, was not normal.

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This would destroy the myth

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that they were trying
to build for my parents

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that I was a perfectly normal little girl.

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(tense electronic music)

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I had a feeling throughout
my teenage years

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that something was different and wrong

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and not quite right about me.

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I didn\'t feel normal.

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I didn\'t feel like everybody else.

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I was, like, lying at cafeteria everyday

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about enjoying sex and enjoying my body

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or whatever, with my boyfriend.

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I knew my body was
different but I thought,

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I just don\'t know where my clitoris is.

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It\'s obviously hard to find.

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That\'s what the magazines say

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but there was a lingering idea that, like,

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there\'s something else going on.

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Sex either really hurts, really
bad, and sometimes you bleed

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or it feels like absolutely nothing.

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I was 18 or 19.

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I was in my first year
of college, I believe,

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and my teacher, she was
talking about gender and sex

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being on a spectrum and
here\'s this example,

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people with AIS, Androgen
Insensitivity Syndrome.

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And I\'m looking at the slide

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and it said, these people
don\'t get their period,

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and I was like, oh, I don\'t get my period.

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And then it said, they
can\'t have children,

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and I was like, I can\'t have children.

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And then it said, they
have XY chromosomes,

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and I was like, oh, I
don\'t have XY chromosomes.

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That\'s not me (laughs).

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And then I was like,
well, maybe it is though.

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I knew my mom had paper work,

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so, I called her after that class

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and I said, \"What do I have?\"

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And she started to read the term

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Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome

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and I felt everything
everything disappear.

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I told my teacher what I had found out

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and she said, \"We have an
intersex person coming to school

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\"to speak, named Lynnell Stephani Long.\"

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- And back in the classroom
there\'s, you know,

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there\'s this beautiful girl

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and she has long beautiful
hair and really pretty makeup

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and she was crying and I knew it.

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I saw it in her face
and this girl was Pidge

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and Pidge and I have been

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in each other\'s lives every since then.

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- Lynell\'s advice was you need
to get your medical records.

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So, I\'m flipping through these pages.

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Starting at six months of my life,

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there was the removal of my testes,

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there was the reduction and
the removal of my clitoris,

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\'cause it was too big, and
there was the female hormones

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pumped into me, starting around age 10.

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There was the vaginoplasty when I was 11

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so that I could have
normal sex with my husband.

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- How could you clip somebody\'s clitoris

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and say that they\'re gonna be

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having a normal sex life after that?

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How can anything in life be normal

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after you cut off somebody\'s clitoris?

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- People have always been born intersex

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because sex variance is part of nature.

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Many people who are intersex

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are intersex in ways that
are not immediately visible,

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just looking at their genitalia.

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Their ovaries and testes and ovotestis

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could be the thing that is
causing them to be sex variant.

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It could be their chromosomes.

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It could be related to
their hormone balances.

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If we look at how many people
are diagnosed by doctors

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as either being genitally
atypical in some way

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or as having sex
characteristics, like hormones,

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that are considered outside the norm,

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that\'s somewhere between one and 150,

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all the way to like one in 50 people

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were being diagnosed by doctors

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as sex variant in some way.

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That\'s a lot of intersex people.

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(light msuic)

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- Hi, hi.
- Hi.

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- How are you?

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I started noticing a
difference about a year old

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when I would change Pidgeon\'s diaper.

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They would urinate and it would be

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like a stream going upwards.

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And I was like, hmm, that\'s kind of funny

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and mentioned it to the doctor.

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Next thing I know, it was like,

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\"Yeah, I\'m gonna send
you to a specialist.\"

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I think the way Dr. Zvijac
explained it, you know,

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was her genitalia were swollen, like,

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everything was swollen
and didn\'t look normal.

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So, we went over to
Children\'s Memorial Hospital

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and they explained to us

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that where the ovaries should have been,

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they explained it as tissue,

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and if they were to
leave that tissue there,

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it would just rot and turn into cancer.

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Well, that was it.

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You hear that, what can you do?

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What are you gonna do to save my baby?

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(somber music)

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- When I was born, they said,
well, you have a micropenis,

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a small penis, whatever.

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So, we can work with that.

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When Pidge was born, they were
born with the vaginal canal

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and so they said we can work with that.

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So, with both of us, they
tried to make one into a girl,

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one into the boy.

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- We live in a society
that is really invested

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in clinging onto outdated
and rigid concepts

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of gender as a binary,

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so, if child is born with a penis,

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we then assume they also
have XY chromosomes,

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male reproductive organs on the inside,

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and will grow up to express
a masculine gender identity.

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And if they don\'t, our
society and the people in it,

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punish that person.

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(light music)

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Around the age of 11, I
had a surgery and they said

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it was gonna be about my
bladder and my urethra,

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to fix those two things.

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I woke up with a new body.

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They only told me it was about my bladder

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but I kind of knew by feeling
myself and touching myself,

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after the surgery, that
they had done a lot more

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than they had told me they were gonna do.

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Were you in the room with me
before I went into the surgery?

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- Oh my God, always.

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Yeah, I walked with
you all the way to the,

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up to the doors of the operating room.

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- What else do you remember about that?

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- I just remember crying.

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I was crying.

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I never wanted you to see me cry

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\'cause I didn\'t want you to be more afraid

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but I\'ll never forget.

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They held you up, they
were walking with you.

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You were crying and it was so hard for me

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and I wanted to hold you and walk you

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and they said, \"No, we\'ll
hold her and walk her

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\"up to the operating room.\"

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Doctors explained they had to do cosmetic

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because she would grow up
with a complex or whatever,

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because it would look funny down there

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and I remember my husband, at the time,

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asking one last time,
\"It\'s not gonna interfere

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\"or do anything with the
nerves,\" and they said, \"No, no.\"

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- It\'s hard to trust your
parents, even though I love them,

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and even though I see
how they were caught up

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in this systematic erasure
of intersex people.

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It\'s hard to trust them

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and when you can\'t trust your parents,

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it\'s really hard to trust anybody else.

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Before I found out I was intersex,

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my gender was already in question

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and I don\'t know if it
was because my mom knew

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something was different based
on the surgeries and things

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that the doctors had done and said,

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but looking back, you know,

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maybe it was just because I was a tomboy.

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I think I really wanted
to fit in everywhere.

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High school, junior high,
and part of that fitting in,

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I thought, was fitting
these gender stereotypes

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that I had once rebelled against.

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So, really trying to do
my hair in certain ways

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and my makeup, and I got good at it.

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Just as good as I was at
softball and being tomboyish,

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which came naturally to me.

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I got really good at looking
the part of femineity.

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Then, I hit 18, I find out I\'m
not even technically a woman.

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That started the new chapter of my life.

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You might have seen this recently.

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I\'m willing to do most everything

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that will increase education
and awareness about intersex

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because I really wanna end these surgeries

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that happen to us.

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These doctors out here
are still doing this

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every single day in my city
of Chicago, in your city,

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and across the world.

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Every single day

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kids are getting intersex
genital mutilation.

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Hey, (laughs) I love it, I love it.

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I love it so much.

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This hospital knows that
intersex people exist

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but they refuse to
believe that we can exist

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left alone in the bodies we were born with

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and that\'s why we\'re here
demanding bodily integrity,

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for not just intersex
people, but for all people.

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And when we demand not to
have surgeries forced on us,

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we\'re also demanding that
people who are trans,

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gender non-conforming, or
anybody else who wants surgery,

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are able to get those, freely, and easily.

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- No justice, no peace,
no intersex surgeries!

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No justice, no peace,
no intersex surgeries!

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No justice, no peace,
no intersex surgeries!

00:10:03.033 --> 00:10:06.700
No justice, no peace,
no intersex surgeries!

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(crowd cheering)

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- We have an extreme position
and it\'s simply this,

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we just want people to be able

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to grow up in the bodies
they were born with

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and be able to make decisions on their own

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when they\'re older.

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(crowd cheering)

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- Intersex is awesome.

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My name\'s Orie.

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I am 10 years old and my
pronouns are they/them.

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I met Pidgeon for the first time

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at Gender Odyssey two years ago.

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I thought Pidge was super cool.

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- Pidgeon was the first time, like,

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Orie met another intersex person

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at a Gender Odyssey Conference
and that was, actually,

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when you learned about
the surgeries and stuff.

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- Uh-huh.

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- We had a doctor that
was really inappropriate.

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They tried to pressure my husband and I

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and said that, you know,

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our child could hate us
for not doing surgery.

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They came in with, like,
a huge doc of research

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and I, basically, was like,

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we want to get hormone levels checked.

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We want to know all the
stuff and what\'s going on

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but there\'s no way we\'re gonna do

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any surgery that\'s cosmetic or aesthetic

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and they definitely recommended
the typical clitoridectomy.

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And the, you know, gonads
could lead to cancer,

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and of course I retorted
back with the statistics

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that I had found, like,

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I was really lucky that
we\'re millennial parents,

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\'cause I was able to go in there

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with a lot of my own research
and a lot of knowledge

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so that I knew what I was
dealing with, kind of.

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They couldn\'t really
manipulate me that way.

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- It\'s hard now, you know,

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knowing that I made this
choice for my daughter

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and it was the worst choice possible

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but, at the time, you hear cancer

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and you\'re gonna do
anything for your baby.

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And I have to say, we were lied to

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and I made that choice
and decision for Pidgeon

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and now Pidgeon has to live
with the choice I made.

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You can\'t change it.

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- Nobody should ever
have a forced sex change

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and that\'s especially important with kids

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who are vulnerable.

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You know, they have no way to say no

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and so how do we allow people the autonomy

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to be the person in charge of saying

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if there\'s gonna be any intervention

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into the private parts of my body,

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I\'m the person who determines
what those will be.

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- I wish I had a Pidgeon
back in the 1980\'s.

00:12:23.730 --> 00:12:25.300
I wish there was a Pidgeon then.

00:12:25.300 --> 00:12:28.130
I couldn\'t say it any
better and nobody could.

00:12:28.130 --> 00:12:31.763
Just take them home and love
them, just the way they are.

00:12:31.763 --> 00:12:34.263
(light music)

00:13:42.873 --> 00:13:45.153
- And remember: Intersex Stories.