Some people are born with sex characteristics that do not fit the usual medical and social categories for male or female bodies. That is what intersex means. It can involve chromosomes, hormones, gonads, genitals, or reproductive anatomy. The injustice intersex people have named is not that their bodies exist. It is that, too often, other people have decided those bodies needed to be corrected before they could ever consent.

That distinction matters. Intersex experience is not the same thing as being transgender, gay, bisexual, or queer, though some intersex people may also be those things. For many intersex people, the central issue has been bodily autonomy. Surgeries and medical interventions have often been performed on infants and children, not because their lives were in immediate danger, but because their bodies made adults uncomfortable with ambiguity.

That should trouble us. It reveals how deeply our communities have been shaped by the demand for normalcy. Rather than making room for bodies that do not fit our categories, we have too often altered those bodies to protect the categories themselves. The harm is not only physical, though it can be. It is also found in the silence, secrecy, shame, and loss of choice many intersex people have carried into adulthood.

During Pride Month, it is not enough to add the “I” to 2SLGBTQIA+ and move on. If inclusion means anything, it has to include truth, consent, bodily autonomy, and an end to unnecessary medical interventions on children. Intersex people are not asking us to make their bodies easier for everyone else to understand. They are asking whether we can build communities where difference does not have to be corrected before it can belong.