(upbeat music begins)
- Were you born with ovaries or any of the female genitalia?
- I was born with ambiguous genitalia.
I had a penis and then I had like a pseudo vagina opening
but they went ahead and closed it up and let me move on.
I'm a boy.
- [Speaker] If you were alone in a room
with an intersex person, what would you ask?
- Is there a specific bathroom that you prefer to use?
- Have you ever been fetishized?
- What sex is like for you?
- Ooh
(jazzy music plays)
- Hi.
- I'm Matthew.
- I'm Jahni. Nice to meet ya.
- Wait a minute.
Something is very familiar here.
- Yeah. Did you go to Federal High?
- I totally did.
Nice to hear from you again.
- Yeah, it's nice to hear from you too.
- Other side of the curtain.
- So overall for a person
like me who's very ignorant on the topic-
- Someone who doesn't really know much
about individuals who are intersex-
- What is intersex?
- Oh yeah.
So intersex is an umbrella term that is able to explain
lived experiences of people who have bodily variations
and that can go to chromosomes and it goes to genitalia,
it goes to hormones.
There's like 40 different intersex traits
that are just like on the books and like-
- Listen, I'm gonna be on them doing my research.
- A lot of people didn't even know
that their intersex trait is an intersex trait
but share the experience of intersex people.
Such a wide range.
- Is that similar to being hermaphrodite?
- Yes, but what we do with that word,
we don't typically use that word.
- Okay. - In our community it's more
of a slur by non intersex people said.
But intersex people tend to sometimes use that
as a way of reclaiming it and as a way of being really proud
and happy about who they are.
- The surgery that you mentioned,
what kind of surgery is that?
- Yeah, so I had a cosmetic surgery when
I was younger that was non-consensual.
That pretty much closed.
It's gonna get real weird pretty much in the scrotum,
there's where testicles drop, mine had not fully fused.
- Okay. - At that time
so it was like in the middle stages of being like a labia
and a scrotum.
There was no vaginal canal or anything
like that so they just went ahead and closed that up.
- So do you feel that children should be able to wait
until the age of consent?
- I think that if it's not medically necessary,
we should hold off surgery until the age of consent just so
that the kid has time to really feel what their body's like.
- Have you changed anything
about your body that you aren't comfortable with?
- I have not yet changed anything on my body.
I have been like in the accepting stage of it.
I think I've had an internal pressure of like I need
to reclaim my genitals for myself and like be able to put
my foot down and say they're mine.
And so I've been thinking a lot about gender
affirming surgery and vaginoplasty.
It's on the books, it's coming.
We'll see when.
- Do you feel that your parents fully educated you
on what intersex is?
- I don't feel that at all.
My dad didn't know what that was.
He felt like he did something wrong more than anything.
Like it was his fault that I was intersex.
- What are your pronouns?
- I use she/her pronouns.
They/them pronouns.
Pronouns to me is like, they're kind of just fun, you know
move throughout in different spaces.
- When did you discover you're intersex?
- About when I was 18, I started losing weight randomly,
50 pounds one week and gain it back the next week.
So I went to the doctors
and they were like we need to check a whole bunch of stuff.
And then they diagnosed me with having partial androgen
insensitivity syndrome.
But I don't like saying syndrome because...
- Right. - Ugh.
- And what does that mean exactly?
- Yeah, so my body's not able to uptake
and like receive testosterone signals in the same way.
And so my body had a really hard time like fully
masculinizing so my voice didn't really drop.
Body hair is pretty limited.
I grew breasts when I was 10.
It's pretty a trip.
- Oh wow.
- When did you realize you were intersex
and then how did that affect you growing up in school?
- Growing up through school, I was always seen
as an androgynous kid and I had breasts
and I went to the boys locker room.
I've been in the girls locker room.
I did it all.
- We went to middle and high school together.
I don't think you were out as intersex at that point.
- Mm-mm.
- To what extent were you like keeping yourself hidden
as intersex person?
Like I've also probably been
in the locker room at the same time as you.
- Mmhm. I didn't even know until I was after high school.
Feelings around like my queerness, feelings around like
transness and like I didn't tell nobody but I would
like I dreamed that I was gonna be pregnant and give birth
and so like I've always felt like I was hiding that part
but never the intersex part 'cause I didn't know it existed.
- Yeah.
- I know you mentioned that you grew breasts
when you were younger. Do you still have...?
- Oh yeah.
- Oh wow. Okay.
- They're in, sure happy with them. Always have been.
- So, I was wondering what sex is like for you?
- Ooh. We love a spicy question.
- Oh good.
- Different areas feel better for me
but it's kind of the same to a degree.
I think I have a little bit more of like what I would call
like dissonance of some sort like a distancing
from like my actual genitalia.
- Okay.
- Like I'm all about the other person.
- How does reproduction work for someone who's intersex?
- For intersex people, reproduction can be so varied
in the way that some people are infertile,
some people can have babies that are intersex.
- Is there a specific bathroom that you prefer to use
or maybe were even forced to use?
- Some internal thing told me not to use public restrooms.
My whole childhood, I have never once used the bathroom
at school.
Now I use the women's restroom
but I don't use public restrooms really still.
- Have you ever been fetishized for being intersex?
- Yeah, actually. Now that you say that, when I was
I did sex work when I was younger.
I feel like I made myself this fetish in a way
and like tailored myself into this fetish
of like giving the best of both worlds.
Like that's how I sold.
So it's kind of like a double edged sword in a way.
Like I knew there was a fetish
for quote unquote hermaphrodites or whatever.
- With what you had, with what you were doing, I'm sure that
you know, had to make money some way.
- Oh yep.
You already know.
Gotta get what you gotta get.
It was just like a need more than like oh,
I want to go do this.
- What type of people are you sexually attracted to?
- Honestly, I feel like I just move with the flow.
More leaning masc-centered in general.
Not men particularly, but anyone who has masculine energy.
- Do you disclose that you're intersex
on the first date or is it like the fifth date?
How does that normally go?
- So for dating, honestly, I wear everything on my sleeve.
I'm out there, open.
If you know me you probably know I'm intersex out the cut.
- So what would you say are some of the big goals
of the intersex community in terms
of like social or political change right now?
- I think we've been working on for many years is to end
non-consensual intersex surgeries.
At least get those pushed back until the age of consent.
And another big one that we have is the social
education aspect.
I have to engage with the medical community very different
than the average person.
The erasure within just the medical field itself.
There are times where doctors have blacked out
people's records so they can't actually see what happened.
Some doctors don't even know what intersex means.
It's interesting to me that you prefer to do surgery
on these people when you don't know more about their traits.
To hear that doctors are doing this to people consciously
I think trips a lot of people out
and like makes 'em take a step back.
- Do you think more people are intersex than we realize?
- Oh a hands down a hundred percent, yes.
There's more and more traits that we're having discourse
about being included like PCOS.
- Oh - And some other ones.
And you know a lot of people have PCOS.
- Yeah. - So like I truly do believe
there's a lot more intersex people.
Not everyone has ever tested all
of their chromosomes and their hormones and all that stuff.
- Right. - So who's to know?
- I can actually relate a little bit (laughs)
only because like I have a condition called
Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome.
- Yeah.
- Which means I don't have a regular period.
Coming to terms with that condition
has definitely been a journey.
- How you're talking about it and how you engage
with it really reminds me very much so
about intersex experiences.
Funny 'cause PCOS is actively
like a discussed and debated whether it's intersex
or not as a trait because it does engage
with hormones and production and reproduction.
- You know, intersex affects every aspect of your life.
What aspects of your life does it affect that you feel
like are not obvious to people who are not intersex?
- In day to day, really it's like kind of paperwork stuff.
It'll say biological sex, male or female and like
that's kind of hard to tick.
Seeing that every day and seeing like you being
erased every single day and like now these nonprofits
who do LGBTQIA work, but where is the real intersex work?
So thinking about intersex experiences and intersex erasure
in the day to day.
Intersex people get like the least funding out
of the whole LGBTQ community as a whole.
And then for someone to put intersex on to be more inclusive
but not to do intersex programming
that doesn't make any sense.
- [Matthew] Yeah.
- Do you think that gender politics are becoming
overly trendy?
- I think the gender identity discourse coming into
like main stage is so good but it's gonna ruffle a lot
of feathers 'cause you know it's gonna push back
against like every cultural piece of how we live our lives.
- What is the most common mistake that well meaning people
in the general public make in regards to you
or intersex people in general?
- Very much so wanting the general public to like understand
that trans has to do with gender identity.
Whereas intersex has to do with biological sex.
It's slowly growing and we see it in media.
Intersex is like coming up more and more
but it's not as fast
as like the trans explosion I would say.
Where like, all of a sudden in like 2014
like trans just popped up, like kind of everywhere.
- Are there things you love about being intersex?
- There are so many things I love about being intersex,
honestly. Being intersex has put me in a position
to challenge people's perspectives and I think that has been
like so eye opening for myself.
Also just like feeling that I embody not just
to a strict category.
I think there's like some freedom in that.
- [Observer] This is an opportunity for you all to meet,
if you would like.
- (gasps) Yeah. - Jahni.
- It's been so long. - Yeah.
- You do hugs? - Oh my gosh, yes.
- I'm a hugger. I like the dress.
- Thank you so much.
I love these braids.
I love this fit.
Show up. Show out.
You know, it's so crazy.
I'm just like shook.
- Oh yeah. - The universe.
Really? 10 years.
- Sixth grade band.
- Exactly. - (indistinct)
- Oh my god, we were band kids.
What a trip.
Like where, where else would this happen?
- Can we hug again?
- Yes, of course.