OPINION: So *deep breath* I’m coming out.

Which isn’t huge news to anyone who knows me, as I’ve been out as lesbian for about a quarter century now.

However, I have something else to come out about … I’m also intersex.

Supplied Recent events have made Sarah Hendrica Bickerton rethink her views on coming out as intersex.

Cue the Law & Order “thump-thump” sound.

This is something I’ve known about myself for over a decade. Some medical professionals have known longer than I have, and I’ll touch on this later. But my family and some of my closest friends have been aware of this for some time now.

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Supplied Sarah Hendrica Bickerton as a baby.

Do I trumpet being intersex to the rafters? No, it’s been private to me, and something I felt like I didn’t need to mention to anyone but those closest to me.

However, recent events have made me rethink how important it is be to be out.

For those that aren't familiar, intersex is an umbrella term for those that are born with a range of reproductive/sexual anatomy, hormonal conditions, or chromosomal arrangements that don't quite fit traditional binary definitions of male and female.

Supplied Sarah Hendrica Bickerton says the category of what it means to be a ‘woman’ is broadening.

Just under two per cent of all people are born intersex, which is approximately the same number of people born with red hair, or with green eyes.

Intersexuality has been around longer than humanity has been a species, as it is present across all animals.

My particular condition is that I have Partial Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (PAIS) which, not to be too technical about it, means that my body doesn’t quite respond to androgens like testosterone the same way it does for y’all.

Basically, my body simply doesn’t work like most people’s do with hormones.

Some intersex people present as female at birth, their intersex status unbeknownst. Some male like me. Some are very apparently intersex. Being intersex is a whole range of embodiments.

In my case, I was born, and assumed to be, male because that’s what my genitals appeared to be. I grew up with all the traditional narrow expectations of a boy, though I hardly fitted those expectations well. That in itself is hardly remarkable, as should be a wonderful range of ways of being a boy.

I was quiet, quite the nerd, living submerged in books, although I was also hugely into swimming and skiing. Not especially feminine nor masculine, just somewhere in between.

But by the time everyone in my peer group was going through puberty, two things were evident to me; one, that I was a chick, and two, that I wasn’t going through puberty like everyone else was.

Photos of me going into my late teens show someone that could easily be thirteen or younger. I had long hair, and merely putting it in different styles had me able to shift between gendered androgynies. I was told I made guys uncomfortable by walking into the guys’ toilets at the time, though interestingly enough I wasn’t told the same about the women’s toilets.

I got massive cramps through my abdomen periodically that had me curled up on my bed in pain. Mood swings were all over the place.

My voice never dropped, and I just got some peach fuzz on my face, not much more than your average woman.

During these years I thought maybe I was transgender, despite all the things that trans people described feeling that I didn’t. This was the early 1990s after all, and finding anything on intersexuality outside dense biology textbooks was virtually unheard of.

I even wondered if I was simply gay, even though I wasn’t really attracted to guys. This was how much not having information impacted me.

I was to find out much much later, that at around age nineteen a hospital expert wrote on my file “possible intersex?”. But I was never told, something I am still frustrated at and pained about to this day. Still, I got access to hormones, and after a dosage was worked out for me, my mood swings dropped away and the abdominal cramps stopped.

I had my name changed to Sarah to match what everyone called me anyway, and focused on the important stuff to me, like coming out as lesbian, and working hard at university and later graduate school overseas. I faded into gender normativity like many queer woman, albeit one that had been disowned by her parents when they realised I wasn’t going to deny myself.

I focused on my studies, going on to work as a sociology lecturer in the US. I only found out I was intersex by happening across diagnostic criteria in my 30s, having a “wait a moment” moment, and presenting to a doctor.

The one thing that never happened to me, however, was surgery.

A great number of intersex infants and youth with more pronounced and apparent conditions than mine are operated on without their permission, or even without their parents’ permission. This is done in order to ‘normalise’ them and is considered ‘corrective’.

Many intersex activists are bravely working to end this practice and to ensure that intersex people have autonomy and control over their bodies; that we can choose what we have done. Our bodies, our choice.

I was lucky enough to avoid this, but now - as an adult - I had the choice to have surgery to fit my body to myself, which for me is something not unlike sex alignment surgery for transgender people, but with other potentialities due to being intersex.

The thing is, I simply couldn’t afford it. It was pursue university studies or have surgery, and studies won every single damn time, even if that meant living with a body that for me didn’t align.

You could say that, while being trans and intersex are two different things, what both groups have in common is a need for bodily autonomy.

Not having infants or youth operated on without their consent easily fits with also advocating for having trans and intersex people, from their teens onward, being able to have ownership over their bodies. To be able to chose surgeries and hormones, to be able to decide what interventions are necessary for yourself, even if that decision is for none, is fundamental here.

Having your body operated on without consent, or being denied it when you desperately need it, are two sides of the same coin.

So, it should come as no surprise that while they can be very different things, and have their own unique considerations, many of the interests of transgender, non-binary, and intersex people can align. Some intersex people are transgender, some intersex people are not, some are non-binary, some are not. Just like all different groups in society, people can exist across multiple categories, even if those categories are different.

But, why am I saying something now? I really don’t have to after all. I’m pākehā, over-educated (finally finishing my doctorate back here in New Zealand), with an upper-middle-class upbringing, and my parents did come around to accept me, so my privilege protects me and I can easily blur into the background.

There are two reasons.

First, transgender and non-binary people are being concertedly targeted by small but vocal hate groups. This is occurring internationally, but we’re also seeing it here in Aotearoa, with such hate groups often positioning this as a divide between transgender people and feminists, purporting to speak for cis-gender (ie non-transgender) women.

Particularly in Aotearoa these groups are being mobilised around passage of the ‘Births, Deaths, Marriages, and Relationships Registration Bill’, which amongst other things updates how gender is recorded on official documents to align how we understand gender today, and simply to update the legislation.

Well, I’m not transgender, I’m a cis woman and I’m a feminist, and I stand with my transgender friends against such hate. Our society needs to acknowledge gender diversity, and having one’s gender recognised in official records is such a basic and fundamental thing - it’s a no-brainer for me simply in terms of justice and respect.



I think it’s crucial for people with social privilege, like me, to stand up and push back when those with less privilege are targeted. Use our privilege for good, to listen, to be counted, and be real allies. Given the international, interconnected, world that we live in, the hatred being directed towards transgender and non-binary people overseas will impact us locally.

Being a voice to say to transgender and non-binary people that they are not alone in this, is the absolute least I can do.

Secondly, things like the ‘Births, Deaths, Marriages, and Relationships Registration Bill’ provides a benefit for so many intersex people too, but yet we are virtually never mentioned in this discussion.

I, for one, will finally be able to have ‘F’ on all my official documentation, not having to fear discrimination or having to explain myself.

Being able to stand up and say that intersex people are a part of this too is crucial, and really needs to be said, given how often we are invisible in this. Intersex people tend to be spoken of, not often speaking ourselves. But we are here, and should damn well be recognised.

Gender and sex are complex, despite what these hate groups would like you to believe. The categories of sex and gender we thought were simple in earlier times, are with more knowledge today being revealed to be, unsurprisingly, intricate and nuanced. While it may feel comfortable to cling to those older, simpler constructions, to do so perpetuates oppression and marginalisation.

Being open to having our ideas about gender challenged by new information is a sign of a generous and kind society, to continue off the words of our Prime Minister.

What we consider a woman or a man has shifted immensely over the last 100 years.

While I’m not butch, I am a tomboy. I assert myself more than is considered traditionally feminine, and I’m at a high level in my profession. I’m never going to settle down and have children. Not long ago, all of these choices of mine, and more, were considered highly inappropriate for a woman. Some still are.

But the category of what it means to be a ‘woman’ is broadening, as is the category of ‘man’. Further, given such breadth, surely it’s not that much more of a stretch to see that there are things outside just these two categories as well.

We’re pushing the boundaries of what we knew, or thought we knew, to new ways of understanding. Isn’t that cool? Isn’t that worth fighting for? Isn’t that worth standing up for?

I’m a sociologist by training, focusing on politics and policy, gender and technology, teaching, researching, and studying across all these subjects, and if there is one thing I know, it’s that including all parts of society (however messy and scary) is fundamentally important.

But that inclusion only happens when we accept people as they are, not by forcing them to be something we think they should be.

Or by thinking that they have to make us comfortable first; change is painful, folks.

This is why I’m coming out … to be counted. Something that is so important at this time in history.

To stand up for myself as someone who is intersex, and for other communities, like transgender and non-binary people. Make no mistake, no rights were ever won by staying silent.

So yeah, I’m coming out.

Hi, I’m Sarah, and I’m intersex.

Sarah Hendrica Bickerton is a PhD candidate and research assistant in the School of Government at Victoria University of Wellington. She has lived in New Zealand, the Netherlands, and the United States. The views in this article are her own, and are not those of the School of Government nor that of Victoria University of Wellington.



Further links



Intersex Youth Aotearoa: https://www.facebook.com/intersexyouthaotearoa/

Intersex Human Rights Australia: https://ihra.org.au/19853/welcome/

Interact Advocates: https://interactadvocates.org/i-want-to-be-like-nature-made-me/

