A friend tells you, casually over coffee, that they’re intersex.
You freeze. You want to say the right thing. You don’t want to say the wrong thing. You end up saying “oh wow, thank you for telling me” in a tone slightly too polite, and now both of you feel awkward, because you’ve turned a normal Tuesday afternoon into a moment your friend has to manage your reaction to.
This article is for that moment. The good news: allyship is much smaller, much quieter, and much less performative than most people think. It’s a short list of habits that take less effort than you’ve been led to fear.
Here’s what you can look into to improve your understanding and allyship right away.
Five Things to Do
1. Believe them, move on.
No interview is required. No questioning their identity. No “double check”. While there’s no clear right response to a disclosure, most of the time it should be as neutral and casual as if your friends told you they’re left-handed. What this communicates: I heard you, I’m not going to make this weird, you’re still the same person to me. That is almost always exactly what your friend was hoping for.
Your friends and family members can be emotional when telling you. In these cases, observe their emotion and respond accordingly. The core idea is to make them feel easy, softened, and that they’re still the same person, your friend, or family member.
2. Use their words.
If they say “intersex,” say “intersex.” If they say “DSD,” say “DSD.” If they refer to themselves as a man, a woman, or neither, follow their lead. Don’t correct them for what you read in an article. Don’t correct or address them in a language they didn’t use. They are the expert on themselves.
In many cases, your friends or family members are also confused about which language to use. And this is ok. Just follow their lead at the time of their coming out, then together you can figure out the correct wording at a later time.
3. Protect their privacy.
Don’t share what they told you with others, not your partner, not your “open-minded” cousin, not the colleague you think would totally be supportive. The decision to disclose is theirs to make, every time, to every person. Once you share it without permission, you have permanently taken something from them that they cannot get back.
4. Default to inclusive language in general settings.
In every setting, default to inclusive language. Use “all bodies” instead of “male and female bodies” when you’re talking about health, “parents” on a school form instead of “mother and father,” etc..
The point isn’t to perform inclusion in the moments people are watching. It’s to build habits and make the world a little less binary by default, so the next time an intersex person who walks into a room doesn’t feel worried.
5. Show up beyond the personal.
Allyship isn’t only interpersonal. Sign petitions. Donate to intersex-led organizations, eg. Intersex Asia, OII Chinese, Intersex Thailand, Intersex Philippines, Campaign for Change Nepal, VoIS India, etc… Vote on bodily autonomy policies. Push your employer to update HR forms; push your kid’s school to update health questionnaires to be intersex inclusive, etc…
Personal kindness is very important but not sufficient to bring changes on a bigger scale. The structural fights are where allyship actually changes outcomes for people who haven’t even disclosed yet.
The “Don’t” List
The most common ally mistakes, drawn from intersex-led ally guides (IDAHOBIT, interACT FAQ):
If you have to remember only one item from this list: don’t expose their identity without their permission. Everything else can be apologized for and recovered from. That one usually can’t. Learn more about intersex terminology here.
Allyship Is Behavior, Not Identity
Here is the thing nobody puts on the Instagram graphics:
You don’t become an ally by declaring yourself one. You act as an ally in specific moments, when a colleague makes a tasteless joke, when a form forces a binary choice, when a hospital uses outdated language, when a journalist writes “born a boy but…” and you write to the editor.
Allyship is a verb, not a noun. The person you’re being an ally to get to decide if you’ve earned the noun. Until then, just keep doing the verb. You don’t have to be perfect. You don’t have to know everything. You don’t have to have a flawless track record. You just have to act decently, in specific moments, and keep doing it.
