Intersex Asia Executive Director Hiker Chiu participated in Women Deliver 2026 (WD26) in Melbourne, marking a historic milestone as the first known intersex activist from Asia to join the conference in its history. Hiker’s participation represented an important step in strengthening intersex visibility and building bridges between the intersex movement and wider feminist, bodily autonomy, and social justice spaces.
At WD26, Hiker was invited to speak in Queers Deliver: Building the Future of Inclusive Global Feminist Gatherings, in Session 1: Queer Indigenous Sovereignty, Bodies and Belonging, alongside Obioma Chukwuike, Executive Director of Intersex Nigeria. In the session, Hiker situated intersex experience within broader conversations on colonial power, bodily autonomy, and belonging. Hiker emphasized that colonial systems claimed not only land, but also authority over bodies by classifying, correcting, and controlling those that did not fit binary norms. For intersex people, Hiker argued, sovereignty begins with bodily sovereignty: the right to exist in one’s body without being medically corrected to fit someone else’s definition of normal.
This perspective also highlighted a deeper challenge within feminist and sexual and reproductive health and rights spaces. Hiker noted that many of these spaces continue to rely on inherited colonial ideas of sex as binary, fixed, and medically defined. From this perspective, intersex exclusion is not only intentional; it is also structural. A truly decolonised feminist movement would trust lived bodies over medical authority, plurality over classification, and create space for bodies that do not fit dominant norms without requiring justification.
This year, five intersex participants were present at WD26: Hiker Chiu, Obioma Chukwuike, Crystal Hendricks from South Africa, Andy Maxell from Kenya, and Rogena Sterling, Chair of Intersex Aotearoa in New Zealand. Their participation remained limited within a conference of around 6,500 participants, but it signaled meaningful progress in intersex visibility in a major global feminist gathering.
Intersex advocates contributed across several parts of the programme. Crystal Hendricks, supported by ILGA World as staff working on sex characteristics, spoke in the plenary session “Autonomy is Collective: Bodily Autonomy and Community Power,” where she shared perspectives grounded in the experience of intersex women. Andy Maxell also joined as a panelist in “Rallying SOGIESC Supporters: Strategize to Resist Division and Build Unity.”
Beyond the formal sessions, Hiker and other intersex advocates engaged conference organizers directly to call for more intersex-inclusive language and explicit recognition of intersex issues. This advocacy reflected a wider goal: ensuring that intersex people are not treated as an afterthought within global feminist spaces, but are fully visible, accurately named, and meaningfully included.
Hiker’s reflection on WD26 points to both progress and unfinished work. The conference created important opportunities for intersex participation, dialogue, and cross-movement connection. At the same time, it also underscored the continuing need for stronger inclusion, clearer language, and more intentional space for intersex leadership in global advocacy processes.
Learn more about intersexuality and Intersex Asia’s work here.
