Happy Pride Month, Black LGBTQIA Community!

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No matter where, who or what we are, Black queer people have always been the originators, leaders, teachers, speakers and creators of queer history and culture across the globe. I thank and honour all Black queer people of the past and present for helping us reach where we are today and where we will go in the future. 🖤🤎

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Queer siblings, Colin and Caz, late 1980s. Photograph: Colin Grant

“I’m driven by my desire for the liberation and dignity of all the communities that I care about— the dignity of Black people; the dignity of queer people; the dignity of intersex people; the dignity of all marginalized people,”

- Sean Saifa Wall, Sean Saifa M. Wall ’01 reflects on time as intersex activist by Nigel Jaffe for The Williams Record (2019)

After college, he came out as transgender and began testosterone therapy. He said his experience trying to navigate the gender binary around that time helped push him toward a career in activism.

“When I started taking T [testosterone], I wanted to pass — I wanted to be binary,” he said. “I came to realize the limitations of my body simply because of the intersex trait that I have, and I knew that in order to create a world in which I want to exist, it was required for me to step out as an intersex activist.”

For Wall, the institutionalized enforcement of the gender binary is just another example of the oppressive systems of power he studied as a history major at the College. “History is told from the perspective of the victors,” he said. “I saw again and again that the people who are most marginalized are overwritten.”

With that in mind, Wall said he hopes to shed light on the struggles of intersex people everywhere by sharing his own story. He said he has given a lot of thought to the importance of personal stories as tools of activism.

“At birth, a narrative for my life was prescribed for me without my consent,” he said. “Doctors tried to write a narrative on my body, and it’s a narrative that they write for a lot of intersex people. For me, it’s important to tell my truth: the truth of what happened to my body, and the truth of what happens to so many people.”

“I’m driven by my desire for the liberation and dignity of all the communities that I care about— the dignity of Black people; the dignity of queer people; the dignity of intersex people; the dignity of all marginalized people,” he said.

“I think I will do this work as long as I live,” he said. “I am committed to a vision where there will be an end to medically unnecessary intersex surgeries in the United States. It’s going to take time to get there, but I’m willing to go as far as I need to go in order to achieve that, while building the capacity of activists to continue that work.”

Sean Saifa M. Wall ’01 reflects on time as intersex activist by Nigel Jaffe for The Williams Record (2019)

Activist Sean Saifa Wall is an unapologetic Black voice in the intersex community. The 38-year-old was born with androgen insensitivity syndrome (AIS), one of a variety of intersex conditions in which a person is not distinctively male or female. He said his activism is fueled by anger and love.

“Anger at what was done to my body without my thorough informed consent, and love for what remains of my body and to protect a future generation from those violations,” he told NBC OUT.

The advocate speaks out against surgeries on intersex children, commonly performed to remove their reproductive organs or alter their genitalia to make them look more distinctively male or female. It’s something Wall has experienced first hand.

“I draw a very distinct parallel between how the medical community has inflicted violence on intersex people by violating their bodily integrity, and how state violence violates the bodily integrity of Black people,” he said.

“I think I’m a survivor of medicalized violence. I think I’m a survivor of state violence, because my dad went to prison,” he said.

While Wall was dealing with the trauma of his father’s death, he was also dealing with a sense of dysphoria over her gender identity. “Woman” just wasn’t an identity that felt right to him. Years later, when he was in college, he looked up “testicular feminization syndrome” online and began learning about AIS, which he didn’t even know he had. He realized the “gonads” described in his medical records were actually male testes.

“I really just started to put things together,” said Wall. “All of my visits to the doctor, what happened when I was 13, all of it started coming together to make sense. And I think that’s when I was just really overwhelmed. I felt feelings of shame. I felt like a freak, but I also felt betrayed because I was like, ‘Why didn’t anyone tell me this?’”

“My desire for intersex liberation is totally intwined with Black liberation. They cannot be teased apart,” Wall concluded.

OutFront: An Unapologetic Black Voice in the Intersex Community by Julie Compton for NBC News (2016)

As a mixed Black and South Asian aromantic, I implore all nonblack aros and even other members of the LGBTQ+ community to educate themselves on black history, and remember to listen, uplift, support, and protect your fellow black members of the LGBTQ+ community.

- Jason W. (@/DerelictSpectre) for AUREA (2021)

It’s wild how my general positivity posts about supporting Black queer people have outsold my posts actually sharing the theory that would help said Black queer people. My Black ace shoutout has outsold every post on what those Black aces actually say. A bunch of people pulled up to reblog my post calling out the neglect of stud and stem from lesbian gender, yet a bunch of my posts on actual stemme theory are sat at 5 notes. Wbk Tumblr prioritises validity over material support and liberation but WOW…

’This is a time where the racism that exists within the LGBTQ+ community needs to be addressed. It’s time for white queer people to stand up for us and to educate themselves, and for non-Black people of colour to understand that they aren’t immune to anti-Blackness either. Now is the time to remember that queer culture wouldn’t exist without Black culture and Stonewall wouldn’t have happened without Black trans women. Even if none of that were true, it wouldn’t make our struggle any less significant to the LGBTQ+ community. All Black Lives Matter, no ifs, no buts, no justification. That includes Black trans lives, Black gay lives, Black bisexual lives, Black asexual lives, Black non-binary lives. That’s what I’m going to make some noise about, and you should too.’

As a Black Woman, Celebrating Pride This Year Has Been Hard, Yasmin Benoit for Refinery29 (2020)