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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Miss Major Griffin-Gracy driving a needle exchange van in San Francisco during the HIV/AIDS Crisis, 1980s

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Miss Major Griffin-Gracy at the Gilded Grape, New York, 1970s

‘I defy any doctor in the world to prove that I am not a woman. It’s only petty maliciousness that is trying to cause me heartache and harm. If they would devote the same amount of energy to local problems that are hurting the community it would be much better. I have lived a good life and a Christian life and I though I am a Christian I reverance all religious faiths. I have lived a good citizen for many years in this town and am going to die a good citizen, but I am going to die a woman.’

- Lucy Hicks Anderson, 1945

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)

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Angel Maxine “Kill The Bill, Our Love Is Our Will” in Accra, Ghana (2022)

‘My name is Kit and I’m 23 years old. It’s been a journey discovering who I am, what I like, don’t like, and what’s best for myself. I came out as asexual to my friends in my senior year of high school. There were lesbian jokes, or celibacy jokes as I am a Christian but I was happy to know nothing was wrong with me and that’s why celibacy seemed so easy so easy to me. My best friend at the time tried to “join” me because she hated men for a week and I became very passionate about asexual awareness, because it’s not swearing off of men period, or even for a few days. My family wasn’t as supporting either. At first I was told I didn’t find the right man. I was asked if I was gay. (they will never open that can of worms that I like woman, gender queer, etc in a Black, Christian household? Oh no!) I was told it was due to trauma.’

'She looks at me again, with an expression of disdain. I think I look bored. “But it’s not natural!”, she says, and I want to smack my head on a desk. “Yeah, you know what else isn’t natural? That synthetic you’re wearing”, I snap back and clutches her shirt protectively. “You can’t compare clothes to humans”, says and I roll my eyes. “Yeah, it’s a travesty I’m comparing human beings to inanimate clothes”, I say.

She’s inching away from me, as if I have a communicable disease and it’s hilarious, honestly. “I’ll go now”, I say and stand up, brushing my clothes. I look back at her and run out from the room like a bat out of hell, almost colliding with a lamp. I hope the future’s better than this. Here’s to a great 2015.’

Brown and Gray: An Asexual People of Color Zine (2015)

“Another example I can draw on from oral histories I have conducted is of a Black trans woman who was kicked out of African Ancestral Lesbians United for Societal Change in the early 1990s. Until she was outed, she had been part of that community for some time, participating in dialogues and events and helping to sustain the organization. Members of the organization determined, however, that she was a “male infiltrator” who had to be extracted. Her assertion that she was a lesbian among lesbians was viewed as a hostile takeover in the eyes of the other members of the group. What would happen if, instead of being an object of fear and suspicion, there was recognition among lesbians that trans women have helped shape lesbian politics and culture? How would that change the narrative of women’s history?”

Good and Messy: Lesbian and Transgender Identities by Matt Richardson, taken from forum: Lesbian generations, L.J. Rupp, Nan Alamilla Boyd, R. Vanita, M. Richardson, S. Stryker (2013)