LET’S TALK ABOUT INTERSEX
LET’S TALK ABOUT INTERSEX In his final year at Westminster, alumnus Anick Soni (Law LLB, 2017) came out as intersex. In the short time since then, he has made a significant contribution to the LGBTQIA+ community through his unwavering determination to educate society about what it means to be intersex and why we need to have more conversations about it.
“I didn’t realise sharing my story could create such radical change,” says Anick. “Telling me ten years ago that all this was going to happen wouldn’t have made any sense to me. It was such a big secret for such a long time.” The ‘secret’ Anick is referring to, is that he was born with intersex characteristics. Now, at just 25, his dedication to combatting ignorance around what this means has won him a Gay Times Honour award, an appointment as Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and the opportunity to write the first ever briefing paper on intersex for parliament, which was discussed in the House of Lords. So, what does ‘intersex’ mean? “Intersex is an umbrella term that refers to when someone is born with biological variations in their sex characteristics,” Anick explains. “So, that’s things such as our hormones, our chromosome pattern; the way our body looks on the inside and the outside. When someone is born with an intersex trait or variation, their body is different in some way to what you’d expect in typical examples of what we see as ‘male’ or ‘female’. “For example, some people may have XX chromosomes, but their body
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looks more male; or they may have more androgen, so that their chromosome pattern doesn’t match how they look on the outside. For others, like in my situation, their body doesn’t respond to androgens in the same way. So no matter how much testosterone I produce, my body doesn’t look like other male bodies, without intervention.” If this is news to you, you’re not alone. Intersex characteristics are rarely talked about and almost never taught in schools. One of the reasons being that the terminology surrounding intersex is so ambiguous. “Intersex is such a complex area because it’s a language game,” says Anick. “There’s so much medicalisation involved, and it’s so broad. Some of the characteristics that count as being ‘intersex’, actually occur in one in every three hundred boys. “But the problem is, we don’t know how many people are born with intersex characteristics, or how many ‘corrective’ surgeries are taking place, because the definitions just aren’t there. Without the information, parents are more likely to opt their child in for surgery, which is not a quick fix and can have serious repercussions throughout childhood and later life.”
| ALUMNI MAGAZINE 2020
To complicate things further, in 2006 the medical profession renamed intersex as ‘Disorders (or Differences) in Sex Development’ or ‘DSD’, which was met with controversy due to the emphasis on and association with medical disorders. “I’m now working with other intersex people to establish a charity, which aims to encourage open discussions between families and medical professionals about the options available to people with intersex variations,” explains Anick. “It’s not about banning surgeries altogether, but about supporting parents so that they can make an informed decision about whether that’s right for their child.” The complexity of these issues, along with the potential impact on human rights violations, is something which Anick was able to study during his law degree at Westminster. “The first two years of my degree were fairly uneventful,” he says. “But thanks to the Distant Horizons scholarship, I spent my third year abroad and gained a whole new outlook. It’s where I found my niche, and decided to focus on topics that would help me look into intersex in greater detail.
