Campus community recognizes Intersex Awareness Day

Oct. 26 is internationally recognized Intersex Awareness Day, and the UNC LGBTQ Center will be telling students about what it means to be intersex.

The center will have representatives in the Pit today from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. said Terri Phoenix, director of the LGBTQ Center.

Rachael James, a member of Tar Heels for Equality and the head of Athlete Ally, said LGBTQIA awareness is important because people in the LGBTQ community face a stigma.

“They’re not fully accepted into society, and I think that this day really helps in just accepting everyone for who they are, for who they express themselves to be,” James said.

James said Athlete Ally, an LGBTQ organization within the student-athlete community, has an educational booth in the Loudermilk Center for Excellence every other Wednesday where student-athletes go for tutoring and academic advising. The booth also acts as a way for Tar Heels for Equality to highlight LGBTQ activities on campus.

“It just brings awareness to LGBT activities and tomorrow I plan on doing it on Intersex Awareness Day and just celebrating that,” James said.

UNC graduate Ashley Dai, co-founder of Tar Heels for Equality, said Intersex Awareness Day is important in raising awareness for a topic that not many people know about.

“Like I am not very well versed in it either and still very involved in the community, so I can only imagine what people who aren’t in the LGBTQ community know about it,” Dai said.

Dr. Richard Sutherland, associate professor of urology at the UNC School of Medicine, said in the last five to 10 years, the medical field has changed, so that many doctors have stopped performing gender assignment surgeries on intersex children.

“There’s a couple of reasons that’s happened. One because it’s the right thing,” Sutherland said. “Second, because our society is more accepting of that.”

Sutherland said it is important to understand that intersex is a respected medical diagnosis.

“In the pediatric medicine field, and the urological medicine field of intersex, it is known to be a true diagnosis, it is respected and must be cared for by experts and that the old ways are no longer valid,” Sutherland said.

He said bringing awareness is important because it gives validity to the people who are intersex and helps to promote society’s acceptance of intersex people.

“We’re very happy that society is accepting that also,” Sutherland said. “It’s very difficult to do the right thing if no one’s going to accept it.”

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