What do you focus on when it comes to defining intersexuality?

We are created people with sexual characteristics - genital, gonads, or chromosomes - who do not fall into the binary definition of male or female bodies. It is the definition of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, we agree with this and that is of importance. To this must be added the social experience: pathology, medical intervention, discrimination... This social experience leads me to make intersex person, regardless of the variations, that social experience is what unites us to intersex people. Medicine, society and the state have annulled me, and that nullity leads me to intersex person and militant.

What is its subversive definition?

He has given me words to the intersex identity: for the first time I received words that are not medical terms. We use the word “variation”, but I have continuously heard words that impress me from the mouths of doctors, such as “ambiguity”, “malformation”, “health problem” and above all the names of disease. That's why it's so hard to exist as an intersex person, because we haven't been told we're intersex people. I have a name for illness. We are syndromes. I've felt the recognition of my life by detecting words that don't belong to medicine. That is why I say that to exist is to exist politically.

If we don’t ask him too much… When did he hear those words for the first time?

It was 2017, at a conference framed in the Quincena de la Spectacularity organized by the structure Collectif Intersexes et Allié.es (Intersex and Allies Collective). Intersex was the first time I saw some people. Intersex was defined, but at the time I didn't know that word. The truth is that they told experiences that were very similar to what I had experienced... He was 38 years old.

That encounter has enormous value. What time would I highlight from this 30-year struggle of existence of greed among intersex people arising in the 1990s?

As could not be otherwise, I have to mention the creation of the first structure of intersex people. It was in 1993, Intersex Society of North America (ISNA). It was revolutionary. They presented themselves to the public as people with intersex variations who rejected medical interventions. It was the first time. On the other hand, I would highlight the 2013 Malta Declaration. Some 30 structures agreed on a joint claim, asking the end of all discrimination and claiming the right to physical integrity, physical autonomy and self-determination.

Two words of medicine?

Medicine is not hors-sun, it's part of our society, it depends on the system. You can't look at medicine without looking at the policies and imaginaries of society. The pathology of the Intersex people and the intervention in our bodies must be framed within the patriarchal logic; moreover, they are part of a racist, homophobic logic, and of an oppression based on health. Debates on the Law on Bioethics last year have led to the radicalization of our position. We had hope, but, despite the arguments and the support of international organizations, we realized that we have no weight in the relationship of force. The doctors ran the government decisions. But that is right: they are part of the same class. These people have gone through the same schools, they have the same leisure times, they go to the same restaurants.

Doctors say that operative techniques have improved and that their experiences are few things from the past.

The truth is, if I were a doctor, I would make the same argument. It is an insurmountable argument, because we have no refutation figure. We don't have data, we don't find it, we keep it. If you're so sure of them, why do you keep them? I was born in 1979 and I, too, believed that it was from the ancient times and the only ones that are desperate. You know, it's hard to find other experiences, intersex people aren't on all streets. My mother told me that she asked the doctors that it was a ttipi to meet some who had the same variation. They replied that there was no more. Recently I have crossed an intersex person of the same age who has gone through the same hospital... That's our own. I left the health system when I was seventeen years old, the day after, it didn't appear. They never came to look for me. If they came, they knew what the consequences were for me. But no. The techniques have improved, the truth, but they continue with the operations. We can say they mutilate better. We want it to be on the basis of a free and clear consensus of the intersex person. Is it so hard to understand? Those who want this road would live better, and those who don't want it would be safe. If it were just a generation, it would be too much. Unfortunately, we are much more. I have no problem with intersex or transgender people who want surgical or hormonal interventions. If I agree, go ahead!

Intersexuals are bodies that question binarism.

This is a subject to be dealt with very carefully. Our stocks are not part of the rules, so we demonstrate that binary organization is social construction. But at the same time, ours should not be used as an argument against the binary system of gender. There are binaries in intersex people, for example me. Those who deny the binary system are non-binary people. In the collective there are no binaries, so we are not representatives of binarism. We have the categories that exist in society. What we say is that sexual categories are constructions.

Do you place heteronorma at the base of the violence suffered?

Clearly. All we have suffered is the result of binarism. You need men and women, and that's heteronorma. Looking at the chromosomes, which was XY, XX or XXY, and finding XX, I was classified as a woman following a stereotype. It's a matter of binarism, but that impoverishment is linked to heterosexual thinking: because they didn't build me a vagina, and I needed a vagina that was interiorizable. Look. That's what my whole story is about. They drive binarism by operating or contributing hormones. Hormones, to flush out the beard, hormones to flush out the breasts -- but it's never occurred to them to ask the person where they are. Her vocabulary is raw: the vagina must be interiorizable and the penis of adequate size. Heterosexuality can be broader than that, so we are in a heteronormalized conception. They want to build “adequate” heterosexual women and “adequate” heterosexual men.

It's an illusion. Furthermore, reproductive relations will not be guaranteed.

It has to be said that they do their best and put enormous resources in place to enable women to have children. If we are women, they have no problem with it. But for transgender women, they don't want ... But in reality, the fact that she was appointed a woman does not always represent an opportunity. For example, in variations called “partial or total androgen non-sensitivity”, XY are women classified. They don't have a uterus or menstrual period -- forgetfulness may happen, but it's rare -- but they're women put in to save their appearance.

These interventions can make intimate and sexual relationships painful. It also influences pleasure. Can we talk about it?

This is one of the reasons that led me to question mine. Certainly, what has been done to me influences my whole life. I can put words and that's the difference between my present and my past; or at least I've detected a few words to understand what I've lived. In real terms, it's not just a regular operation. In my case I have not been able to get the medical report, but I can tell you that I have had surgery fifteen times. When the problems have appeared, by infection or others, I have been repeated for years. I've also been dilated because if you don't dilate, you close the built vagina. Ten and ten dilatations. The problem of nonsensibility is also there. What I want to tell you is that the mines, the scars, the lack of sensitivity... all of which reminds me every day of the operations carried out in the distant past. Classified for women, she has eliminated the gonads she had kept inside and forced her to take hormones throughout her life. It has very serious psychological and physical consequences. I know you have as an argument the risk of testicular cancer. Instead of operating, why don't they follow us closely and in time? The most stubborn is cancer that is rare and the one that is best cured. It's not about that: a woman's contact with her testicles bothers them. From the ttipi you start to misuse and dirty our bodies. They can determine that it's not serious, but with the strength to treat us as a sick body, the time comes when we think we're sick. I rarely recognize the conversations, because they invade me, I don't find it a simple exercise.

How don't you have a medical report?

Usually, when you get into the hospital they give you some papers and when you take it out you have a report. I have received absolutely nothing... and I am not the only one, we have realized that we are almost the majority in this case. It's not that we don't have a medical report... they don't want to pass us. Following a cosmetic, physically and psychologically reason, they put us on the woollen. Of course, that's not going to be recognized. They don’t call us “intersex people,” and that’s what we have in the difficulties: we are syndromes, some “sexual development disorders.” Lying can also have its place. I've had 15 surgeries and 33 anesthesia, which the parents were told it was an operation or two. That is why we claim the status of free and informed consensus. In cases where there is no health risk, we ask for the end of surgical and hormonal interventions directed to children. In my case they started in three years – and it is late, give me! How would I give my free and informed consent at the age of three?

Approval. Free and informed.

The Me Too movement has allowed the issue of consensus to be placed at the center of the plaza, which allows few to express that non-consensual sexual relations can be derived. If there is no conformity, the dilatations are: I don't like this term, I have difficulty accepting it, but... it can be assimilated to a violation. When you put an object in a vagina to a child... Okay, it's a medical object, but it has the same function as a dildo. I forgive you for being raw, but what do you want you to burn more? This is the case and has many psychological consequences. If a child is born with hypospadias (does not have a hole in the tip of the penis), an operation is proposed for parents to be able to pee standing, that is, the cause given to them. To check that the penis goes well... they put the child's penis into erection, to confirm that the hardened penis goes straight. They do it to a kid ... Why are we fighting? Imagine how the consequences can be. As for mine, I can say that I don't live in my body, that I don't feel this body. Between the ages of three and seventeen, I have not felt suddenly because of their enemies, photographs taken, operations and dilatations. There it is.

However, he remains standing and proud as an intersex person. How does your pride influence physicians?

The state doesn't change. In the event of an amendment, it shall be bound by the law. During the debate on the Law of Bioethics, a hundred doctors published an unequivocal opinion text. This shows us that there are bottlenecks. We did not believe that they were going to put so much pressure on the parliamentarians, we picked up the denial.

What is the place of the pathological approach in society?

Medicine is a donation from society. What is our society like? The target, of an age, of a certain culture and of a certain amount of money. That's what dominates, what governs us. Society is what society wants to show us. These regulated bodies that appear on television are society. We have very few spaces to exist outside of these bodies and representations. This organization goes beyond the physical body. My name is Naima, I am a reasoned person of a different language and religion, except in France, which is not a festive atmosphere for us. At the same time, my family, my friends are part of society... Surely people have the ability to educate and welcome them if other representations are given. I've just concretized a acquaintance who I see regularly as an intersex person, who didn't know that we existed and thanked me. We fight for spectacularity. But the same struggle is carried by lesbian, gay and trans collectives, and you as Basques as well. The right to exist and freedom. But that existence is unbearable. I believe, however, that the situation is changing.

If the answer is salty and sweet...

Below comes the change – from the LGBT community, from the extreme left, from minority and minority citizens –… My positive side is that we are at the end of the “white race”, because the decline appears everywhere. But that doesn't mean that some steps delay us and leave us with the site... Antonio Gramsci states that “the old world is going to die, the new world is going late, and in that interval of lights and shadows the monsters are born.” I'm very proud to be one of those worlds that the old world wants to preserve: an intersex person, the LGBT community, a minority culture in France ... It's not easy every day, but I'm proud.

What do we have those of us who are not intersex people to build and to deconstruct? Among the readers there are some who surely intend to be parents.

We are doing a great deal of awareness-raising, we have just drawn up a booklet for parents. We list the different variations to know exactly what your child's variation is. We reassure ourselves, explaining that intersex is not serious, it is not a drama and that the priority is to protect the child. I want my parents and they want me, but they got stuck on this issue. They let her hand in trying to protect her. They were deceived: because they were explained my thing with scientific words, they were working-class and talked about a doctor in front of them... We want to end the envisibilization, and their report goes in that direction. It's a lot for us.

We also provide training. I've been militating for about ten years in feminist and LGBT collective groups. I have never met in their speeches. In the end, because mine was not represented. I don't want to get dirty, it's not a matter of that. People have to be informed as we know we exist. I was 38 years old and I learned that I was an intersex person. It's too late. Thanks to the spectacularity that we are taking and the influence of intersex references, I hope that the following do not have to wait so long. But it's not easy. Vincent Guillot says that “the difficulty lies in naming what has never been named.” So, if someone tells you that you're an intersex person, help them and don't treat everything as a child, don't take misused attitudes. Collectives like ours are there to help.

Do we have a place in your struggle or not?

Intersex people are on the front line, we are the striker. But in reality, you can't just stay in our hands, because it's a big fight and we're few activists. Society has to unite us, because without it we will hardly win. We need allies. But being me here is a victory. If I have my revenge: I exist, I still exist. The conclusions of the interventions are dramatic for many and can lead to suicide.