Bodily Autonomy for All: Lessons from the Intersex Movement

Bodily Autonomy for All: Lessons from the Intersex Movement explores how the fight for intersex rights offers powerful insights into broader struggles for bodily autonomy. Drawing from personal experience and activism, this keynote will challenge secrecy and medical authority while highlighting the importance of informed consent, self-determination, and justice for all bodies. Attendees will leave with a deeper understanding of intersex issues and how they connect to wider movements for human rights and bodily freedom.

Pidgeon Pagonis has worked for over a decade as an intersex advocate, speaker, consultant, photographer, and filmmaker to shed light on the human rights violations endured by intersex people. Their goal is to help end the non-consensual irreversible medical procedures meant to discipline unruly intersex bodies. Pidgeon’s accessible advocacy helps people complicate their preconceived binary notions about “biological differences”. Their work has been essential for those who want to show up for intersex people in their lives, but aren’t sure where to start.

Whether advancing the intersex cause as the co-founder of the Intersex Justice Project (IJP), co-producing viral informational videos, creating art that centers intersex voices, appearing on the cover of National Geographic “Gender Revolution” special issue, or being honored as an LGBT Champion of Change in by the Obama White House, Pidgeon has staked out a place at the fore of debates on intersexuality. In 2020, IJP’s #EndIntersexSurgery campaign succeeded in getting Lurie Children’s to become the first hospital in the nation to apologize and halt surgeries. Currently, they’re working on their memoir slated to be published in 2023 by Little A Press

This event is part of a Women’s and Gender Studies Lecture Series funded by the Mellon Foundation’s Affirming Multivocal Humanities Grant, which was awarded to Dr. Winfrey and the WGS program in the fall of 2023.

This lecture will be recorded and ready to view on the Available Recordings page approximately 24-36 hours after the conclusion of the event. The recording will only be available for two weeks from the date of the lecture.