By Mason Soto
In planning this article and asking for interviews, I wanted to showcase academic and activist work that I saw happening in the communities around me. After the presidential memo in October that attempted to redefine sex as immutable, biological, and binary, the need to uplift and engage with intersex, trans, Two Spirit, non-binary, and gender non-conforming people seemed all the more urgent.
Thus, the following conversations with two intersex students are not about a singular experience, but about who these students are and what they are up to, as well as their thoughts on language, theory, beauty, survival, and more. Hopefully, these transcripts can open up chances for further recognition and collaboration across our community. Look for the rest of these long convos in our next issues!
Augustine, who insisted on mononymity (“like Cher or Madonna”), is an Evergreen student of writing. She is as boisterous at times as she is forbearing, and during our talk, she gave herself just the extra second between responses to ruminate on her words.
Where did you grow up?
L.A. I was there til the age of nine. Then I moved up here, to Everson, Washington, which is a border town to Canada. And then when I was 14, I moved to the East Coast. I went to Boston and Providence. Warwick, Rhode Island.
What brought you back here?
Family. They lived here. I moved away because I was listening to a lot of Ani DiFranco, and I had to see some stuff for myself. My mom got cancer, and so I came back to be with her. She is the most elegant woman I’ve ever met. The most linguistically well-versed person I’ve ever met. Also the most tender person I’ve ever met. She’s beautiful.
So, I got here. It was September when I officially moved here. I would come to visit, but I never lived in Olympia before.
How has your experience been here and at Evergreen?
Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. As someone who is terrified of provinciality and pedestrianism, it’s been making me feel like I’m the stupidest person alive — but what’s really brilliant is my engagement with Olympia, with Evergreen. It’s nice to know that I can sustain a sense of commitment.
I feel like a lot of people have that experience here. Like, it really does involve you. The city does, the school does. Okay, so let’s talk identity. I think this can be a troublesome question, but how would you describe your identity?
Ever in development. Beautiful, I would hope. My identity is intersexed, and I think about it in terms of molecular, biological, chemistry, and there’s — because of intersex-ionality, I don’t know if I could ever identity as something. Like, the identifying factor, it’s mixed. And therein lies my commitment to marriage of both feminine, masculine, and then I’m in the middle, molecularly, biologically in the middle. And here I am existing in a realm that qualifies only binary and duality. And here I am without any necessary answers. I think the identity is just development.
I like that. So what is important to you about talking about that identity, and understanding it and its intersections.
It’s important because it’s survival. The importance of development is that we can come to conclusions, we can come to an idea of something, but what matters first and foremost is that we belong. Identity, there’s — if definition is saying when something is found, I haven’t found it yet. But I am seeking it. And that seeking of definition, I think deserves to survive.
Are you apart of any Intersex, LGBTQIA+ communities?
All my friends.
That’s real. A lot of people in the community, and in general, seem to conflate trans and intersex, and I know we’ve talked some about how there is a strong affinity between the communities, but there’s difference. What can you say about that? Has that been an issue for you and what do you wish people would understand?
I wish people would take seriously their own semantics. I think, I am trans in the way that, as an artist I am constantly in the process of transmutation, and transfiguring, and transforming, and yeah, that’s our job, so to speak. We raised our hand for the assignment.
But semantically, when it comes to identity, we’re just trying to belong. It doesn’t matter. Like, identity doesn’t become a qualification. What matters is that we just survive. That’s all that matters.
What are some issues you’re passionate about right now?
Rest. Survival. Not going the way of Virginia Woolf. I think because this world — you think about the implementation of patriarchy and white supremacy and colonialism, and you think about how, they don’t want us to exist. And we have to wake up every day and go against that brutality. So, when I’m passionate, in terms of survival, I mean, it’s just surviving. And that’s all it is.
Any plans for Intersex Awareness Day?
Showing up.
A resolution in California recently affirmed intersex rights against genital mutilation, the first state to do so. What do you hope to see happen for intersex people in the future with regard to medical processes and understanding?
Respect. Awareness. Love, compassion, tenderness.
I mean, what more can you ask?
Right.
So I want to talk about the recent presidential memo that would define sex as either male or female, unchangeable, and determined by the genitals a person was born with. It’s been an effort to limit trans people’s protections, but this memo seems to ignore and contradict what already goes on as far as medical intervention with regards to intersex people. Indeed it seems to ignore intersex existence altogether. What are your thoughts on the memo and the state of intersex rights?
He doesn’t get to decide. Going back to the idea of showing up. I mean, I will fight everyone, including him. And I will become an X-Man, I will become stronger than anything that has come before. He doesn’t get to decide what belongs and what doesn’t belong, where, and what. He doesn’t get to do that. Because I wake up every day, I am standing in opposition to it.
You have incredible style. I always see people complimenting it, and I’m one of those people. So what do style and beauty mean to you?
Everything! Everything, it’s all there is. I think about it in terms of metaphor, how we alchemize our existence, and we adorn ourselves. Fashion, style, is a communication, and it’s also a context. It’s something that we’re aware of, and that we wish to not only inhabit, but exhibit. I think about that realm of exhibition, of being like a perpetual exhibition. We get to be art. And that means — you know, everything bows down to beauty. Everything. Even the rain. When you bow down to something there’s a devotion, there’s also a comfort. You find a home within the context of comfort. Beauty and style is one of those subliminal significances. It means that there’s hope, because there’s effort.
Amazing. Like, wow. So as someone who doesn’t see people like themself represented in media, what does it mean to navigate the world and social media representing your authentic self?
Going back to X-Men strength. We’re mutant and proud. That’s the whole point of art, isn’t it though? Doing something that’s never been done before. So yes, it’s going to be erroneous, and yes it’s going to look like perhaps existence in and of itself is fault. However, that in and of itself can be stylized, and become charming and cute. And when I go through this world, there’s a power in my fight to belong. I don’t have any point of reference. No one has ever been Augustine before. I’m gonna get it wrong, but maybe I’ll get it right — in terms of not going the way of Virginia Woolf.
Yeah. Yeah, I mean you better! Even as representation increases, people have talked about the limits of representation, tokenization and commodifying aspects of it. How do you think the community and its goals can overcome or see past that?
Stop being afraid of ourselves. Post-structuralize it. Get the fuck over the limits. There’s no limits.
Alright, tell me about your writing, your work as an artist. What’s important to you about your voice?
That I have one. Period.
You and I often talk about how language can be simultaneously a limit and a catalyst for understanding, and for me this notion is really relevant to identity politics.
Yeah, in terms of like, we just want context, language itself is a trajectorial metaphor for something that we want access to in terms of identification. Like, what I say to you, you could perceive as powerful. The metaphor therein is that I want to be that powerful, I want to feel that powerful. But if existence is failure, I don’t know. Maybe I fail in my pursuit of power.
Anything else you want to talk about?
I think what’s important about being intersex is identity being a suspended thing. And going back to survival, I’ve always had to go into the realm of epigenetics, and chemistry, biology, molecularism, to say that my anatomy, my atomic number — I can’t seek societal validation. I have to seek cosmic validation. To go back to my atomic number. The fact that our genes and molecules made us; we have purpose regardless of what society says. They don’t matter. I mean, they matter, but we matter. Literally, we are matter.
Jonathan Leggette is a student of many subjects, who was honored with the Equity Award last year for his activism. He has traveled around the country to advocate for intersex people, and his candid and lively social media presence keeps me alive. He’s a bit more shy in person, though just as charming.
I saw you have family in the South, and I’m a southern girl myself. Tell me about your family and growing up there.
In the South, it’s a mess, let me tell you. I lived down there only for three years, but in my later years, which is nice because I kind of knew who I was already. It was just me actually connecting with my family for the first time, in Mississippi. In the Bible Belt, deep. So I got to meet them for the first time when I was 17 or 18.
I’m the youngest that my dad has, but I’m the only person that ever went down south to meet our family. Going down there and creating that bridge was super cool, I have like 450 family members down there. It was really important for me to go down there in a sense to learn about who I am.
My dad would always say we are Creole, which checks out. And my family is Haitian and Dominican, and then learning my family history about them actually immigrating here a couple generations before. Okay, I say immigrate in the nice terms. They were on the last slave ship here.
My family is extremely religious. There’s a church that is behind my grandma’s house, and my whole family is the whole congregation, the pastor, the choir, everything about the church. So it’s crazy, big family, very religious. Dark skin, all of them, I’m one of the lightest skinned family members I’ve ever had.
That’s so amazing that you’ve went back there. What brought you to Evergreen?
I didn’t know Evergreen existed. I grew up in Seattle and graduated high school in Federal Way and I had never heard of Evergreen in my life. I actually, in high school, was homeless and supporting a household that I didn’t live in to make sure my nephew was okay, and so I was just working and then I went to Seattle Central and did some classes there. I had a teacher, she like kept me alive, fed me, got me clothes. And she was like, you need to apply to Evergreen. ‘You’re smart, you’re intelligent, I want you to get a degree.’ She kept pushing and pushing and finally I was like, sure. Two weeks before school started, applied. Got in, and then I moved in the week after. Didn’t know anything about this campus, and hearing the no grades thing and stuff like that was great. I had a 1.98 GPA graduating high school from being homeless, not going to school, making money how I needed to. But then having a 4.0 GPA in community college, people are like what happened? Well, obviously it’s not about my care of school, it’s about circumstances that I can’t control.
Evergreen being as open as it was, and kind of just being pushed onto me in a sense, ‘Just go, you’ll fit in perfectly here,’ I was like, why not. So here I am.
You’ve traveled a lot in the past couple years for conferences and different events and things. What were some of the most inspiring moments for you through that?
My first conference, first ever time speaking about being intersex, and being open about it was at Creating Change in Philly in 2016. And that was like, crazy. It was mind blowing, so inspiring because I had never thought that my story could impact people, impact change. I got to be on a panel with three other intersex youth and we got to tell our stories and field questions, and it was insane because I just never thought I would have a chance to do that, and knowing that telling my story meant a lot to other people, and possibly helped a lot of intersex youth was crazy. And a non-profit giving me a chance when I had only been with them for two months.
I got to talk to people from around the country that ranged from professors, staff members, lawyers, everybody was in that room. At the end I got numbers, people got my email, and I actually helped to shape curriculum for high school and college students.
So you got to help professors that you met through conferences shape curriculum. How so?
Shaping curriculum to be more intersex inclusive by telling my story. Talking about how in biology, it was hard for me in high school. I would refuse to do the DNA swabs and stuff like that because I thought, they’re going to think that I’m weird. Like, it’ll come out. So talking about that. And in sex-ed in high school, for the people that are fortunate enough to get it, the need to not talk about just the two sex dichotomy. And not being like, this is a male, this a female, this is what their bodies look like, but knowing that that there are bodies in between that, far over, wherever they’re at. There is not a body that is going to look identical, and growing up I still think that I never thought about that, that people aren’t identical. Kind of just invalidated my own existence to assimilate and feel okay, feel with everybody.
I got to talk to a professor and a social worker, and they were like, ‘Thank you so much.’ Once they thanked me, it set in. I was like, okay this is something amazing. From then on, I was like, I gotta do more. I started a whole circuit of conference after conference. I’ve been to Rutgers University, I’ve been to Yale, I’ve been to Harvard. It’s been really cool just to do it.
Are you still working with interACT Youth?
Yes, I am still a youth member with interACT. I do a lot of work with them when it comes to traveling or hosting workshops. Most of them are about interACT, how I’ve been involved with them and how that organization has not only helped me grow, but given me opportunity to help shape the organization. I got to help coordinate our youth program development, and that was amazing to get input and shape a program that’s going to last and have more capacity to take on more intersex youth, and to develop resources that we don’t have.
And you’re a GLAAD Campus Ambassador as well, what does that involve?
Helping to accelerate equality, acceptance of the LGBTQ community — they still haven’t added the I in their mission statement, which is a mess, but we’re working towards it. Specifically on college campuses across the U.S., there’s I think about 140 campus ambassadors altogether. Last year, I was by myself Evergreen’s campus ambassador, and I did a lot of work with the Trans and Queer Center to actually put on events and host a couple Intersex Awareness Day things, as well as some film screenings and stuff like that to do education that I see is lacking, extremely lacking.
And now there’s two campus ambassadors, me and So’le Celestial. We get to train and learn about media, and how telling our stories in writing can actually reach masses. We learn from GLAAD on media institutes and learn how to write to grab people. And especially activist writing. Activist writing is, you’re standing strong in your point, you’re not wavering but you’re giving details and information, and you’re also being relatable in anyway you can.
In a video for GLAAD for Black History Month, you said of your blackness, “I have to claim it because I was given it. It’s a gift.” Can you speak more to that?
Yeah. I think being black, my black identity, my black ancestry, in general just is a gift. It’s that culture, that connection to the world. Knowing that my people have been so resilient across the world. It’s a gift to be able to be affiliated and be a part of that history, and to help add to it, has been amazing. I’m so joyed. I’m happy. I’m living and just knowing that my black identity is so important to me and it’s something that I’ve learned to love.
Because growing up it was like, ‘Oh you’re black, cool. That’s all. We’re done.’ But never talking about the nuances of black identity and the resilience of black folks. Not only in America, but the Caribbean where my family is originally from. Beyond the Carribean. From the continent of Africa, and just knowing that black people exist in every part of the world.
And also just how all-encompassing black identity is because it is a very international thing. Where we talk about the breakdown of black and African American and what that is. Black identity is held by so many people and there’s no monolith of blackness. It’s a gift, I think. It’s amazing. It’s reinvigorating to think about whose come before me to take the steps for me to be able to continue. Just knowing that gives me motivation to continue and to reach out, especially to those black intersex youth that haven’t had the resources or don’t talk about it.
Because in the black community, a lot of times we don’t want to talk about anything that could be seen as wrong with you because everyone already sees you as violent, so it’s pushed away. Like mental health is pushed away, intersex variations are pushed away. Anything that to them is out of the normal or out of the conversation.
So it’s just amazing to be a part of the resistance and be a part of a legacy of not only my black identity but my grandmother’s, my grandfather’s. It’s really cool to know that I’m the next step. That however my life ends, kids, whatever that may be, that I get to pass that on. And I get to gift them something that can never be taken away. And hopefully they’ll have a place where they learn to love it from the beginning and not halfway into life, or twenty years into their life.
You talked about activist writing, and I think that reading some of your stuff, there’s this certain quality to it where it’s positive. Not unwaveringly positive, but I think you have an optimism to your writing. Do you think that’s true, and for you, what is important for your voice?
I know that I am a very unique individual. Been told that a long time, very outspoken, I say wild things and perceive things in an interesting way and I include that in my writing as much as possible, like I want it to be my voice. I don’t edit my work. I don’t go back and revise because I don’t believe in that. Obviously some grammatical stuff, but I don’t believe in second-guessing my heart in my own writing because I think that’s a very colonial structure and it’s a way that white supremacy was able to erase a lot of history. By making people take that out, add something different. Like who came up with the writing process? Guarantee it’s a white man. 100% guaranteed.
And so, me fighting back and making my writing as accessible and relatable as possible is so important. So I try not to use big words. I try to talk from my heart, and I try to talk from a non-academic standpoint because it’s a privilege that I get to be here in the academy, having a job here, understanding how it works. It’s a big privilege and I want to be able to reach more people.
I loved your letter to Big Freedia, and how you weaved together these ideas about representation, dance, joy, self-expression. Can we talk about, as you put it, the ‘real world implications that pop culture can have?’
Yeah, I think pop culture is what shapes our conversations. Pop culture is what is remembered. Pop culture is what I think can have the opportunity not only to shape conversations but to shape an education, to shape curriculum, to shape politics, as we’ve seen. To shape movements, and that includes Beyonce, Jay-Z, Rihanna, people that we don’t think in a sense have power. Rihanna’s empire is growing, Fenty, all this other stuff and how those have become such a big part of pop culture that they’ve began to actually help people that don’t have voices, help people that don’t have access to things. Fenty lingerie being plus size, and having the right color of nude, multiple nudes for different skin tones. It starts to change things.
It has implications if we talk about racism. And how it’s been with Trump and all this extra stuff, that’s starting to become an integral part of conversation now, for everybody. Even if some people are like, I’m tired of it, or whatever, it’s starting to become a part of the conversation every time. Now it’s a part of the mainstream culture for us to bring up racism. And that’s a conversation that needed to be brought up and pop culture has done that.
That includes musicians talking about it, making analogies in their music about it, or artists making beautiful murals and stuff about racism, and what happens, the hurt and the trauma that it’s caused. To educate people, and reach, and reach until people are actually learning and able to have discourse and nuance, and start to shape a perspective on it. I think that pop culture in general has a lot of real-world implications that we a lot of time forget.
There are one hit songs that people will forever remember, that people say bring people together. Like the Cupid Shuffle. That’s a song that everyone learns the dance, when they see people dancing they go and try. It’s one of those songs that was very popular in pop culture and now has moved into a community building song, but no one says it has, it just happens.
That’s a really cool perspective. So, you’re always serving in photos. What does style and beauty mean to you? How does it intersect with your notions of self?
I used to, and I still do sometimes latch onto things like, ‘I want to look like this person.’ But knowing that nothing has ever been for me, nothing’s ever been created for me, nothing in the fashion industry. I’ve never had clothes made specifically for me, for my person, for my identities or anything. Being a big person, being intersex, having breasts and still trying to dress masc — and I’m not going to wear a binder, I embrace having breasts and it’s a part of me that I love and continue to love.
How I change the narrative by how I dress is something that I think about all the time actually, because when I want to shop there’s maybe five places I can shop. I can’t go anywhere in stores, I have to pray things come in the right size. I think style and beauty — we always say beauty’s in the eye of the beholder, but I think that’s a super simplified version of how it really works. It all comes down to social conditioning.
Like us knowing that we’re beautiful inside and out, knowing that we’re gorgeous human beings, knowing that we can show however we want to show. But it’s scary to know that it’s still in someone else’s hand to help you move forward and live your life, whether that’s getting a job or whatever.
Even if we talk about queer media. Why does every popular person in queer media, in magazines, Teen Vogue, whatever– Why are they skinny? Why are they conventionally attractive? Even if they’re people of color, they’re people you would put on a magazine. They’re people you would put as a headline. So why is it that way? That’s people’s perception of beauty and the continuation of upholding these beauty standards that are eurocentric, but now have hopped onto terms like ‘diversity’ and ‘inclusion.’
‘We need a brown person, lemme check that box,’ but no one is going to say they’re doing that. Especially with queer magazines and big LGBTQIA media. ‘We’re here for this.’ Are you really? Your whole staff is skinny. Like, what?
I work with HRC [Human Rights Campaign] and they just did a shoot with J Crew. Why is everyone in that shoot thin and conventionally attractive? There’s like no blemishes, no acne. The type of people you see on magazines anway. Even though it was a fight to even have brown and black people on magazines, now that they’re there, that’s all we have is skinny folks. When we look at trans representation, skinny folks. Any queer representation, it’s skinny people. Even intersex representation is usually a skinny white femme.
Beauty is a complexity of its own. It is what you make it and how you think and how you feel. But we also for some reason all want to have the same style, but with little tweaks because of our personalities. We all want to assimilate to that one idea of style. ‘I wanna be a model’, so you’re going to try and dress like every model you’ve ever seen. But we all buy the same clothes also. The complexity is that stores sell everything the same, we don’t make our own clothes. Like there is no uniqueness a lot of the times to our clothing. That’s just a complex whole thought of, what is beauty, what is style?
And then relating it to LGBTQIA stuff, you have to be stylish to get somewhere in the queer world. You have to look — the queer look. Whether that’s putting nail polish on and being masc presenting, or being thin, or wearing heels, it is what it is.
You and other GLAAD ambassadors signed a letter to Congress about gun violence. I thought it was interesting to see how that intersects with queer issues. What about that, and other larger cultural issues — how do you see queer intersections as important or invigorating for those causes?
I think it boils down to me listening and learning from elders, and the amazing words that elders say, especially black and indigenous elders, about how we’re not liberated until we’re all free. In mass shootings, school shootings, gun violence, police brutality, I guarantee it happens to queer people. There is a guarantee that people of all intersections of life, walks of life, cultures, deal with gun violence especially in America.
And then the increasing numbers of gun violence specifically with certain populations, as in black trans femmes, trans women in general. Just how one community that I’m apart of is constantly targeted, that makes it a very intersectional issue. Whether it’s gun violence, or fatphobia, or the efforts of decolonization — it’s a queer subject.
So California recently banned intersex genital mutilation, the first state to do so. How was finding out about that, and how has the medical industrial complex affected your life?
Wow, that’s a big one. So, with the resolution that they had, it’s one of the biggest misconceptions: it’s not banned. They didn’t ban the surgery. It’s the first state to recognize that intersex surgeries are human rights violations. It’s like the first stepping stone to create an actual policy, like a law.
For me, specifically being a survivor of intersex surgery, it’s near and dear to my heart. Being able to write my own testimony, that was not only used in the Washington Blade, but used as testimony for why it needs to be banned in California. It’s mind blowing to think about how the medical industrial complex not only did surgery on me but does it on babies every day, every minute around the world. It’s not just an American issue, it’s an issue for everyone. Everyone can have an intersex kid, and so what are we gonna do?
And it’s like, how much power the medical industrial complex has over society as a whole, it’s insane to me. Especially in America, if you wear a white coat you have the end all, say all.
Yeah, I want to get into that a little more. I know that we briefly had conversations about hormone therapy and Planned Parenthood offering that in Olympia. I know that even among my trans friends there’s been inconsistency, so how has that been for you?
It’s so interesting when we talk about the offering of hormones to people who want or need to take them, and specifically in Olympia when places started offering hormones to trans individuals, it somehow got harder for intersex people to get them.
Being intersex, to get hormones you have to go through genetic testing, hormone testing, like there are many, many more steps to get them. The hormones that intersex people use are sometimes used to transition, or beyond that they’re used for bone health, and other things that can happen if we don’t have our hormones because of surgery or whatever it may be.
We have to go to endocrinologists first, and then go through all this testing, and then they’ll prescribe whatever they think they need to. Whereas, what I’ve heard, just saying, ‘Hey, I’m trans, I need these hormones to fit who I am in my transition.’ I sometimes have to do this like code-switching thing, and create this whole story that mirrors my identity, but just enough to get me what I need without constantly getting poked and prodded for them.
I want you tell me about winning the Equity Award.
Oh, God. Didn’t know it was happening, like at all. Winning the Equity Award has been amazing, mind blowing, has me shook. I’ve done work with the United Nations, done work internationally, and every time I bring up Evergreen and how I’ve been able to make my college education actually work for what I do, and with ILCs, internships, however that might be. I think for the school to recognize the work that students are doing, finally, is amazing. For me to be the recipient, I think it just shows that they started to notice, but still only started to notice students who are heavily involved in whatever it is.
It’s an amazing thing and it’s an honour, and I wish we had awards ceremonies for students and staff and faculty, just honoring the amazing people we have on this campus and the amazing work that not only myself but so many people are doing. It’s so important to recognize and acknowledge that work that’s not only happening here but in our community.
It’s been interesting. Nothing much else has come of just winning the award. Now I have this little glass plaque thing — it’s cute! It’s gorgeous, I love it, I’m happy that I won. But I just constantly think about, what else are other people doing?
I’ve been privileged enough to have the platform I have, to work with four non-profits now on top of Evergreen, and Evergreen reaching out to write an article about me. Stuff like that, that’s all privileges. And it’s also because there’s a disconnect between the students and the school.
I’ve done my activism even while doing upper division science classes. Like they wouldn’t understand that everyday I didn’t have class, I would be on a flight, or coming back from a state that i just gave a talk at. So for people to finally understand and recognize, it’s the validation that was good. Being validated by an institution that has lead to a lot of trauma for me but also a lot of amazing times, it was a very weird feeling. It was amazing, but at the same time how many other students are doing work that don’t have the platforms I do, that don’t get showcased.
It’s super crazy. I love the award, and I can’t wait to see who is awarded next year. And I hope that they award more people, and put in work to figure out more students, and staff — there are some amazing staff at this school that have never once been awarded, never once even been recognized for their work. It’s an honor, it’s amazing, but at the same time, do better Evergreen. This isn’t the end all, this needs to keep happening.
(Editor’s Note: This article has been updated to include the full interviews, and to correct the spelling of Ani DiFranco’s name. Sorry, Ani!)
