Dani Coyle Is Celebrating The Beauty And Diversity Of Intersex People

We have already talked a little bit about intersex people in the ‘No Box For Me’ project, highlighting the stigmatization and violence our binary society inflicts on them. Today, we want to focus on the plurality of what being intersex means.

There is a common misconception for dyadic people (by the way, dyadic refers to people who were born with sex characteristics that fit into the gender binary system we sadly live in), that intersex people all look alike. Well, it is absolutely wrong. For starters, sex is a broad term regrouping a lot of different elements: hormonal system, internal and external reproductive organs, chromosomes, so called secondary sexual characteristics (like beard, or chest, fat and muscle repartition, for instance), etc. All of these elements have an infinity of variations. But early  XXth century physicians and biologists decided that in order to meet their definition of 'normality' all these characteristics had to align. But that is not how it works. Each one of these elements vary in each person. And no variations are better than others.

Dani Coyle is a non-binary intersex artist who has decided to show intersex people. In order to achieve this, she has launched an Instagram account displaying portraits of intersex folks. The account is a collection of faces with names and pronouns, highlighting the diversity of intersex people. And we love it! Some of the portraits are even accompanied by a few words, like for Lynn, for instance:

‘It’s not cool to be intersex, I just am. There’s nothing especially ‘cool’ about it, but I have the right to exist. It’s actually quite normal, for me at least. I want people to see and respect that, and that’s all. We are not sick and we should have the right to decide not to live as either a man or a woman. We are what we are’ (Lynn, he/they, from the inter_face Instagram account).

PS: on an important note, we would like to remind you that being intersex and being non-binary are not the same thing: non-binary refers to gender identity. And just like dyadic people, intersex people can be cisgender, transgender, non-binary and any other gender identity. Being intersex does not come with a gender identity package.

Browse the gallery down below for a snapshot of Dani’s work!