Intersex Awareness Day and Welcoming Intersex People

In the most recent edition of “A Matter of Faith: A Presby Podcast," available here, hosts Simon Doong and the Rev. Lee Catoe speak with Dr. Stephanie Budwey and Marissa Adams about how we can educate ourselves and others regarding relevant issues for intersex people. The first portion of the episode focuses on racism and power dynamics in sports, and around the 28:30 mark, the conversation shifts to this focus we particularly lift up on October 26, Intersex Awareness Day.

“We can barely talk about sex in our faith communities, let alone issues faced by the intersex community.”

Special guest Budwey serves as Luce Dean’s Faculty Fellow Assistant Professor of the History and Practice of Christian Worship and the Arts at the Divinity School at Vanderbilt University, where regular host Catoe earned a Master of Divinity. Recently, Budwey also published the book Religion and Intersex: Perspectives from Science, Law, Culture and Theology. Adams, an advocate for intersex people, specializes in the intersection of intersex, faith and religion.The podcast opened by recognizing that LGBTQIA+ individuals are still generally underrepresented in church education, and intersex people tend to be even less represented due to a "pathologizing" view of intersexuality. This view is reflected in society's norms of carrying out surgery on children to "correct" intersex characteristics despite the risks and consequences of these nonconsensual surgeries.

"Often times, churches have this theology that if you’re not male or female then you’re not made in God’s image, so you’re not a human being.”

This episode highlighted stories of intersex people denied full membership into the life of their churches, including the opportunity to receive baptisms, due to theologies of binary gender.As people of faith, we can support intersex people in a number of practical ways:

• Portraying God with feminine, masculine and non-gendered images

• Broadening our language from "brothers and sisters" to include "siblings"

• Naming the word intersex in education about LGBTQIA people

• Highlighting representation in our Scriptures, such as the account of Phillip baptizing the Ethiopian eunich in Acts

• Understanding gender not as a binary, but as a spectrum including male, female, and non-binary

On Intersex Awareness Day, we especially seek to share ways that Christians can advocate for intersex children of God.