Recently launched NBC OUT, a new vertical dedicated to coverage about and of interest to the LGBTQ community from NBCNews.com published its first ‘Out Millennial Spotlight’ featuring intersex activist and Chicago native Pidgeon Pagonis, the artist behind numerous campaigns that aim to support and raise awareness about the intersex community.
At a young age, doctors decided Pagonis, born with androgen insensitivity syndrome, would be best off raised as a girl so they performed various surgeries to make Pagonis’s genitals look more distinctively female.
“I was told I wouldn’t have a period or be able to have children,” Pagonis said. “It didn’t register that I was intersex or even what that was.”
“I was angry and hurt and felt robbed of an opportunity to live a genuine life without all the anger and sadness,” said Pagonis, who learned about the full extent of the surgeries in college. “I didn’t have a complete body. I was ashamed.”
Pagonis is now working to convince the medical industry to stop performing “gender corrective” surgeries on intersex children, which the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights considers a human rights violation.
For more of the interview with Pagonis visit NBCOUT.com