Do we get enough people on the boat? That question soon shot through the head of Sharan Bala (39) when the idea came up with a boat to sail especially for Intersekse people at the boat parade during Pride in Amsterdam. “There are few people who are completely open that they are intersekse,” says Bala.
For the first time, Interseekse people sail on Saturday with their own boat with the Canal Parade, the largest event during Pride in Amsterdam. Bala, filmmaker and artist, founded ‘Spread the Word’, a collective for intersex people, who took on the organization of the boat. About half of the ninety people on the boat are intersex people, the rest are allies– allies. Bala: “I don’t think that many intersex people have never opened together in the Netherlands.”
In the Netherlands there are an estimated 190,000 people whose hormones, sexual organs or chromosomes do not fit within the man or female box. For many of them it is very exciting to go outside, Bala notes. “I have received many messages from people who want to come on the boat, but don’t dare. That is really totally understandable. If you are told all your life that it is better not to talk about it, it is a very big step to suddenly stand on a boat. On live television.”
Sharan Bala also did not share it with anyone, not even with friends and relatives outside the family. That changed five years ago, when the fellow sufferer Marieke met Schoutsen, after their therapist had introduced them to each other. “So it is so important to meet people with the same experiences, to have someone you understand.” They decide to make a documentary together, Choose, cut, remain silentwho was broadcast last year by the VPRO and in which they tell their secret to friends and medical records.
Secrecy
For years, the protocol was to choose one gender for babies whose gender could not be determined, to operate them at a young age and then no longer talk about it. “That secrecy, whether it was imposed as it used to happen, or more implicitly, as today, is disastrous for people,” says Miriam van der Have, director of the NNID, Sex diversity Expertise Center.
Van der Have founded the NNID in 2013 with the aim of advocacy and increasing the visibility of intersex persons. The organization wants to prohibit all non-necessary medical treatment for intersex children under the age of twelve-from that age children can only decide for themselves.
In 2017, the Council of Europe found that unnecessary medical intervention among intersek children without their permission is contrary to human rights. But so far, the Dutch cabinet has not yet prohibited a legal prohibition on non-consensual and non-necessary medical treatments. Last month, outgoing State Secretary Mariëlle Paul (Fundend Education and Emancipation, VVD) and Minister of Health Eddy van Hijum (NSC) announced in a letter to Parliament to conduct an investigation into the advantages and disadvantages of regulation.
Purple-yellow
During Pride in Utrecht, where NNID has been taking a boat for several years, Van der Have saw how important such a boat parade can be. “I sat with a group of people on the terrace who said: I want to come, but I don’t want people to see I am intersekse. Because of the cheering people at the quays, they eventually dared to put on a purple-yellow shirt, the colors of the flag for intersex people. And therefore to come out for who they are.
On Saturday, the NNID will also sail on the intersex-boot, recognizable by the yellow flags with a purple heart and the banners with the slogan: Love Every Body.
I have received many messages from people who want to come on the boat, but don’t dare
The purple-yellow boat sails second through the canals, after the boat of the organization with almost all Pride ambassadors. Almost all, because ambassador Marleen Hendrickx (34), theater maker and intersex activist, chose to sail on the intersekse boat. “Fortunately I can wave my fellow ambassadors.”
Never before the Pride organization asked an intersex person as an ambassador. “I think that is because the emancipation of intersek people is the most recent, after that of the other letters of the LGBTI community,” says Hendrickx. Compared to the other ambassadors, she has a relatively quiet week. “As an ambassador you are mainly used for ‘your’ letter. And there are not many activities for intersex people.”
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Queer community
Not every intersex person feels part of the queer community, says Hendrickx. “But the way in which intersex people are treated stems from the same heteronormative idea that LGBT people fight against: you have a man and a woman and they can have sexual intercourse with each other. That’s why I have operated on.”
From the age of ten, Hendrickx was informed by the doctors that she is intersekse. They told her that people around her would not understand, might bully her or break the contact. When she was 22 and after years of silence told her environment, people shrugged. “They said: oh what cunt for you, and that was it. The discrepancy between what doctors told me and reality was so great. I thought: all intersex people must know that that very confidentiality is nonsense.”
When Hendrickx first carried along on the pride boat of the NNID in Utrecht, in 2023, she found it uncomfortable for the first ten minutes. “Why are you clapping for me? I don’t do anything at all.” That feeling made way for pride. “I really felt: we are there and we will never leave. As if I was flying. I wish that feeling every intersex person.”