Crystal Hendricks from ILGA World tells DIVA her extraordinary story from corporate life to calling for change
BY ELLA GAUCI
Crystal Hendricks had never heard the word “intersex” when she was growing up. When she went through puberty and noticed that her body was developing differently from other girls, she was taken to a doctor. Still, the word “intersex” was never uttered. Instead, the doctor performed a number of invasive medical procedures, claiming they were vital for Crystal’s health.
“Doctors didn’t treat me like a patient, they treated me like a science project,” Crystal explains. “I’d never have just one doctor – it would be a doctor, a professor, a student.”
She was just 16 at the time, and both she and her mother trusted that the doctor knew best. However, when she got to 22 she found herself wanting to know more. Working in a corporate job in a bank, Crystal saved up enough to see a specialist in genetic testing. It was then that she first heard the term “intersex”.
“Then I had a word. I had complete androgen insensitivity syndrome. I had something.”
It was something which lit a fire inside her to continue learning more. She joined a Facebook group for other intersex people but found herself too nervous to ever post anything. In fact, it wasn’t until three years later, when someone asked where everyone in the world was from, that Crystal finally typed out a message.
She found two other people who were intersex and based in South Africa. And this was where her activism truly began. In 2017, she was contacted by an NGO that wanted to connect intersex people in South Africa. Despite having never flown on a plane before or left Cape Town, Crystal found herself hurtling through the sky to Johannesburg. As she entered the conference, she experienced something of a homecoming.
“In that room, I thought ‘How can I use my voice for intersex people? How can I speak about this?’” Crystal says. “At this time I wasn’t out as intersex. I wasn’t out to anyone.”
Despite this, Crystal knew that advocacy was where her future lay. And so she had a fairly standard coming out: being interviewed in a magazine! Soon she was using all her annual leave to attend conferences, meetings, events, and more in the name of intersex activism. When a job as an Intersex Rights Officer at Iranti – a South African-based LGBTQIA organisation – came up in 2021 she leapt at the chance.
Now, in 2024, she is the Sex Characteristics Programme Officer for ILGA World, a title that has now taken her activism to the global stage. The most rewarding part of the role for Crystal is the real-life impact she is making on intersex people.
“I just want to see intersex people thriving,” she gushes. “I just want them to be happy with who they are, and every day wake up and choose themselves. Yes, I was to change policy and legislation. But at the end of the day, I just want intersex people to live with dignity.”
In the face of intersex discrimination globally, activists like Crystal are refusing to be silenced.
“Nothing about us without us. We should be the ones holding the narrative. We should be telling our stories in the way that we want to without sensationalism. Don’t come to people with a narrative.”
Are you passionate about intersex rights? There is still time for you to respond to the call for inputs in preparation of the Report of the High Commissioner for Human Rights on “Combating discrimination, violence and harmful practices against intersex persons”. You can find out more here: Call For Inputs
This open call closes on 20 November.
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