Star Tribune
Yes, intersex people exist. A Twin Cities advocate is fighting for their rights.
Ly Baumgardt has always had a flair for the dramatic.
So, no one was really surprised with what Baumgardt decided to do on the steps of the Minnesota Capitol a few months ago during a lobbying day for transgender people.
It was Baumgardt’s first time talking so publicly about life as an intersex person. But the Hopkins 23-year-old, who has become Minnesota’s most public face for this often-ignored or misunderstood group of people born with atypical sexual characteristics, is not shy. So, as they spoke to a couple hundred spectators about how intersex people live in the shadows even more than trans people, Baumgardt removed their coat. Their t-shirt read, “GIRLS WILL BE BOYS.” A friend loaded up a syringe with testosterone. Baumgardt rolled up one sleeve, and the friend injected the “T” into their arm.
“Intersex people need to be more in the public eye,” Baumgardt said later. “People don’t want to acknowledge intersex people exist. Because if they understand sex is a spectrum as well, then they would have to acknowledge there might be more than two genders.”
The testosterone is necessary, Baumgardt says, both to fight the chronic fatigue that comes with their intersex variation and for masculinization as part of their gender transition.
For the past several years, headlines have abounded about trans people. Trans people have successfully fought for legal protections in blue-leaning states like Minnesota, while red-leaning states have restricted gender-affirming care and passed laws about bathroom usage and youth sports participation.
But even as some states have banned gender reassignment surgeries, exceptions have been made for surgeries on intersex children, illustrating how intersex people challenge traditional binary views on gender.
Baumgardt was a leading force behind a bill introduced this session by Rep. Liish Kozlowski, the state’s first nonbinary legislator. The bill would have banned cosmetic, nonessential surgeries on intersex people younger than 12, surgeries often done on babies with atypical sexual characteristics. The bill never made it to a vote, but advocates point to Baumgardt’s work on the legislation as the beginning of a longer battle for further recognizing intersex people.
“This was the very first year anything like this has even been introduced in Minnesota,” said Kat Rohn, executive director of OutFront Minnesota. “It’s exceedingly rare to have a brand-new piece of legislation go start-to-finish in one session unless there’s a clear, broad consensus, and especially on topics people don’t know much about. Ly recognizes the urgency of these conversations but also recognizes this is building work.”
Searching for identity
Baumgardt’s path to the steps of the Minnesota Capitol began as a struggle to understand their identity.
“The first time we had sex education in school, I threw up and got sick,” Baumgardt said. “Because I felt so cosmically wrong. They’re like, ‘You’re going to get a period!’ ‘You’re going to have this thing called puberty!’ It literally felt like a cosmic incorrectness.”
Baumgardt came out as trans at 14 — by reading a poem at the middle school variety show. (“I was the only one to get a standing ovation,” they said.) They came out as intersex at 15. Their journey has been punctuated by advocacy. Baumgardt graffitied “VOTE NO” around their elementary school during the runup to the 2012 constitutional amendment that would have banned same-sex marriage. In middle school and high school, they ran the gay-straight alliance and a trans youth club, and they visited other schools to talk with teachers about how to treat trans students.
“I was every stereotype of a social-justice warrior,” Baumgardt said.
Baumgardt was studying to be an American Sign Language interpreter when COVID hit. (Their mom is deaf.) They now work for TIGERRS, a group that advocates for transgender, intersex and gender-expansive Minnesotans.
Intersex issues are as complicated and nuanced as Baumgardt’s life journey. Intersex is an umbrella term; there are dozens of intersex variations, which can affect people in different ways. Some intersex people have genitals or internal sex organs that fall outside traditional male-female categorization, like someone with both ovarian and testicular tissues. Others have combinations of chromosomes different than XY or XX. Sometimes intersex traits are noticeable at birth, while other times they can be discovered later in life, if ever.
“It’s a complicated piece of queer identity,” said Rep. Leigh Finke, the first openly transgender Minnesota legislator. “The concept of intersex characteristics is very antithetical to the anti-trans movement. Sexual biology is complicated, far more complicated than the anti-trans movement ever wants to acknowledge. To have a nuanced conversation about intersex traits is going to muddy the waters on what the anti-trans movement is based on, which is that there’s no complexity to binary sexual characteristics.”
Adding nuance to public dialogue
The most urgent goal for intersex advocates is stopping cosmetic, nonessential surgeries on intersex infants. But more than that, they want to take societal stigma away from being intersex.
Baumgardt tells of experiences with the medical community that have been traumatizing.
“Intersex people have been made to feel like experiments and medical oddities,” Baumgardt said. “Doctors will call in other doctors and say, ‘Look at how weird this person is, you’ll probably never see this again!’ People have been made to feel like they’re weird or freaks. And there’s no way to find community. It’s not always visible. You’ve probably walked past intersex people, and you have no idea.”
Baumgardt hopes their advocacy can add nuance to the often binary statewide and national dialogue about gender and sexuality.
“A lot of these laws are like, ‘See, there are two genders — a woman is someone who produces eggs,'” Baumgardt said. “But what about an intersex woman who has a vagina but has ovotestes instead of ovaries? It doesn’t make any sense to try to medically define a woman, because there’s so much variation in what a woman is, so much variation in what a man is. Man and woman are more broad categories than a definite thing. There’s variation in male and female.”
Star Tribune
Israeli airstrikes kill dozens across Lebanon as Hezbollah confirms a 7th top commander was killed
JERUSALEM — Israeli airstrikes across Lebanon killed dozens of people on Sunday as the Hezbollah militant group sustained a string of deadly blows to its command structure, including the killing of its overall leader, Hassan Nasrallah.
Hezbollah confirmed Nabil Kaouk, the deputy head of the militant group’s Central Council, was killed Saturday, making him the seventh senior Hezbollah leader slain in Israeli strikes in a little over a week. They include founding members who had evaded death or detention for decades.
Hezbollah had earlier confirmed that Ali Karaki, another senior commander, died in Friday’s strike that killed Nasrallah. Israel says at least 20 other Hezbollah militants were killed, including two close associates of Nasrallah, one of whom was in charge of his security detail.
Meanwhile, Israeli warplanes and drones carried out deadly strikes across Lebanon on Sunday. Two consecutive strikes near the southern city of Sidon, about 45 kilometers (28 miles) south of Beirut, killed at least 32 people, the Lebanese health ministry said. Separately, Israeli strikes in the northern province of Baalbek Hermel killed 21 people and injured at least 47.
The Israeli military said it also carried out another targeted strike on Beirut, but did not immediately provide details.
Lebanese media reported dozens of strikes in the central, eastern and western Bekaa and in the south, besides strikes on Beirut. The strikes have targeted buildings where civilians were living and the death toll was expected to rise.
In a video of a strike in Sidon, verified by The Associated Press, a building swayed before collapsing as neighbors filmed. One TV station called on viewers to pray for a family caught under the rubble, posting their pictures, as rescuers failed to reach them. The Lebanese health ministry reported at least 14 medics were killed over two days in the south.
Meanwhile, wreckage from the strike on Friday that killed Nasrallah was still smoldering. AP journalists saw smoke over the rubble as people flocked to the site, some to check on what was left of their homes and others to pay respects, pray or simply to see the destruction.
CONYERS, Ga. — Some residents east of Atlanta were evacuated while others were told to shelter in place to avoid contact with a chemical plume after a fire at a chemical plant.
Rockdale County Fire Chief Marian McDaniel told reporters that a sprinkler head malfunctioned around 5 a.m. Sunday at the BioLab plant in Conyers. That caused water to mix with a water-reactive chemical, which produced a plume of chemicals. The chief said she wasn’t sure what chemicals were included.
A small roof fire was initially contained, but reignited Sunday afternoon, Sheriff Eric Levett said in a video posted on Facebook as gray smoke billowed into the sky behind him. He said authorities were trying to get the fire under control and urged people to stay away from the area.
People in the northern part of Rockdale County were ordered to evacuate and others were told to shelter in place with windows and doors closed. Sheriff’s office spokesperson Christine Nesbitt did not know the number of people evacuated.
The federal Environmental Protection Agency and the Georgia Environmental Protection Division were both on site, county Emergency Management Director Sharon Webb said. The agencies are monitoring the air ”to give us more of an idea of what the plume consists of.”
McDaniel said crews were working on removing the chemical from the building, away from the water source. Once the product is contained, the situation will be assessed and officials will let residents know whether it is safe to return to their homes, she said.
An evacuation center was opened at Wolverine Gym in Covington.
Former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, running for the Senate as a moderate Republican, brought up Trump’s false claims that Harris, the daughter of Jamaican and Indian immigrants, had previously downplayed her Black heritage. Harris attended Howard University, a historically Black college, and has identified as both Black and South Asian consistently throughout her political career.
”I’ve already called him out when he had the one interview where he was questioning her racial identity, and now he’s questioning her mental competence,” Hogan told CBS’ ”Face the Nation.” ”And I think that’s insulting not only to the vice president but to people who actually do have mental disabilities.”
If elected, Harris would be the first woman, Black woman and person of South Asian descent to be president. She has not commented on Trump’s recent attacks but has said when asked about other comments that it was the ” same old show. The same tired playbook we’ve heard for years with no plan on on how he would address the needs of the American people.”
Trump was holding a rally Sunday in Erie, Pennsylvania, and some of the supporters showing up for his speech said he often makes offensive remarks. Still, they support his proposals to restrict immigration and said he would have a better handle on the economy.
”He says what’s on his mind, and again, sometimes how he says it isn’t appropriate,” said Jeffrey Balogh, 56, who attended the rally with two friends. ”But he did the job. He did very well at it.”
Tamara Molnar said she thinks Trump is very strong on immigration. As for his insults, Molnar said: ”I think everybody has to have some decorum when speaking about other candidates, and I don’t think either side is necessarily innocent on that. There’s a lot of slinging both ways.”
