Chicago intersex activist, who won a historic victory at Lurie Children’s Hospital, talks about life and a new memoir

CHICAGO — Nobody told Pidgeon Pagonis that they were intersex, or born with a body that doesn’t fit standard definitions of male and female.

Not when Pagonis, who was raised as a girl but now identifies as nonbinary, learned that they couldn’t menstruate or have children.

Not when, one by one, the friends with whom Pagonis had shared secrets and sleepovers entered puberty, leaving Pagonis — whose body remained stubbornly childlike until they began hormone therapy — feeling alone and ashamed.

In their new memoir, “Nobody Needs to Know,” Pagonis, a leading intersex activist based in Chicago, explores what it was like to be part of a generation of intersex kids who were often subjected to irreversible childhood surgeries intended to make their genitals more typically male or female, and then kept in the dark regarding their medical histories.

In keeping with standard medical practices in the 1980s and 1990s, surgeons at what is now Lurie Children’s Hospital removed Pagonis’ undescended testicles and part of their clitoris, according to Pagonis’ medical records.