In 2021, Te Ngākau Kahukura hosted a series of webinars for the youth sector, sharing the expertise and lived experience of those working with and amongst rainbow rangatahi.

In our second webinar, Jelly O’Shea and Joey Macdonald talked about what bodily autonomy and self-determination can mean for intersex and trans people.

About the presenters

Jelly O'Shea (she/they) is an intersex person who is the current Communications and Project Manager for Intersex Aotearoa. Jelly is a community worker who thrives on collaboration and creative responses to communication strategies that empower marginalised people. Jelly spends their days demanding that everyone should have the right of bodily autonomy, and evenings making jewellery at their studio hideout.

Joey Macdonald (they/them) is a nonbinary trans queer pākehā living in West Auckland working for Te Ngākau Kahukura as the Training Lead. They're particularly interested in wrangling health professionals and empowering community workers to improve health and social services for people who are trans, queer, intersex, takatāpui, etc. They want to see recognition of self-determination in the form of high quality informed consent healthcare and recognition of the strong relational skills that rainbow/ intersex/ trans/ queer/ takatāpui people (and organisations led by those people) have developed in the face of intergenerational systemic injustice.

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