Founded in South Africa in 2023 by Ayanda (Yaya) Mqakayi, Yaya M Voices works primarily with intersex people, LGBTQIA+ communities, young people, artists, activists, and communities impacted by silence, stigma, and bodily discrimination. The organisation’s work also speaks to families, especially mothers of intersex children, through education, storytelling, and visibility. Yaya M Voices focuses on documenting and archiving intersex lives, histories, and lived experiences through photography, film, storytelling, interviews, creative activism, and community engagement. Their work challenges medical erasure, social stigma, and invisibility while preserving intersex existence through visual and historical documentation.

Visão

A world where intersex people are fully recognised, respected, protected, and visible as part of natural human diversity, and where future generations grow up with access to truthful representation, history, dignity, and bodily autonomy.

Missão

To create and preserve intersex-led archives, stories, and visual histories through creative documentation and advocacy. The organisation aims to reclaim narrative ownership by ensuring that intersex people speak for themselves and are represented through their own lived realities.

Goals/Objectives

• To document and preserve intersex histories and lived experiences.
• To create visual and educational resources about intersex existence.
• To challenge stigma, discrimination, and non-consensual medical interventions on intersex bodies.
• To support visibility, healing, and self-representation within intersex communities.
• To build archives that future generations, researchers, families, and intersex people can access.
• To contribute toward social and legal change regarding bodily autonomy and intersex rights.

Projects

Current projects include:

• Being Intersex — a photographic body of work documenting intersex identity, embodiment, memory, scars, healing, and lived realities.
• Ride for Intersex Justice — an awareness and advocacy cycling campaign focused on ending non-consensual surgeries on intersex infants and children.
• Unseen Lives — a visual storytelling and documentary project focusing on hidden intersex experiences and social invisibility.
• Archival Documentation — collecting oral histories, photographs, interviews, and visual records related to intersex existence and African intersex narratives.
• Community Education and Visibility Work — creating conversations around bodily autonomy, identity, and intersex human rights through social media, exhibitions, public speaking, and collaborations.

Contacto

yayamvoices@gmail.com
0680100962
Facebook
Instagram

Yaya M Voices in the media

Arte

Watch our interview with Yaya, 22 May 2026

First screened in December 2012, ‘My Secret Life’ is a short documentary compiled by Support Initiative for People with Atypical Sex Development (SIPD), exploring intersex lived realities through voices of intersex children and people, parents, doctors, and SIPD staff. The documentary highlights the obscene discrimination that intersex persons in Uganda experience simply because of their uniqueness.

“Are you a boy or a girl?” This is the question that determines which group a person can play with at school.

The first public screening took place at the December 26th ILGA (International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association) World Conference in Stockholm, where it received a paradoxical yet powerful response – both unsettling and deeply encouraging. Many activists working on minority rights witnessed, for the first time, an African perspective on intersex lived realities and experiences documented in such depth. 

The post-screening question and answer session was one of the most rewarding moments, sparking new partnerships and opportunities to amplify African intersex voices on national, regional, and International platforms.

Watch the documentary

This article was written by our intersex content contributor, Delphine Barigye.