Anick Soni

Anick Soni (born 1995) is a British Asian intersex human rights activist, creative and researcher, and Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. In 2020, he co-founded an intersex charity in the UK named InterconnectedUK.
Early life.
Soni was born with atypical sex characteristics including hypospadias and partial androgen insensitivity syndrome. Growing up, Soni was subjected to failed surgery at age 4 months, followed by multiple procedures over 17 years to try to improve the outcome and enlarge the size of his penis. In a 2017 interview with Patrick Strudwick for BuzzFeed, he recalls repeated medical examinations, living in fear of discovery at school, an adolescent desire to be 'normal', never having met another intersex person, and a lack of counselling support for him or his parents, leading to an attempted suicide. Despite experiencing a lack of disclosure during his childhood, Soni later chose to undergo a phalloplasty. He learned the word intersex at age 21, initially misunderstanding the term, when he obtained access to his medical records.
Soni graduated with an honour degree in Law from the University of Westminster in 2017, which included a year of study in Sydney, Australia. He is currently studying the sociology of childhood and children's rights at University College London. He participated in his first event by and for intersex people in February 2018, at an OII Europe conference in Copenhagen. This experience was filmed for the BBC.
Media.
Soni has been the subject of a BBC TV and radio documentary, named "The Intersex Diaries". In January 2020, Soni became the first intersex person on the cover of Attitude Magazine.
Activism.
Anick Soni has been involved with intersex activism publicly since 2017, first disclosing his story to BuzzFeed. Soni campaigns for protections from discrimination and forced surgeries, and for better support for children and caregivers, visibility and community healing. He describes himself as favoring personal consent and bodily autonomy, and not anti-surgery. He has written the first briefing on intersex for the UK Parliament and speaks nationally and internationally.
He helped organize a first intersex march in London in 2018, with fellow activists and allies. and is communications officer at UK Black Pride. Whilst acknowledging that intersex is not necessarily an 'LGBT+' issue, as a bisexual, he feels comfortable speaking about this intersectionality.
In 2020 he became a co-founder and trustee of new intersex charity InterconnectedUK (iConUK).
In May 2021, Anick was included in Queer Power! A Celebration of Icons, Activists and Game Changers from Across the Rainbow by illustrator Dom&Ink, published by HarperCollins. He was recognised for his intersex activism and being a Queer Person of Colour within the LGBT+ community - it mentions his involvement in planning events like UK Black Pride and outreach and educational work. 
Recognition.
Soni is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. In 2019 he was awarded the Gay Times 'British Community Trailblazer' award in recognition for his work on intersex activism within the LGBT+ community.