Sorcha Rosa will address healthcare professionals at RCSI on intersex healthcare, bodily autonomy, human rights, and why intersex voices must be part of Ireland’s healthcare future.
I am delighted to share that I will be speaking at LGBT Ireland’s 5th Annual Pride Healthcare Conference, Silent Letters: Addressing Invisibility in LGBTQIA+ Health and Social Care, taking place on 12 June 2026 at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI) in Dublin.
The conference brings together healthcare professionals, researchers, educators, advocates and community organisations to explore how healthcare systems can better serve LGBTQIA+ people. This year’s theme, Silent Letters, focuses on communities whose experiences are too often overlooked, misunderstood, or rendered invisible within healthcare and social care settings.
Despite increasing conversations about diversity and inclusion in healthcare, intersex people remain one of the least understood groups within the system. Many healthcare professionals receive little or no training on intersex variations. Decisions about intersex bodies continue to be made without meaningful involvement from intersex people themselves. The result is a healthcare landscape where many intersex people still encounter misunderstanding, invisibility, and barriers to informed care.
My session, Intersex Healthcare and Human Rights, will explore these challenges through the lens of lived experience, community advocacy, and human rights.
Drawing on my work as Secretary of Intersex Ireland and years of advocacy both nationally and internationally, I will discuss how healthcare systems have historically approached intersex people, the ongoing legacy of medically unnecessary interventions on intersex children, and the importance of bodily autonomy, informed consent, and patient-centred care.
Healthcare professionals have a crucial role to play in improving outcomes for intersex people. Many genuinely want to provide better care but have never been given the tools, education, or opportunities to engage with intersex perspectives. Conversations like this conference help bridge that gap.
The session will be developed with support and input from Dr Adeline Berry, Chair of Intersex Ireland, whose research and advocacy have helped shape intersex discourse both in Ireland and internationally.
The wider conference programme includes a focus on queer women’s health in partnership with LINQ Ireland, a fireside conversation with internationally recognised asexual activist and researcher Yasmin Benoit, and discussions on building healthcare workforce capacity to better support LGBTQIA+ communities.
I am particularly pleased to see intersex healthcare included as a dedicated topic within the programme. Too often, intersex people are treated as an afterthought in discussions about healthcare. Having an opportunity to address a room of healthcare professionals directly about intersex experiences, rights, and needs represents an important step forward.
I look forward to contributing to what promises to be an important and thoughtful day of discussion, learning, and change.
Related Articles:
Rights Without Routes: Trans and Intersex Healthcare in Ireland
Counting Every Body: Intersex Justice in European Healthcare
Beyond the Binary: Intersex Liberation and Bodily Autonomy
Beyond the Binary: Speaking at Bread and Roses Festival 2026
Ireland Under Scrutiny: ECRI and the Fight for Trans & Intersex Rights
About Sorcha Rosa
Sorcha Rosa is an intersex and transgender woman, writer, public speaker, cyclist, activist, based in Dublin, Ireland.
Sorcha has built a diverse and often unconventional life. She has represented Ireland as an elite cyclist, worked as a coach and team manager, spoken at international conferences, contributed to European health and human rights projects, and advocated publicly for intersex, transgender, and LGBTQIA+ rights.
As Secretary of Intersex Ireland, Sorcha works to improve understanding of intersex experiences and to challenge the non-consensual medical interventions, discrimination, and invisibility that many intersex people continue to face. Her advocacy has brought her to conferences, universities, government consultations, and policy discussions across Ireland and Europe.
Professionally, Sorcha has worked in women’s health, public health, stakeholder engagement, and European research projects. Her interests include healthcare equity, bodily autonomy, sexual health, sport, and social justice.
Outside of advocacy, Sorcha writes regularly on politics, feminism, intersex rights, sport, sexuality, and contemporary Irish society. Her writing combines personal experience with political analysis, often exploring the connections between individual lives and wider systems of power.
Simply Sorcha was created as a space where all of these parts of her life can exist together. Rather than separating activist, athlete, writer and intersex woman into different identities, this platform reflects the reality that people are complex, contradictory, and impossible to fit neatly into categories.
Whether through writing, public speaking, community work, or personal connection, Sorcha believes in honesty, curiosity, dignity, and the power of stories to change how we see each other.
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