Pagonis joined the advocacy organization
interACT a few years after discovering they were intersex. They were also featured in the 2012 documentary
Intersexion. This work was published in a
bioethics journal,
Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics.
The Son They Never Had was also shown at the
Leeds Queer Film Festival in the
UK in March 2017. In 2015, Pagonis created the
hashtag campaign #intersexstories for
Intersex Awareness Day. The campaign attracted a huge following, with many intersex people sharing their stories. Pagonis also appeared in a
BuzzFeed video about intersex bodies, identities and experiences. Pagonis is a writer for
Everyday Feminism, where they have addressed subjects including anti-black racism in the intersex community, interviewing
Sean Saifa Wall and Lynnell Stephani Long, and debate over the inclusion of intersex people in the
LGBTQA acronym. They lobbied for the part when meeting show creator
Joey Soloway at a White House awards ceremony. Pagonis was featured in season 3, episode 1 of Transparent and made a cameo as the intersex character of Baxter to increase the representation of intersex people. The role of Baxter involves them working as a volunteer at the Los Angeles LGBT Center hotline along with Maura. In the episode “Elizah,” Baxter is introduced and mentions both the phrase “ambiguous genitalia” as well as referencing the Oprah episode on intersexuality. Pagonis cites the reason for participating in Transparent as creating “a positive instance of representation” for intersex people, increasing the “notoriety” of the intersex movement. Pagonis considers this role to be a way of advocating for human rights. Pagonis appeared on the cover of the January 2017
National Geographic "Gender Revolution" issue. They were one of the intersex activists who wrote in expressing concern that being intersex was defined by the magazine as a
disorder.
National Geographic responded to reader pressure by updating the definition in the online issue. In June 2017, Pagonis appeared in a video for
Teen Vogue alongside fellow intersex advocates Emily Quinn and
Hanne Gaby Odiele, explaining what it means to be intersex. Pagonis also co-founded the Chicago-based Intersex Justice Project with activists
Sean Saifa Wall and Lynnell Stephani Long. Wall and Pagonis organized protests and demonstrations outside of
Lurie Children's Hospital, where Pagonis was operated on as a child. Intersex Justice Project carried forth the #endintersexsurgery campaign against Lurie for three years. On July 28, 2020, Lurie Children's Hospital issued a formal public apology to intersex patients for past surgeries and ceased performing cosmetic surgeries on infants, becoming the first hospital in the United States to do. In May 2021, Pagonis reported that for the second time the
intersex hashtag was removed on TikTok and demanded its return. A poster could not click the tag on their own post and trying to search for intersex pulled up a “null” page. TikTok told
The Verge that in both of the instances Pagonis noticed, the tag had been removed by mistake and was subsequently restored. But because there was no public statement about the accidental removal, Pagonis and others were left to speculate about whether it was being intentionally censored. After growing up with secrecy, lies, and shame around being intersex, Pagonis sees
TikTok and other platforms as spaces where intersex people “can connect with each other and also advocate for ourselves and each other, and then other people can learn about intersex.” But when the easiest way to discover intersex content on TikTok disappears, that erasure follows the historical mistreatment of intersex people. “My community is
erased with a scalpel, and with words and linguistics,” said Pagonis, “but this time they're literally erasing the word.” ==Awards and recognition==