One of my favorite books that I read this year actually came out in 2017.

I read it last month, and before I even finished it, I was about halfway through, and it was so

enlightening, so eye-opening to these aspects of the human experience that we don't talk about,

and I thought, okay, we have to do this for the podcast.

That book is called Born Both.

It's by Hita Valoria.

Hita is one of the leading intersex and non-binary activists.

They're also the founder of the intersex campaign for equality,

which, as you'll hear, alongside Lambda Legal,

was responsible for the U.S.

finally issuing the first passport with an ex

under the sex and gender marker.

Now, for those who don't know,

intersex people are born with sex characteristics,

so that's gendals, gonads, chromosome patterns,

that don't fit the typical binary notions that we have about male or female bodies.

And there are many ways to be intersex.

It's a term that describes a wide range of natural variations in the body.

Sometimes it's more apparent, as you'll hear he to talk about with their body,

but also it should be noted that intersex people can have bodies that look like

what we consider to be typically male or female.

The intersex experience is a real blind spot that we have, one that is almost entirely

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