Guest
On this episode, Mary Jacobsen speaks with Kimberly Zieselman about her book, XOXY, an award-winning memoir of her personal and professional intersex journey. Zieselman is an intersex woman, lawyer and human rights advocate. She served as the executive director of interACT: Advocates for Intersex Youth. In 2022 the State Dept. appointed her Senior Advisor to the Special Envoy for LGBTQI Human Rights. Zieselman explains the meaning of intersex, which refers to someone born with sex characteristics (chromosomes, reproductive organs or genitalia) that don't line up with typical definitions of either a “male“ or “female“ body. Nearly 2% of the world’s population are born intersex, about the same number of people who have green eyes. Zieselman will correct common misconceptions of what it means to be intersex, and will describe how binary notions of gender and sex embedded in U.S. health care have contributed to life-long harms of intersex persons, in
