Shedding Light on Intersex

Being intersex made high school especially awkward for Katie. "So much of adolescence for a girl is about moving through these rites of passage of getting your period and buying your first bra—and having your parents be awkward about it—and going on your first date and all this other stuff," she says. "And I wasn't really doing that stuff at the same time that my friends were. So I felt really isolated in that sense."

At 18, Katie and her parents found a support group of people like her. "I met some really amazing, talented, beautiful, smart women who were just like, 'You know what? This is something that I have. Yes, I used to have testes, but it doesn't mean anything to me in terms of how I live my life. It's just part of me. It's not all of me.'"

Now 22, Katie says something like dating can still be intimidating. "It's always really scary to think about telling someone that I may be dating. And it's something that I build up a lot in my mind and that I get very, very nervous about," she says. "But the fact of the matter is, I've had three boyfriends. My current boyfriend is absolutely amazing. None of them have ever cared at all. One of them, when I told him, was like, 'Okay, so when do you want to go to dinner?'"