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The 29-year-old says she’s coming out now to advocate on behalf of children who are intersex.
This is Hanne Gaby Odiele.
The 29-year-old Belgian has modeled for designers like Alexander Wang and Christian Dior but is in the news for another reason — Odiele just revealed she’s intersex in a story in Vogue magazine.
Vogue / Via instagram.com
What does it mean to be intersex? Actually, it can mean a number of things.
According to InterAct, a non-profit group that advocates on behalf of intersex youth, intersex people have “reproductive or sexual anatomy and/or a chromosome pattern that doesn’t seem to fit typical binary definitions of male or female.”
As InterACT explains, these traits are 'intersex,' and can include several different conditions, including “androgen insensitivity syndrome, some forms of congenital adrenal hyperplasia, Klinefelter’s syndrome, Turner’s syndrome, hypospadias, Swyers’ syndrome, and many others.”
According to the American Psychological Association, as many as 1 in every 1,500 babies is born intersex.
Odiele was born with “androgen insensitivity syndrome,” which means she has XY chromosomes of genetic males but doesn’t have the external genitalia of typical males.
According to the National Institutes of Health, the bodies of people with androgen insensitivity syndrome, “are unable to respond to certain male sex hormones (called androgens), they may have mostly female external sex characteristics or signs of both male and female sexual development.”
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