For years through childhood and early adulthood, Raven van Dorst felt different. The response evoked in others was always ‘too’: too loud, too wild, too aggressive, too messy.

It wasn’t until a visit to a doctor, aged in their early 20s, that it all fell into place. Having struggled to fit in as a little girl, then a young woman, the medic confirmed van Dorst had been born intersex, with aspects of both male and female sex characteristics, and operated on as a baby. It was…