On Wednesday morning, Anunnaki Ray Marquez woke up to something they’ve spent years waiting for: a birth certificate that accurately reflects their sex.

Marquez, who identifies as a gender-nonconforming, androgynous gay man and uses both they/them and he/him pronouns, is intersex. They were born with a variation of hormones, chromosomes, and (later) secondary sex characteristics that cannot be easily categorized into either of the two binary sexes. And after months of back-and-forth correspondence, medical documentation, and a court ruling, the state of Colorado agreed to issue an amended birth certificate that reads “intersex” in the field where so often we only see the words "male" or "female."

Courtesy of Anunnaki Ray Marquez

Marquez, now a Jacksonville, Florida-area resident who works as an intersex advocate with the group Jax Youth Equality, is careful to distinguish between their biological sex and gender identity. Some intersex people identify as men or women, while others consider their gender to be nonbinary.

“Here’s the thing that confuses people: My biological sex is intersex. We live in a world that thinks that should be in alignment with my gender identity,” says Marquez. “But my gender identity doesn’t match: it’s non-conforming, androgynous male. My sexual orientation confuses people even more. If I have an intersex body, they get confused when I say I’m gay.”

Colorado is the first U.S. state to issue an intersex birth certificate, and its vital records office confirmed in an email Wednesday that it had made the decision to do so after receiving “adequate materials” from Marquez. In December 2016, Sara Kelly Keenan became the first person in U.S. history to receive an amended intersex birth certificate, but it was issued by her hometown of New York City, which has its own vital records department separate from the state. According to the Intersex and Genderqueer Recognition Project (IGRP), which tracks legal advances in nonbinary identity documents nationwide, several intersex birth certificates followed Keenan’s in New York City. And new statewide policies across the country have introduced gender-neutral ‘X’ markers on driver’s licenses and state ID cards, allowing intersex and nonbinary people a way to opt out of categorizing themselves as either male or female. But no state has followed New York City’s lead in issuing birth certificates that read “intersex” — until now.

"The nonbinary rights movement has incredible momentum right now,” says Toby Adams, executive director of IGRP. “These changes to birth certificates and driver’s licenses on the state level — in Oregon, California, Washington, New York, D.C., and now Colorado — are also likely to have implications in how the Federal Government handles passports.”