An unexpected and touching acceptance speech from Yael van der Wouden, winner of this year’s Women’s Prize for fiction:
“I was a girl until I turned 13, and then as I hit puberty all that was supposed to happen did not quite happen, or if it did happen it happened too much. I won’t thrill you too much with the specifics but the long and the short of it is that hormonally I am intersex. This little fact defined my life throughout my teens until I advocated for the healthcare that I needed. In the few precious moments here on stage I am receiving truly the greatest honour of my life as a woman, presenting to you as a woman and accepting this Women’s prize and that is because of every single trans person who’s fought for healthcare, who changed the system, the law, societal standards, themselves. I stand on their shoulders.”
