her ability to make a living. She sent out hundreds of resumes, often hearing, she said, that she was free to dress up however she wanted—but not on the job. At home, at first, her wife and her daughters struggled to adjust. The personal and financial strain wore on her and her family. More than once, she swallowed too many pills, closed her eyes, and was disappointed when she woke up.

But in September 2010, four months after the State Department’s new policy had taken effect, Richter’s passport arrived. In practical terms, it helped her attain state certification as a female-owned business—something her Illinois driver’s license already identifying her as female hadn’t had the power to do, she said. The state certification eventually led to more work, she said—awith aides, including a speechwriter, “to map out what she wanted to say,” according to Jonathan Allen and Arnie Parnes in their book, HRC: State Secrets and the Rebirth of Hillary Clinton, she came out in support of same-sex marriage—“personally and as a matter of policy and law”—in a six-minute video released by the Human Rights Campaign. The Economist sniffed that her shift was “farcically late.”

The following year, in Hard Choices, a second memoir generally seen as an opening salvo to her expected second presidential run, she wrote at length about her time as Secretary of State. She mentioned the transgender passport policy on page 578. “We also made it easier for Americans to change the sex listed on their passport …”

It caught the eye of Terry Gross.

“Did