Professor Mickey Diamond: "Nature Loves Variety; Unfortunately, Society Hates It"

I have for the past four years writing my columns avoided the issue which has, to a large degree, overdetermined my life - my life as an intersex person. There are a number of reasons for this - the complexity of the issue, the involvement of endocrine disruptors in the genesis of the condition which few still want to acknowledge, its causation of the most traumatic time of my life, and the political difficulty in dealing with intersex in the context of the growing acceptance of trans rights.

Starting with the last - the success of the trans rights movement - I see sufficient progress that the old tension between the two communities in the U.S. has resolved sufficiently that it's time for the two to coexist, and there is no better underpinning to that political marriage than recognition that being trans is a form of human intersexuality. One example - now that we have open trans military service, the team that brought that about, led by Aaron Belkin, is turning its attention to intersex persons.

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