Educational conferences are normally staid affairs, however the 1973 Worldwide Symposium on Gender Identification, held in Dubrovnik, Yugoslavia, was an exception. Every thing was peaceable till a psychologist named John Cash stood and yelled, “Mickey Diamond, I hate your guts!”
Milton Diamond, a sexologist who had passed by Mickey since childhood, was sitting on the opposite facet of the room. Dr. Cash and Dr. Diamond had been bitter rivals: Dr. Cash, a nationally acknowledged researcher at Johns Hopkins College, had lengthy argued that sexual and gender identification are impartial at delivery and formed primarily by an toddler’s environment.
Dr. Diamond, who was simply starting his profession on the College of Hawaii, strongly disagreed, and had mentioned so repeatedly — together with in a broadly learn 1965 critique of Dr. Cash’s work. He took explicit problem with Dr. Cash’s advice that intersex infants have surgical procedure to “appropriate” their genitals.
Dr. Cash rushed over to Dr. Diamond, getting in his face, furiously insisting he was proper.
Dr. Diamond solely replied, “The info isn’t there.”
At one level, eyewitnesses reported that Dr. Cash slugged Dr. Diamond, although Dr. Diamond later mentioned he didn’t bear in mind it.
The incident, reported by the journalist John Colapinto in Rolling Stone journal and in a subsequent guide, “As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Lady” (2000), was particularly heated due to a latest announcement by Dr. Cash.
He had been working with a baby who in 1965, after his penis was irreparably broken throughout a circumcision, had undergone additional surgical procedure to take away his male genitalia. The kid was then raised as a woman, taking over all the standard bodily and emotional traits of a feminine adolescent — fortunately, Dr. Cash mentioned.
Although the kid was not born intersex, Dr. Cash claimed that the case proved that gender and sexual identification had been malleable and that intersex youngsters ought to certainly obtain surgical procedure.
Dr. Cash and an affiliate, Anke A. Ehrhardt, now a researcher within the area, introduced their findings in a 1972 guide, “Man and Girl, Boy and Lady.” The journalist James Lincoln Collier, writing in The New York Instances, known as it “an important quantity within the social sciences to look for the reason that Kinsey experiences.”
However Dr. Diamond remained unconvinced, and mentioned so, a place that fired up Dr. Cash in Dubrovnik. The case examine was inconclusive, he mentioned, including that the kid, who was about 7 when the guide was revealed, had not even reached puberty.
It was not till the early Nineteen Nineties that Dr. Diamond managed to trace down the kid and the psychiatrist who had handled them, H. Keith Sigmundson.
What he discovered demolished all of Dr. Cash’s claims.
The kid, born Bruce Reimer however then raised as Brenda, had rebelled towards the enforced upbringing, tearing off clothes and threatening suicide. At 14, the kid’s mother and father agreed to cease hormone remedy, and permit him to stay as a boy — now underneath a unique title, David.
Worse, Dr. Diamond discovered that Dr. Cash, who met yearly with David and his twin brother, had abused the kids, forcing them to simulate sexual exercise and yelling at them once they refused. (Dr. Cash denied the accusations).
Dr. Diamond’s findings, which he and Dr. Sigmundson revealed in 1997, rewrote not simply Dr. Cash’s case examine, however how the medical neighborhood approached intersex infants typically.
Below Dr. Cash’s affect, normal apply had lengthy been for docs to decide on a intercourse for a child with ambiguous genitalia. Dr. Diamond argued for the alternative: Identification couldn’t be compelled, intersex folks deserved a spot on the spectrum of human sexuality, and the choice to make adjustments to their physique must be left to the person.
Dr. Diamond stayed in contact with David, who finally married and adopted his spouse’s youngsters. He died by suicide in 2004.
In the present day, whereas many docs comply with Dr. Diamond’s suggestions, different docs and plenty of mother and father nonetheless go for toddler surgical procedure, in line with Bo Laurent, the founder and former government director of the Intersex Society of North America.
“Possibly we actually should suppose,” Dr. Diamond instructed the BBC in 1980, “that we don’t come to this world impartial; that we come to this world with some extent of maleness and femaleness which is able to transcend regardless of the society needs to place into it.”
Dr. Diamond died on March 20 at his residence in Honolulu. He was 90. His spouse, Constance Brinton-Diamond, confirmed the dying.
Milton Diamond was born on March 6, 1934, within the Bronx to Aaron and Jennie (Arber) Diamond, Jewish immigrants from Ukraine. They owned grocery shops within the borough, and the household moved continuously. He spent part of his childhood in an Irish neighborhood, the place among the youngsters, having by no means met a Milton earlier than, gave him a reputation extra acquainted to them, Mickey. It caught.
In 1955, Milton turned the primary scholar on the Metropolis Faculty of New York to obtain a level in biophysics. After three years within the U.S. Military, he attended the College of Kansas and in 1962 earned a doctorate in anatomy and psychology, writing a dissertation on the results of testosterone in utero.
Alongside together with his spouse, he’s survived by 4 youngsters from his first marriage, Hinda, Irene, Sara and Leah Diamond; three stepchildren, Maia James Tidwell, Kristina Brinton and Andrew Brinton; and 14 grandchildren.
Dr. Diamond taught for a couple of years on the College of Louisville, then moved to the College of Hawaii in 1967 to affix the founding college of its new medical faculty. He took emeritus standing in 2009.
After publishing his 1997 paper on Dr. Cash’s work, Dr. Diamond spent a number of years creating tips for the care of intersex people. He additionally pushed towards the concept being intersex was a dysfunction and argued for its acceptance as a traditional a part of human sexuality.
Nature loves selection, he appreciated to say.
