Op/Ed

Ghost in the Machine

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Once you label me, you negate me Søren Kierkegaard We know nothing of Joseph Marzo in life, so it is impossible to know what they would have ever thought of the declaration made after their death that they were “una donna” – a woman. They died after another episode of the vomiting and diarrhea that…
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Here be Dragons*

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Here be Dragons*

It began long ago in a land far away to the east, the like of which you will not find in the world today. ~ The Hobbit     Storytelling is the ancient means by which mankind has always shared information. The Indigenous groups of North America, and Australia shared the stories of their ancestors…
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Undeniable Blackness and Impossible Hermaphrodites

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Undeniable Blackness and Impossible Hermaphrodites

  A Shared Guest Post by Sean Saifa Wall and Dr Cary Gabriel Costello   “In preparing for my talk, “Undeniable Blackness and Impossible Hermaphrodites” at UC Colorado at Colorado Springs next week, I revisited J. Marion Sims, heralded as the father of gynecology. I couldn’t help but feel my heart pound and break reading…
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Making Depathologisation a matter of Law

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The ripples from Malta’s adoption of legal protections for intersex, trans and gender-queer people continues to resonate. The Maltese GIGESC Act not only defends children’s rights in Malta, including those of bodily integrity, self-determination and health. It also makes a fundamental contribution to intersex people’s human rights by recognizing in law the pervasive role that…
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Musing on binary essentialism

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There’s definitely something stirring in the ether. Claire Ainsworth was first out of the traps with their article in Nature, openly stating that science has known for years that sex is a spectrum, and nothing like the immutable binary that everyone is told about in class, all the way from primary school thru to med….
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Reflections

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I am quite sure every empire that has ever bestrode the world believed it would last forever. They never do. The hubris that informs such sure and certain beliefs hold the seeds that hasten their downfall. During 2005 a group of clinicians from around the world, and a single US activist, met in a Chicago…
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