Academic conferences are usually solid, but the 1973 International Symposium on Gender Identity in Dubrovnik, Yugoslavia, was an exception. All was peaceful until a psychologist named John Money stood up and yelled, “Mickey Diamond, I hate your guts!”
Sexologist Milton Diamond, who had been with Mickey since he was a child, sat across the room. Dr. Money and Dr. Diamond were fierce rivals. Dr. Money, a nationally known researcher at Johns Hopkins University, has long maintained that sexual and gender identities are neutral at birth and are shaped primarily by the infant's environment.
Dr. Diamond, who was just beginning his career at the University of Hawaii, strongly disagreed and said so repeatedly, including in a widely read 1965 critique of Dr. Money's work. He took particular issue with Dr. Money's recommendation that intersex infants should undergo surgery to “correct” their genitals.
Dr. Money runs up to Dr. Diamond and gets in his face, angrily claiming that he is right.
Dr. Diamond simply replied, “The data doesn't exist.”
At one point, a witness reported that Dr. Money punched Dr. Diamond, but Dr. Diamond later said he did not remember it.
The case was reported by journalist John Colapinto in Rolling Stone and his subsequent book As Nature Made: The Boy Raised as a Girl (2000), and was particularly heated by recent announcements by Dr. Money. . .
He worked with a child whose penis was irreparably damaged during circumcision in 1965, and underwent further surgery to remove the male genitalia. The child was then raised as a girl and took on all the physical and emotional characteristics of a traditional female adolescent — fortunately, Dr. Money said.
Although the child was not born intersex, Dr. Money argues that this case proves that gender and sexual identity are malleable, and that intersex children should indeed undergo surgery. did.
Dr. Money and his colleague Anke A. Ehrhardt, a current researcher in the field, published their findings in their 1972 book, Men and Women, Boys and Girls. Writing in the New York Times, journalist James Lincoln Collier called the book “the most important book in the social sciences published since the Kinsey Report.”
However, Dr. Diamond remained unconvinced and said so, which infuriated Dr. Money in Dubrovnik. He said the case study was not conclusive, adding that the child, who was about 7 years old at the time the book was published, had not yet reached puberty.
It was in the early 1990s that Dr. Diamond tracked down the children and the psychiatrist who treated them, H. Keith Sigmundson.
What he discovered contradicted all of Dr. Money's claims.
The child, born Bruce Reimer and then raised as Brenda, rebelled against his forced upbringing, tore her dress and threatened suicide. At the age of 14, the child's parents agreed to stop hormone treatment and live as a boy, now living under the name David.
Worse, Dr. Diamond said there was evidence that Dr. Money, who met with David and his twin brother every year, was abusive to the children, including forcing them to imitate sex acts and yelling at them when they refused. Dr. Money, who died in 2006, denied the accusations.
The findings of Dr. Diamond and Dr. Sigmundsson, published in 1997, reshaped not only Dr. Money's case study but also how the medical community approaches intersex infants in general.
Under Dr. Money's influence, it has long been standard practice for doctors to choose the sex of babies with ambiguous genitalia. Dr. Diamond argued the opposite. Identity cannot be forced, intersex people have the right to lie within the spectrum of human sexuality, and the decision to make changes to their bodies should be left to the individual.
Dr. Diamond continued to communicate with David, and David eventually married and adopted his wife's children. He died by suicide in 2004.
Beau Laurent, founder and former executive director of the Intersex Association of North America, said that while many doctors today follow Dr. Diamond's recommendations, other doctors and many parents still choose infant surgery. It is said that there is.
Dr Diamond told the BBC in 1980: “Maybe we should really think about it.” We are born into this world with a certain degree of masculinity and femininity that transcends what society desires. ”
Dr. Diamond died on March 20th at his home in Honolulu. He passed away at the age of 90. His wife, Constance Brinton-Diamond, confirmed his death.
Milton Diamond was born in the Bronx on March 6, 1934, to Aaron and Jenny (Arbor) Diamond, Jewish immigrants from the Ukraine. They owned a grocery store in the borough and the family moved frequently. He spent part of his childhood in a neighborhood in Ireland, where some children who had never met Milton before gave him the more familiar name Mickey. . He froze.
In 1955, Milton became the first student to earn a degree in biophysics from the City University of New York. After serving three years in the U.S. Army, he attended the University of Kansas and earned a doctorate in anatomy and psychology in 1962, writing a dissertation on the effects of testosterone in the womb.
In addition to his wife, he is survived by four children from his first marriage, Hinda, Eileen, Sarah and Leah Diamond. three stepchildren, Maia James Tidwell, Christina Brinton and Andrew Brinton; and 14 grandchildren.
Dr. Diamond taught at the University of Louisville for several years, then moved to the University of Hawaii in 1967 to join the founding faculty of the new medical school. He was made an honorary member in 2009.
After publishing a 1997 paper on Dr. Money's research, Dr. Diamond spent several years developing guidelines for the care of intersex people. He also opposed the idea that being intersex was a disability and advocated for it to be accepted as a normal part of human sexuality.
Nature loves diversity, he was fond of saying.