I’ve been trying to tell people all along that transsexuality is one form of intersexuality and just found out last night that Milton Diamond agrees with me on this point:
“Actually from my own clinical experiences, my own experimental research, and from the findings of others I conclude that transsexuality is a form of intersexuality…. I believe that transsexuals are intersexed in their brains as others are or might be more obviously so in their gonads, genitals, hormonal character, receptors, enzymatic or chromosomal constitution. And it is this brain intersexuality that biases the person to assert his or her gender identity.”
Read Dr. Diamond’s full article here: http://www.hawaii.edu/PCSS…
I would also add that many self-identified transsexuals might actually have a physical intersexed condition that is not readily obvious, something that may be discovered later on or perhaps never discovered. In fact, there are cases from time to time where a person who always felt that their body didn’t match their perceived gender but who didn’t show any outward proof of a physical anomaly did find out later that they had conditions such as chromosomal variants or internal organs of those of the opposite gender, but sometimes these conditions go undetected. Read about one such example here.
UPDATE: This also concurs with what Dr. Eric Vilain has taught: “Intersex is an intermediate sexual phenotype. This means that this is a state of being in-between what’s commonly accepted as male or female at all levels; that is: an anatomical level, gonadal level, and brain level, and behavioral level.”
