Milton Diamond

Milton Diamond (born March 6, 1934 in New York City^[1]) is a retired professor of anatomy and reproductive biology at the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa. He has had a very long and productive career in the study of human sexuality. Dr Diamond retired from the University in December 2009 but continues full-time with his research and writing and also continues to travel extensively consulting in his field.

Early career

Milton Diamond graduated from the City College of New York with a B.S. in biophysics in 1955,^[1] after which he spent three years in the Army as an engineering officer, stationed in Japan.^[2] On returning to the United States, he attended graduate school at University of Kansas from 1958–1962 and earned a Ph.D. in anatomy and psychology from that University.^[2] His first job was teaching at the University of Louisville, School of Medicine where he simultaneously completed two years toward an M.D., passing his Basic Medicine Boards,^[1] and in 1967 he moved to Hawai'i to take up a post at the recently-established John A. Burns School of Medicine. Milton Diamond had a long running feud with the psychologist Dr. John Money. In the early seventies, Diamond and Money were attending a conference on transgenderism in Dubrovnik. According to the book 'As Nature Made Him: The Boy raised As A Girl' (p.174) ^[3] at this conference Money initiated a loud and aggressive argument with Diamond. One witness claims that John Money punched Diamond; however, Diamond himself said that he could not recall any physical contact during this encounter.

The "John/Joan" case

Dr. Diamond is known for following up the case of David Reimer, a boy raised as a girl after a botched circumcision. With the cooperation of Dr. H. Keith Sigmundson, who had been Reimer's supervising psychiatrist, he tracked down the adult Reimer and found that John Money's sex reassignment of Reimer had failed. This case, which Dr. Diamond named that of "John/Joan" to protect Reimer's privacy, has become one of the most cited cases in the literature of psychiatry, anthropology, women's studies, child development, and biology of gender.

The major tragedy of the decision to raise David Reimer as a girl is that it was popularized as a success. This was unfortunately accepted by physicians as a model for how to deal with infants with intersex conditions. Dr. Diamond was the first to alert physicians that the model was faulty^[4]. He recommended^[5] that physicians (1) do no surgery on intersexed infants without their informed consent; (2) assign such infants in the gender to which they will probably best adjust; (3) refrain from adding shame, stigma and secrecy to the issue, by assisting intersexual people to meet and associate with others of like condition. Dr. Diamond encouraged considering the intersex condition as a difference of sex development, not as a disorder^[6].

Current work, appointments and awards

Dr. Diamond has written extensively about abortion and family planning, pornography, intersexuality, transsexuality, and other sex- and reproduction-related issues for professional sex and legal journals, as well as lay periodicals. He is frequently interviewed for public media and legal matters, and often serves as an expert in court proceedings, and is known for his research on the origins and development of sexual identity. Although he has retired from teaching, he continues to research and consult concerning transsexuality, intersexuality and pornography.

Appointments

Dr. Diamond was based at the John A. Burns School of Medicine, now at the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa, from 1967.^[2] He was appointed Professor of Anatomy and Reproductive Biology in 1971, and from 1985 until his retirement he was Director of the Pacific Center for Sex and Society^[2] within the School of Medicine.

In 1999 Dr. Diamond was appointed as President of the International Academy of Sex Research,^[7] and in 2001/02 as President of the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality.^[8]

Awards

Awards which have been made to Dr. Diamond include:

• 1999: the British GIRES Research Prize;^[9]

• 2000: the German Magnus Hirschfeld Medal for sexual science;^[10]

• 2005: the Norwegian Diversity Prize for his research efforts on behalf of transsexual and transgender people worldwide;

• 2008: the first of a proposed annual award made by the German Intersex Society (Intersexuelle Menschen e.V.)^[11] "for his decades-long commitment to the benefit of intersex people";^[12]

• 2009: the Regents' Medal for Excellence in Research by the University of Hawai'i;^[13]

• 2010: the Kinsey Award for 2011, made by the Midcontinent Region of the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality.^[14]

Publications

• Sexual decisions (1980) - ISBN 0-316-18388-1
• Sexwatching: Looking into the World of Sexual Behaviour (1992) - ISBN 1-85375-024-7
• Sexual Behavior in Pre Contact Hawai’i: A Sexological Ethnography[1][2]

References

External links

• The Pacific Center for Sex and Society website