Tony Briffa: “The Hippocratic Oath, Western Medicine, and the Children of Hermes and Aphrodite”

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Living and Loving in Diversity cover

Living and Loving in Diversity: An anthology of Australian multicultural queer adventures.
Maria Pallotta-Chiarolli (ed)


Tony Briffa has written on being intersex and Maltese Australian in the book Living and Loving in Diversity: An anthology of Australian multicultural queer adventures (chief editor Maria Pallotta-Chiarolli, Wakefield Press). The book was launched at the 2018 Australian GLBTIQ Multicultural Council conference, “Living Loving Diversity”, and an edited extract has been published by Archer Magazine.

I am proud of my Maltese heritage; I am also proud of my intersex heritage. As a heritage that has a very long history, I believe having an intersex variation is nothing to be ashamed of, despite the fact that some would have had my parents and I feel ashamed, as they still to this day try to convince others.

People with intersex variations have only relatively recently found their own voice. We work to ensure that the social and medical needs of those with intersex variations have a voice that is understood in its own right.

It is often the cultural examples of other societies rather than Western understanding of intersex variations that is key to achieving the best way to approach treatment and so it would have been in my case.

More information

Briffa, Tony. 2018. ‘Intersex Variations: Western Medicine and the Hippocratic Oath’. Archer Magazine (blog). 28 September 2018. http://archermagazine.com.au/2018/09/intersex-variations-western-medicine-and-the-hippocratic-oath/.

Pallotta-Chiarolli, Maria (editor). 2018. Living and Loving in Diversity An Anthology of Australian Multicultural Queer Adventures. Adelaide, South Australia: Wakefield Press. https://www.wakefieldpress.com.au/product.php?productid=1473.