title: Beau Biden

text: Beau Biden married Hallie Olivere in 2002. They had two children: daughter Natalie Naomi (b. 2004), and son Robert Hunter II (b. 2006).


title: Beau Biden

text: Biden graduated from Archmere Academy, his father's high school alma mater, and the University of Pennsylvania in 1991, where he was a member of the Psi Upsilon fraternity. He was also a graduate of Syracuse University College of Law, as was his father. After graduating from law school, he clerked for Judge Steven McAuliffe of the United States District Court of New Hampshire. From 1995 to 2004, he worked at the United States Department of Justice in Philadelphia, first as Counsel to the Office of Policy Development and later as a federal prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney's Office.


title: Beau Biden

text: Biden was in Kosovo after the 1998-1999 Kosovo War, working on behalf of the OSCE to train judges and prosecutors for the local judicial system. In 2004 he became a partner in the law firm of Bifferato, Gentilotti, Biden & Balick, where he worked for two years before being elected Attorney General of Delaware.


title: Beau Biden

text: When Joe Biden was nominated for Vice President at the 2008 Democratic National Convention, Beau introduced him. Many delegates wept at his speech, which recounted the auto accident that killed his mother and sister and the subsequent commitment his father made to his sons.


title: Beau Biden

text: Biden joined the Delaware Army National Guard in 2003 and attended The JAG School at the University of Virginia. He attained the rank of major in the Judge Advocate General's Corps as part of the 261st Signal Brigade in Smyrna, Delaware.


title: Beau Biden

text: Biden's unit was activated to deploy to Iraq on October 3, 2008 and sent to Fort Bliss, Texas for pre-deployment training. This was the day after his father participated in the 2008 presidential campaign's only vice presidential debate. His father was on the record as saying, "I don't want him going. But I tell you what, I don't want my grandson or my granddaughters going back in 15 years, and so how we leave makes a big difference."


title: Beau Biden

text: Biden traveled to Washington, D.C. from Iraq in January 2009 for the presidential inauguration and his father's swearing-in as vice president, then returned to Iraq. Biden received a visit at Camp Victory from his father on July 4, 2009.


title: Beau Biden

text: Biden returned from Iraq in September 2009 after completing his yearlong stint on active duty which included a 7-month deployment in the combat zone. During his deployment he announced that he would continue to actively serve as Delaware's attorney general by working in conjunction with his office's senior staff in Delaware, although a member of his unit related that Biden said he had turned over most of his attorney general work to his deputy in order to focus on his duties in Iraq.


title: Beau Biden

text: Biden was awarded the Bronze Star Medal for his service in Iraq. Army Chief of Staff Raymond Odierno delivered the eulogy at Biden's funeral and presented a posthumous Legion of Merit for his service in the Delaware National Guard, stating "Beau Biden possessed the traits I have witnessed in only the greatest leaders." He was also posthumously presented with the Delaware Conspicuous Service Cross, which is "awarded for heroism, meritorious service and outstanding achievement".


title: Beau Biden

text: In his first bid for political office, Biden ran for attorney general of Delaware in 2006. Biden's opponent was a veteran state prosecutor and assistant U.S. attorney, Ferris Wharton. Major issues in the campaign included the candidates' experience and proposed efforts to address sex offenders, Internet predators, senior abuse and domestic abuse. Biden won the election by approximately five percentage points.


title: Beau Biden

text: After being elected, he appointed former Delaware Attorney General and International Judge Richard S. Gebelein as Chief Deputy Attorney General, and former assistant U.S. Attorney Richard G. Andrews was appointed as State Prosecutor. As Attorney General, Biden supported and enforced stronger registration requirements for sex offenders.


title: Beau Biden

text: Joe Biden resigned from the Senate following his 2008 election to the vice presidency. Governor Ruth Ann Minner named former Joe Biden aide Ted Kaufman to fill the vacant seat, but Kaufman made it clear that he would not be a candidate in the 2010 special election. It fueled speculation Beau would run at that time. Biden's father stated after the announcement of Kaufman's appointment, "It is no secret that I believe my son, Attorney General, would make a great United States Senator just as I believe he has been a great attorney general. But Beau has made it clear from the moment he entered public life that any office he sought he would earn on his own... [I]f he chooses to run for the Senate in the future, he will have to run and win on his own. He wouldn't have it any other way."


title: Beau Biden

text: In October 2009, Biden stated that he was considering a run for the Senate and that he would make a final decision in January. On January 25, Biden confirmed that he would forgo a Senate run so as to better focus on the prosecution of Earl Bradley, a convicted serial child rapist.


title: Beau Biden

text: On November 2, 2010, he was easily re-elected to a second term as Delaware Attorney General, beating Independent Party of Delaware candidate Doug Campbell by a large margin.


title: Beau Biden

text: Biden was criticized for his handling of the prosecution of Robert H. Richards IV, an heir of the powerful Delaware-based Du Pont family accused of sexually assaulting his young daughter. In 2008, Biden's office charged Richards with two counts of second-degree rape, charges punishable by a minimum of 20 years in prison, but later that year, his office entered a plea bargain with Richards in which Richards pleaded guilty to one count of fourth-degree rape and was sentenced by Judge Jan Jurden to eight years' probation. Defending the plea bargain and Jurden's sentencing in a letter to "The News Journal", Biden wrote "This was not a strong case, and a loss at trial was a distinct possibility" and said the judge "exercised sound discretion".


title: Beau Biden

text: Biden did not seek election to a third term as attorney general in 2014. In the spring of that year, he announced his intention to run for governor of Delaware in the 2016 election to succeed term-limited Democratic Governor Jack Markell. At the time of this announcement, the cancer that would kill Biden in 2015 had been diagnosed (in 2013), but was in remission.


title: Beau Biden

text: According to his father, Beau was diagnosed with ankylosing spondylitis in 2001 after returning from service in Kosovo. He was later diagnosed with brain cancer, which his father believes was possibly a consequence of exposure to military burn pits in Iraq.


title: Beau Biden

text: For the final few years of his life, Biden suffered from a brain tumor. In May 2010, he was admitted to Christiana Hospital in Newark, Delaware, after complaining of a headache, numbness, and paralysis. Officials stated that he had suffered a mild stroke. Later that month, Biden was transferred to Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia and kept for observation for several days.


title: Beau Biden

text: In August 2013, Biden was admitted to the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston and diagnosed with glioblastoma multiforme, an aggressive type of brain cancer, after experiencing what White House officials called "an episode of disorientation and weakness". A lesion was removed at that time. Biden had radiation and chemotherapy treatments and the cancer remained stable. On May 20, 2015, he was admitted to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, because of a recurrence of brain cancer. He died there ten days later, on May 30, 2015, at the age of 46. His funeral was held at St. Anthony of Padua Roman Catholic Church in Wilmington, Delaware, on June 6, 2015.


title: Beau Biden

text: Biden's funeral was attended by then President Barack Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama, their daughters Malia and Sasha, former President Bill Clinton, former Secretary of State and former First Lady Hillary Clinton, former US Army Chief of Staff General Ray Odierno, and then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. At his funeral, he was awarded the Legion of Merit Award by General Odierno, for his services in the Iraq War. President Obama described Biden as "an original. He was a good man. He did in 46 years what most of us couldn't do in 146." At his funeral service, a solo rendition of the song "Til Kingdom Come" was performed by Chris Martin, the lead singer of the band Coldplay, of whom Beau had been a fan.


title: Beau Biden

text: Beau Biden was buried at St. Joseph on the Brandywine in Greenville, Delaware. His gravesite is near the graves of his grandparents Joe Sr. and Catherine, his mother Neilia and his sister Naomi.


title: Beau Biden

text: On November 4, 2015, Biden was posthumously awarded the Albert Schweitzer Leadership Award, the highest honor given by the Hugh O'Brian Youth Leadership Foundation (HOBY), for his service to mankind. A portion of the 21st Century Cures Act (2016) was named the "Beau Biden Cancer Moonshot" initiative after him. A named scholarship was established at Syracuse University College of Law in 2016.


title: Beau Biden

text: In August 2016, Joe Biden, his sister Valerie Biden Owens and son Hunter attended a ceremony that renamed a southeastern Kosovar highway "Joseph R. 'Beau' Biden, III" to honour Beau's contribution to Kosovo for training its judges and prosecutors. That year the Major Joseph R. "Beau" Biden III National Guard/Reserve Center in New Castle, Delaware was named in his honor. On November 14, 2017, Joe Biden published a memoir titled "", where he reflects on Beau Biden's illness and death.


title: Beau Biden

text: On March 2, 2020, Joe Biden mentioned Beau in a speech, comparing him to former South Bend Mayor, Pete Buttigieg, after Buttigieg endorsed Biden for the 2020 presidential election.The Major Joseph R. "Beau" Biden III National Guard/Reserve Center, named for Biden, is in New Castle, Delaware; it was the site of a speech by Joe Biden the day before his inauguration where he stated "we should be introducing him (Beau) as president".


title: Beau Biden

text: On January 20, 2021, the day his father was sworn in as president, the band New Radicals reunited for the first time in 22 years to perform their 1998 hit song "You Get What You Give" during an inauguration performance. The song was a favorite of Beau's and at his 2015 funeral his sister Ashley recited the lyrics in her eulogy. The band had rejected offers to perform over the past 22 years but wanted to honor this day and honor Beau. "We pledged if Joe [Biden] won, we’d get together and play our little song both in memory and in honor of our new president’s patriot son Beau and also with the prayer of Joe being able to bring our country together again with compassion, honesty and justice for a change,” singer Gregg Alexander said prior to their performance.


title: MF Doom

text: Daniel Dumile ( ; July 13, 1971October 31, 2020), best known by his stage name MF Doom or simply Doom (both stylized in all caps), was a British-American rapper and record producer. Noted for his intricate wordplay, signature metal mask, and "supervillain" stage persona, Dumile became a major figure of underground hip hop and alternative hip hop in the 2000s. After his death, "Variety" described him as one of the scene's "most celebrated, unpredictable and enigmatic figures".


title: MF Doom

text: Born in London, Dumile moved to Long Island, New York, at a young age. He began his career in 1988 as a member of KMD, performing as Zev Love X. The group disbanded in 1993 upon the death of member DJ Subroc, Dumile's brother. After a hiatus, Dumile reemerged in the late 1990s. He began performing at open mic events while wearing a metal mask resembling that of Marvel Comics supervillain Doctor Doom, who is depicted on the cover of his 1999 debut solo album "". He adopted the MF Doom persona and rarely made unmasked public appearances thereafter.


title: MF Doom

text: Between 2003 and 2005, Dumile released four solo albums and three collaborative albums. In addition to the critically acclaimed "Mm..Food" (2004) under the MF Doom moniker, he released solo albums including one under the pseudonym King Geedorah and two as Viktor Vaughn. "Madvillainy" (2004), recorded with producer Madlib under the name Madvillain, is often cited as Dumile's "magnum opus" and is regarded as a landmark album in hip hop. In 2005, Dumile released "The Mouse and the Mask" with producer Danger Mouse as Danger Doom.


title: MF Doom

text: Though he lived the majority of his life in the United States, Dumile never gained American citizenship. In 2010, he was denied reentry after returning from an international tour for his sixth and final solo album, "Born Like This" (2009). He relocated to London and, in his final years, worked mostly in collaboration with other artists, releasing albums with Jneiro Jarel (as JJ Doom), Bishop Nehru ("NehruvianDoom"), and Czarface ("Czarface Meets Metal Face" and the posthumous "Super What?").


title: MF Doom

text: Dumile was born in Hounslow, London, on July 13, 1971, the son of a Trinidadian mother and Zimbabwean father. He was the eldest of five children. According to Dumile, he was conceived in the United States, and happened to be born in London because his mother was visiting family. As a child, Dumile moved with his family to Long Island, New York; he grew up in Long Beach, New York. He said he had no memory of his London childhood and his parents had no affiliation with British culture. However, he remained a British citizen, never gaining American citizenship.


title: MF Doom

text: Dumile began DJing during the summer after third grade. As a child, he was a fan and collector of comic books and earned the nickname "Doom" (a phonetic play on the name Dumile) among friends and family.


title: MF Doom

text: As Zev Love X, Dumile formed the hip hop group KMD in 1988 with his younger brother DJ Subroc and Rodan, who was later replaced by Onyx the Birthstone Kid. A&R representative Dante Ross learned of KMD through the hip hop group 3rd Bass and signed them to Elektra Records. Their recording debut came on 3rd Bass's song "The Gas Face" on "The Cactus Album", followed in 1991 by their debut album "Mr. Hood". Dumile performed the last verse on "The Gas Face"; according to Pete Nice's verse on the track, Dumile created the phrase.


title: MF Doom

text: On April 23, 1993, just before the release of the second KMD album, "Black Bastards", Subroc was struck by a car and killed while crossing the Long Island Expressway. Dumile completed the album alone over the course of several months, and it was announced with a release date of May 3, 1994. KMD was dropped by Elektra and the album went unreleased due to its controversial cover art, which featured a cartoon of a stereotypical pickaninny or sambo character being hanged.


title: MF Doom

text: After his brother's death, Dumile retreated from the hip hop scene from 1994 to 1997, living "damn near homeless, walking the streets of Manhattan, sleeping on benches". In the late 1990s, he settled in Atlanta; he had moved to Georgia in the mid-90s. According to interviews with Dumile, he was "recovering from his wounds" and swearing revenge "against the industry that so badly deformed him". "Black Bastards" had been bootlegged by that time, but was not officially released until 2000.


title: MF Doom

text: In 1997 or 1998, Dumile began freestyling incognito at open-mic events at the Nuyorican Poets Café in Manhattan, obscuring his face by putting tights over his head. He turned this into a new identity, MF Doom, with a mask similar to that of Marvel Comics supervillain Doctor Doom. He later used a mask based on the character Maximus from the 2000 film "Gladiator".


title: MF Doom

text: Bobbito Garcia's Fondle 'Em Records released "", Dumile's first full-length LP as MF Doom, in 1999. Dumile's collaborators on "Operation: Doomsday" included fellow members of the Monsta Island Czars collective, for which each artist took on the persona of a monster from the "Godzilla" films. Dumile went by the alias "King Geedorah", a three-headed golden dragon space monster modeled after King Ghidorah. The album's productions sampled cartoons including "Fantastic Four". Jon Caramanica, in a review of "Operation: Doomsday" for "Spin", emphasized the contrast between Dumile's flow as Zev Love X in KMD and his revised approach as a solo artist: "Doom's flow is muddy, nowhere near the sprightly rhymes of KMD's early days, and his thought process is haphazard." Caramanica revisited "Operation: Doomsday" in "The New York Times" in 2021, calling it "one of the most idiosyncratic hip-hop albums of the 1990s, and one of the defining documents of the independent hip-hop explosion of that decade". Cyril Cordor, in a review for "AllMusic", described "Operation: Doomsday" as Dumile's "rawest" lyrical effort.


title: MF Doom

text: In 2001, Dumile began releasing his "Special Herbs" instrumentals series under the pseudonym Metal Fingers. In a review of a 2011 box set containing ten volumes of the "Special Herbs" series, "Pitchfork" observed that the instrumentals stand on their own without vocal tracks: "most of these tracks sound plenty 'finished' even in rhyme-less form".


title: MF Doom

text: In 2003, Dumile released the album "Take Me to Your Leader" under his King Geedorah moniker. In "Pitchfork", Mark Martelli described "Take Me to Your Leader" as close to a concept album, noting how it lays out the "mythos" of the eponymous King Geedorah. Martelli praised the album, particularly tracks such as "One Smart Nigger" which, in his view, were superior to other artists' attempts at political hip hop. "Fact", in a brief notice for a 2013 reissue of "Take Me to Your Leader", called it "arguably the most cinematic" of Dumile's albums from the turn of the 21st century.


title: MF Doom

text: Later in 2003, Dumile released the LP "Vaudeville Villain" under the moniker Viktor Vaughn (another play on Doctor Doom, who is also known as Victor von Doom). "NME" described the Viktor Vaughn persona as "a time travelling street hustler". "Pitchfork" named "Vaudeville Villain" the week's best new album and highlighted its lyricism, writing that Dumile was one of the best writers in rap.


title: MF Doom

text: Dumile's breakthrough came in 2004 with the album "Madvillainy", created with producer Madlib under the group name Madvillain. They recorded the album in a series of sessions over two years before a commercial release on March 23, 2004. "Madvillainy" was a critical and commercial success, and has since become known as Dumile's masterpiece.


title: MF Doom

text: Also in 2004, Dumile released "", a follow-up LP under the Viktor Vaughn moniker. Nathan Rabin noted in "The A.V. Club" that "VV:2", coming as it did after the commercial and critical success of "Madvillainy", represented an unusual career choice for Dumile whereby he went "deeper underground" instead of embracing wider fame.


title: MF Doom

text: Later in 2004, the second MF Doom album "Mm..Food" was released by Rhymesayers Entertainment. "Pitchfork" gave the album a positive review. Nathan Rabin described it as a "crazy pastiche" but argued that it grew more coherent on repeated listening.


title: MF Doom

text: Although still an independent artist, Dumile took a bigger step towards the mainstream in 2005 with "The Mouse and the Mask", a collaboration with producer DJ Danger Mouse under the group name Danger Doom. The album, released on October 11, 2005, by Epitaph and Lex, was developed in collaboration with Cartoon Network's Adult Swim and featured voice actors and characters from its programs (mostly "Aqua Teen Hunger Force"). "The Mouse and the Mask" reached #41 on the "Billboard" 200. Critic Chris Vognar, discussing the role of comedy in hip hop, argued that "Doom and Danger exemplify an absurdist strain in recent independent hip-hop, a willingness to embrace the nerdy without a heavy cloak of irony". In the same year, Dumile appeared on the second Gorillaz album, "Demon Days."


title: MF Doom

text: Dumile produced tracks for both of Ghostface Killah's 2006 albums "Fishscale" and "More Fish". In February 2013, Ghostface Killah said that he and Dumile were in the process of choosing tracks for a collaborative album. In 2015, Ghostface Killah announced that the album, "Swift & Changeable", would be released in 2016, and later posted promotional artwork for the collaboration. It remains unreleased.


title: MF Doom

text: Dumile's "Born Like This" was released on Lex Records on March 24, 2009. The album was Dumile's first solo album to chart in the US. In a largely favorable review for "Pitchfork", Nate Patrin cast the album as a return to form for Dumile, following a period of limited output. He observed that Dumile's lyrics and flow—"a focused rasp that's subtly grown slightly more ragged and intense"—were darker than on earlier records. He also highlighted the overtly homophobic "Batty Boyz", a diss track against unnamed rappers. Steve Yates, reviewing the album in "The Guardian", likewise saw "Born Like This" as hearkening back to Dumile's earlier output. Yates felt it presented Dumile at "his scalpel-tongued, scatter-mouthed best". Both Patrin and Yates noted the influence of Charles Bukowski on "Born Like This": the first line of Bukowski's poem "Dinosauria, We" gives the album its title.


title: MF Doom

text: In early 2010, Dumile released the EP "Gazzillion Ear" on Lex, a compilation of remixes of the track "Gazzillion Ear" from "Born Like This" that included a remix by Thom Yorke and two mixes by Jneiro Jarel. A further remix by Madvillain featuring a voicemail message from Kanye West was released online. The EP coincided with Dumile's first performances outside North America. On March 5, 2010, Lex and Sónar presented the first Doom show in London, at the Roundhouse in Camden. "Expektoration", Dumile's second live album, was released on September 14, 2010, through Gold Dust. In a review of "Expektoration", "Pitchfork" noted that Dumile's vocal performance was considerably more energetic than on his recordings, which it characterized as "laidback" by comparison.


title: MF Doom

text: After completing his European tour, Dumile was refused entry into the United States. He settled in the UK in 2010. "Key to the Kuffs", an album Dumile made in collaboration with producer Jneiro Jarel as JJ Doom, was released on August 20, 2012, and included guest features from Damon Albarn, Beth Gibbons of Portishead, Khujo Goodie of Goodie Mob and Dungeon Family, and Boston Fielder. Reviews of "Key to the Kuffs" in "Pitchfork" and "Fact" emphasized its references to Dumile's "exile" in the United Kingdom, while "Resident Advisor" noted its play on Britishisms in tracks like "Guv'nor".


title: MF Doom

text: "NehruvianDoom", Dumile's collaboration with rapper Bishop Nehru, was released on October 7, 2014. Dumile produced all the tracks on "NehruvianDoom", often using beats developed in the "Special Herbs" series; vocals are primarily Nehru's, with some contributions from Dumile. The album was Nehru's major label debut. Critics emphasized Nehru's comparative youth (he was still in his teens when the album was recorded) and the consequent limits to his artistic achievement on the album—especially given its brevity, at just over 30 minutes. Dumile's contributions were also seen as limited: "Pitchfork" wrote that he often seemed on "autopilot"; "XXL" suggested that neither he nor Nehru were able to "push the envelope".


title: MF Doom

text: In August 2017, Adult Swim announced a Doom compilation, "The Missing Notebook Rhymes", that would consist of songs from his upcoming projects and featured appearances on other artists' songs. The Adult Swim website was to release one new song per week over the course of 15 weeks. However, the arrangement was canceled in September after the release of only seven tracks.


title: MF Doom

text: In February 2018, Dumile and Czarface released "Nautical Depth", the first single from their collaborative album "Czarface Meets Metal Face". The album was released on March 30, 2018. In a lukewarm review for "Pitchfork", Mehan Jayasuriya compared verses by Open Mike Eagle favorably to Dumile's, but noted that Dumile's contribution to "Nautical Depth" exhibited his "once razor-sharp lyricism". Ben Beaumont-Thomas, in "The Guardian", was more complimentary, noting Dumile's "stoner surrealism" in "Captain Crunch".


title: MF Doom

text: Aside from the album with Czarface, Dumile's musical output in the final three years of his life was limited to one-off guest appearances on other artists' tracks. Posthumous releases included appearances on two songs for the video game "Grand Theft Auto Online": "Lunch Break", with Flying Lotus; and "The Chocolate Conquistadors", with BadBadNotGood, made for the game's content update "The Cayo Perico Heist." Shortly after Dumile's death was announced, Flying Lotus revealed that they had been working on an EP. Having been completed in early 2020 but later delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Dumile's second collaborative album with Czarface and first posthumous release, "Super What?", was released in May 2021.


title: MF Doom

text: Dumile's lyrics are known for wordplay. Bradley and DuBois, describing Dumile as "among the most enigmatic figures in hip-hop", wrote that Dumile's "raspy baritone weaves an intricate web of allusions drawn from comic books and metaphysics along with seeming nonsense and non sequiturs". According to an obituary in "The Ringer", his flow was "loose and conversational, but delivered with technical precision", and his use of rhyme and meter eclipsed that of Big Pun and Eminem.


title: MF Doom

text: Dumile's production work frequently incorporated samples and quotations from film. A review of "Special Herbs" volumes 5 and 6 in "CMJ New Music Monthly" compared Dumile's beats to "soul jazz".


title: MF Doom

text: Dumile created the MF Doom character as an alter ego with a backstory he could reference in his music. The character combines elements from the Marvel Comics supervillain Doctor Doom, Destro, and the Phantom of the Opera; like Doctor Doom and Phantom, Dumile referred to himself in the third person while in character. His signature mask was similar to that of Doctor Doom, who is depicted rapping on the cover of Dumile's 1999 debut album "".


title: MF Doom

text: Dumile wore the mask while performing, and would not be photographed without it, except for short glimpses in videos and in earlier photos with KMD. Later versions of the mask were based on a prop from the 2000 film "Gladiator". Academic Hershini Bhana Young argued that, by appropriating the Doctor Doom mask, Dumile "positions himself as enemy, not only of the music industry but also of dominant constructions of identity that relegate him as a black man to second-class citizenship".


title: MF Doom

text: Dumile sometimes sent stand-ins to perform in the mask, which he saw as a "logical extension" of the concept but angered audiences. Dumile initially claimed that he had lost weight and thus looked and sounded different. At a 2010 show in Toronto, an imposter was booed off stage before being replaced by Dumile. In an interview with "The New Yorker", Dumile described himself as the "writer and director" of the character and that he "might send a white dude next ... Whoever plays the character plays the character."


title: MF Doom

text: In November 2019, during his performance at the Adult Swim Festival, electronic artist Flying Lotus announced that he would be joined onstage by Dumile; instead, the masked figure who appeared on stage was revealed to be comedian Hannibal Buress. Dumile's involvement in the prank has not been confirmed.


title: MF Doom

text: Dumile is considered one of the most celebrated and influential musicians in hip hop. The English musician Thom Yorke, who collaborated with Dumile on two occasions, wrote: "He was a massive inspiration to so many of us, changed things... For me the way he put words was often shocking in its genius, using stream of consciousness in a way I'd never heard before." "Stereogum", reviewing "Operation: Doomsday" on its 20th anniversary, noted Dumile's "formative" influence on younger rappers. El-P of Run the Jewels described him as a "writer's writer", while Q-Tip called him "your favorite rapper's favorite rapper".


title: MF Doom

text: Dumile's worldview was informed by Islam and the Afrocentrism espoused by African-American Muslims. His parents raised him and his brother as Muslims in the Five-Percent Nation, a religious black nationalist movement influenced by Islam. Dumile's father taught him about pan-African history, including historical figures such as Marcus Garvey and Elijah Muhammad—lessons that he then strove to impart upon his peers. By the early 1990s, Dumile and the other members of KMD identified as a member of the Ansaar Allah Community, later known as the Nuwaubian Nation. In their music, the members of KMD professed a religious message based on tenets of Nuwaubianism, which Dumile distinguished from Five-Percent beliefs in an early interview. In the music video for "Peachfuzz", Dumile and the other members of KMD wear kufi caps. By 2000, though he was no longer as strictly observant, Dumile still participated in Nuwaubian events such as the Savior's Day celebration at the Tama-Re compound in Georgia and held a positive opinion of the community.


title: MF Doom

text: Dumile was married to Jasmine Dumile for an unknown period until his death in October 2020. According to various sources, they had either two or three children, one of whom was a son called Malachi. Malachi died at the age of 14 from unspecified causes in late 2017, with Dumile paying tribute on social media:KING MALACHI EZEKIEL DUMILE 2/22/03 – 12/18/17 The greatest son one could ask for. Safe journey and may all our ancestors greet you with open arms. One of our greatest inspirations. ‘Thank you for allowing us to be your parents. Love you, Mali.Dumile was refused re-entry to the United States in late 2010 after completing a European tour. Although he had lived in the country for most of his life, he never became a naturalized citizen. He had previously avoided leaving the United States—it had only been his second international tour—but had acquired a British passport prior to the tour. He had believed he would be able to secure reentry based on his long-term residency and family connections. The denial of reentry forced Dumile apart from his wife and three children, and for nearly two years he saw them only via video calls or during their brief visits to the United Kingdom. He was reunited with his family when they moved to London in 2012. The same year, Dumile said he was "done with the United States". In December 2017, Dumile announced that his 14-year-old son, King Malachi Ezekiel Dumile, had died.


title: MF Doom

text: On December 31, 2020, Dumile's wife announced on social media that he had died on October 31. His representative confirmed the death. The cause of death was not announced.


title: MF Doom

text: Many musicians made tributes to his work and his passing. President Joe Biden included Dumile's 2004 track "Coffin Nails" in his inauguration playlist. The decision was criticized by some, as Biden was part of the Obama administration, which had barred Dumile from returning to the United States.


title: Leo Tolstoy

text: Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy (; , ; ), usually referred to in English as Leo Tolstoy, was a Russian writer who is regarded as one of the greatest authors of all time. He received nominations for the Nobel Prize in Literature every year from 1902 to 1906 and for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1901, 1902, and 1909; the fact that he never won is a major controversy.


title: Leo Tolstoy

text: Born to an aristocratic Russian family in 1828, Tolstoy's notable works include the novels "War and Peace" (1869) and "Anna Karenina" (1878), often cited as pinnacles of realist fiction. He first achieved literary acclaim in his twenties with his semi-autobiographical trilogy, "Childhood", "Boyhood", and "Youth" (1852–1856), and "Sevastopol Sketches" (1855), based upon his experiences in the Crimean War. His fiction includes dozens of short stories and several novellas such as "The Death of Ivan Ilyich" (1886), "Family Happiness" (1859), "After the Ball" (1911), and "Hadji Murad" (1912). He also wrote plays and numerous philosophical essays.


title: Leo Tolstoy

text: In the 1870s, Tolstoy experienced a profound moral crisis, followed by what he regarded as an equally profound spiritual awakening, as outlined in his non-fiction work "A Confession" (1882). His literal interpretation of the ethical teachings of Jesus, centering on the Sermon on the Mount, caused him to become a fervent Christian anarchist and pacifist. His ideas on nonviolent resistance, expressed in such works as "The Kingdom of God Is Within You" (1894), had a profound impact on such pivotal 20th-century figures as Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. He also became a dedicated advocate of Georgism, the economic philosophy of Henry George, which he incorporated into his writing, particularly "Resurrection" (1899).


title: Leo Tolstoy

text: The Tolstoys were a well-known family of old Russian nobility who traced their ancestry to a mythical nobleman named Indris described by Pyotr Tolstoy as arriving "from Nemec, from the lands of Caesar" to Chernigov in 1353 along with his two sons Litvinos (or Litvonis) and Zimonten (or Zigmont) and a druzhina of 3000 people. While the word "Nemec" has been long used to describe Germans only, at that time it was applied to any foreigner who didn't speak Russian (from the word "nemoy" meaning "mute"). Indris was then converted to Eastern Orthodoxy, under the name of Leonty, and his sons as Konstantin and Feodor. Konstantin's grandson Andrei Kharitonovich was nicknamed Tolstiy (translated as "fat") by Vasily II of Moscow after he moved from Chernigov to Moscow.


title: Leo Tolstoy

text: Because of the pagan names and the fact that Chernigov at the time was ruled by Demetrius I Starshy, some researchers concluded that they were Lithuanians who arrived from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. At the same time, no mention of Indris was ever found in the 14th-to-16th-century documents, while the Chernigov Chronicles used by Pyotr Tolstoy as a reference were lost. The first documented members of the Tolstoy family also lived during the 17th century, thus Pyotr Tolstoy himself is generally considered the founder of the noble house, being granted the title of count by Peter the Great.


title: Leo Tolstoy

text: Tolstoy was born at Yasnaya Polyana, a family estate southwest of Tula, and south of Moscow. He was the fourth of five children of Count Nikolai Ilyich Tolstoy (1794–1837), a veteran of the Patriotic War of 1812, and Princess Mariya Tolstaya (née Volkonskaya; 1790–1830). His mother died when he was two and his father when he was nine. Tolstoy and his siblings were brought up by relatives. In 1844, he began studying law and oriental languages at Kazan University, where teachers described him as "both unable and unwilling to learn". Tolstoy left the university in the middle of his studies, returned to Yasnaya Polyana and then spent much time in Moscow, Tula and Saint Petersburg, leading a lax and leisurely lifestyle. He began writing during this period, including his first novel "Childhood", a fictitious account of his own youth, which was published in 1852. In 1851, after running up heavy gambling debts, he went with his older brother to the Caucasus and joined the army. Tolstoy served as a young artillery officer during the Crimean War and was in Sevastopol during the 11-month-long siege of Sevastopol in 1854–55, including the Battle of the Chernaya. During the war he was recognised for his courage and promoted to lieutenant. He was appalled by the number of deaths involved in warfare, and left the army after the end of the Crimean War.


title: Leo Tolstoy

text: His experience in the army, and two trips around Europe in 1857 and 1860–61 converted Tolstoy from a dissolute and privileged society author to a non-violent and spiritual anarchist. Others who followed the same path were Alexander Herzen, Mikhail Bakunin and Peter Kropotkin. During his 1857 visit, Tolstoy witnessed a public execution in Paris, a traumatic experience that marked the rest of his life. In a letter to his friend Vasily Botkin, Tolstoy wrote: "The truth is that the State is a conspiracy designed not only to exploit, but above all to corrupt its citizens ... Henceforth, I shall never serve any government anywhere." Tolstoy's concept of non-violence or ahimsa was bolstered when he read a German version of the Tirukkural. He later instilled the concept in Mahatma Gandhi through his A Letter to a Hindu when young Gandhi corresponded with him seeking his advice.


title: Leo Tolstoy

text: His European trip in 1860–61 shaped both his political and literary development when he met Victor Hugo. Tolstoy read Hugo's newly finished "Les Misérables". The similar evocation of battle scenes in Hugo's novel and Tolstoy's "War and Peace" indicates this influence. Tolstoy's political philosophy was also influenced by a March 1861 visit to French anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, then living in exile under an assumed name in Brussels. Tolstoy reviewed Proudhon's forthcoming publication, "La Guerre et la Paix" (""War and Peace"" in French), and later used the title for his masterpiece. The two men also discussed education, as Tolstoy wrote in his educational notebooks: "If I recount this conversation with Proudhon, it is to show that, in my personal experience, he was the only man who understood the significance of education and of the printing press in our time."


title: Leo Tolstoy

text: Fired by enthusiasm, Tolstoy returned to Yasnaya Polyana and founded 13 schools for the children of Russia's peasants, who had just been emancipated from serfdom in 1861. Tolstoy described the schools' principles in his 1862 essay "The School at Yasnaya Polyana". His educational experiments were short-lived, partly due to harassment by the Tsarist secret police. However, as a direct forerunner to A.S. Neill's Summerhill School, the school at Yasnaya Polyana can justifiably be claimed the first example of a coherent theory of democratic education.


title: Leo Tolstoy

text: The death of his brother Nikolay in 1860 had an impact on Tolstoy, and led him to a desire to marry. On 23 September 1862, Tolstoy married Sophia Andreevna Behrs, who was sixteen years his junior and the daughter of a court physician. She was called Sonya, the Russian diminutive of Sofia, by her family and friends. They had 13 children, eight of whom survived childhood:


title: Leo Tolstoy

text: The marriage was marked from the outset by sexual passion and emotional insensitivity when Tolstoy, on the eve of their marriage, gave her his diaries detailing his extensive sexual past and the fact that one of the serfs on his estate had borne him a son. Even so, their early married life was happy and allowed Tolstoy much freedom and the support system to compose "War and Peace" and "Anna Karenina" with Sonya acting as his secretary, editor, and financial manager. Sonya was copying and hand-writing his epic works time after time. Tolstoy would continue editing "War and Peace" and had to have clean final drafts to be delivered to the publisher.


title: Leo Tolstoy

text: However, their later life together has been described by A.N. Wilson as one of the unhappiest in literary history. Tolstoy's relationship with his wife deteriorated as his beliefs became increasingly radical. This saw him seeking to reject his inherited and earned wealth, including the renunciation of the copyrights on his earlier works.


title: Leo Tolstoy

text: Some of the members of the Tolstoy family left Russia in the aftermath of the 1905 Russian Revolution and the subsequent establishment of the Soviet Union, and many of Leo Tolstoy's relatives and descendants today live in Sweden, Germany, the United Kingdom, France and the United States. Tolstoy's son, Count Lev Lvovich Tolstoy, settled in Sweden and married a Swedish woman. Leo Tolstoy's last surviving grandchild, Countess Tatiana Tolstoy-Paus, died in 2007 at Herresta manor in Sweden, which is owned by Tolstoy's descendants. Swedish jazz singer Viktoria Tolstoy is also descended from Leo Tolstoy.


title: Leo Tolstoy

text: One of his great-great-grandsons, Vladimir Tolstoy (born 1962), is a director of the Yasnaya Polyana museum since 1994 and an adviser to the President of Russia on cultural affairs since 2012. Ilya Tolstoy's great-grandson, Pyotr Tolstoy, is a well-known Russian journalist and TV presenter as well as a State Duma deputy since 2016. His cousin Fyokla Tolstaya (born Anna Tolstaya in 1971), daughter of the acclaimed Soviet Slavist Nikita Tolstoy () (1923–1996), is also a Russian journalist, TV and radio host.


title: Leo Tolstoy

text: Tolstoy is considered one of the giants of Russian literature; his works include the novels "War and Peace" and "Anna Karenina" and novellas such as "Hadji Murad" and "The Death of Ivan Ilyich".


title: Leo Tolstoy

text: Tolstoy's earliest works, the autobiographical novels "Childhood", "Boyhood", and "Youth" (1852–1856), tell of a rich landowner's son and his slow realization of the chasm between himself and his peasants. Though he later rejected them as sentimental, a great deal of Tolstoy's own life is revealed. They retain their relevance as accounts of the universal story of growing up.


title: Leo Tolstoy

text: Tolstoy served as a second lieutenant in an artillery regiment during the Crimean War, recounted in his "Sevastopol Sketches". His experiences in battle helped stir his subsequent pacifism and gave him material for realistic depiction of the horrors of war in his later work.


title: Leo Tolstoy

text: His fiction consistently attempts to convey realistically the Russian society in which he lived. "The Cossacks" (1863) describes the Cossack life and people through a story of a Russian aristocrat in love with a Cossack girl. "Anna Karenina" (1877) tells parallel stories of an adulterous woman trapped by the conventions and falsities of society and of a philosophical landowner (much like Tolstoy), who works alongside the peasants in the fields and seeks to reform their lives. Tolstoy not only drew from his own life experiences but also created characters in his own image, such as Pierre Bezukhov and Prince Andrei in "War and Peace", Levin in "Anna Karenina" and to some extent, Prince Nekhlyudov in "Resurrection". Richard Pevear, who translated many of Tolstoy's works, said of Tolstoy’s signature style, "His works are full of provocation and irony, and written with broad and elaborately developed rhetorical devices."


title: Leo Tolstoy

text: "War and Peace" is generally thought to be one of the greatest novels ever written, remarkable for its dramatic breadth and unity. Its vast canvas includes 580 characters, many historical with others fictional. The story moves from family life to the headquarters of Napoleon, from the court of Alexander I of Russia to the battlefields of Austerlitz and Borodino. Tolstoy's original idea for the novel was to investigate the causes of the Decembrist revolt, to which it refers only in the last chapters, from which can be deduced that Andrei Bolkonsky's son will become one of the Decembrists. The novel explores Tolstoy's theory of history, and in particular the insignificance of individuals such as Napoleon and Alexander. Somewhat surprisingly, Tolstoy did not consider "War and Peace" to be a novel (nor did he consider many of the great Russian fictions written at that time to be novels). This view becomes less surprising if one considers that Tolstoy was a novelist of the realist school who considered the novel to be a framework for the examination of social and political issues in nineteenth-century life. "War and Peace" (which is to Tolstoy really an epic in prose) therefore did not qualify. Tolstoy thought that "Anna Karenina" was his first true novel.


title: Leo Tolstoy

text: After "Anna Karenina", Tolstoy concentrated on Christian themes, and his later novels such as "The Death of Ivan Ilyich" (1886) and "What Is to Be Done?" develop a radical anarcho-pacifist Christian philosophy which led to his excommunication from the Russian Orthodox Church in 1901. For all the praise showered on "Anna Karenina" and "War and Peace", Tolstoy rejected the two works later in his life as something not as true of reality.


title: Leo Tolstoy

text: In his novel "Resurrection", Tolstoy attempts to expose the injustice of man-made laws and the hypocrisy of an institutionalized church. Tolstoy also explores and explains the economic philosophy of Georgism, of which he had become a very strong advocate towards the end of his life.


title: Leo Tolstoy

text: Tolstoy also tried himself in poetry, with several soldier songs written during his military service, and fairy tales in verse such as "Volga-bogatyr" and "Oaf" stylized as national folk songs. They were written between 1871 and 1874 for his "Russian Book for Reading", a collection of short stories in four volumes (total of 629 stories in various genres) published along with the "New Azbuka" textbook and addressed to schoolchildren. Nevertheless, he was skeptical about poetry as a genre. As he famously said, "Writing poetry is like ploughing and dancing at the same time." According to Valentin Bulgakov, he criticised poets, including Alexander Pushkin, for their "false" epithets used "simply to make it rhyme."


title: Leo Tolstoy

text: Tolstoy's contemporaries paid him lofty tributes. Fyodor Dostoyevsky, who died thirty years before Tolstoy, admired and was delighted by Tolstoy's novels (and, conversely, Tolstoy also admired Dostoyevsky's work). Gustave Flaubert, on reading a translation of "War and Peace", exclaimed, "What an artist and what a psychologist!" Anton Chekhov, who often visited Tolstoy at his country estate, wrote, "When literature possesses a Tolstoy, it is easy and pleasant to be a writer; even when you know you have achieved nothing yourself and are still achieving nothing, this is not as terrible as it might otherwise be, because Tolstoy achieves for everyone. What he does serves to justify all the hopes and aspirations invested in literature." The 19th-century British poet and critic Matthew Arnold opined that "A novel by Tolstoy is not a work of art but a piece of life." Isaac Babel said that "if the world could write by itself, it would write like Tolstoy."


title: Leo Tolstoy

text: Later novelists continued to appreciate Tolstoy's art, but sometimes also expressed criticism. Arthur Conan Doyle wrote, "I am attracted by his earnestness and by his power of detail, but I am repelled by his looseness of construction and by his unreasonable and impracticable mysticism." Virginia Woolf declared him "the greatest of all novelists." James Joyce noted that, "He is never dull, never stupid, never tired, never pedantic, never theatrical!" Thomas Mann wrote of Tolstoy's seemingly guileless artistry: "Seldom did art work so much like nature." Vladimir Nabokov heaped superlatives upon "The Death of Ivan Ilyich" and "Anna Karenina"; he questioned, however, the reputation of "War and Peace", and sharply criticized "Resurrection" and "The Kreutzer Sonata". Critic Harold Bloom called "Hadji Murat" "my personal touchstone for the sublime in prose fiction, to me the best story in the world."


title: Leo Tolstoy

text: After reading Schopenhauer's "The World as Will and Representation", Tolstoy gradually became converted to the ascetic morality upheld in that work as the proper spiritual path for the upper classes. In 1869 he writes: "Do you know what this summer has meant for me? Constant raptures over Schopenhauer and a whole series of spiritual delights which I've never experienced before...no student has ever studied so much on his course, and learned so much, as I have this summer."


title: Leo Tolstoy

text: In Chapter VI of "A Confession", Tolstoy quoted the final paragraph of Schopenhauer's work. It explains how a complete denial of self causes only a relative nothingness which is not to be feared. Tolstoy was struck by the description of Christian, Buddhist, and Hindu ascetic renunciation as being the path to holiness. After reading passages such as the following, which abound in Schopenhauer's ethical chapters, the Russian nobleman chose poverty and formal denial of the will: But this very necessity of involuntary suffering (by poor people) for eternal salvation is also expressed by that utterance of the Savior (): "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God." Therefore, those who were greatly in earnest about their eternal salvation, chose voluntary poverty when fate had denied this to them and they had been born in wealth. Thus Buddha Sakyamuni was born a prince, but voluntarily took to the mendicant's staff; and Francis of Assisi, the founder of the mendicant orders who, as a youngster at a ball, where the daughters of all the notabilities were sitting together, was asked: "Now Francis, will you not soon make your choice from these beauties?" and who replied: "I have made a far more beautiful choice!" "Whom?" ""La povertà" (poverty)": whereupon he abandoned every thing shortly afterwards and wandered through the land as a mendicant.


title: Leo Tolstoy

text: In 1884, Tolstoy wrote a book called "What I Believe", in which he openly confessed his Christian beliefs. He affirmed his belief in Jesus Christ's teachings and was particularly influenced by the Sermon on the Mount, and the injunction to turn the other cheek, which he understood as a "commandment of non-resistance to evil by force" and a doctrine of pacifism and nonviolence. In his work "The Kingdom of God Is Within You", he explains that he considered mistaken the Church's doctrine because they had made a "perversion" of Christ's teachings. Tolstoy also received letters from American Quakers who introduced him to the non-violence writings of Quaker Christians such as George Fox, William Penn, and Jonathan Dymond. Tolstoy believed being a Christian required him to be a pacifist; the apparently inevitable waging of war by governments is why he is considered a philosophical anarchist.


title: Leo Tolstoy

text: Later, various versions of "Tolstoy's Bible" were published, indicating the passages Tolstoy most relied on, specifically, the reported words of Jesus himself.


title: Leo Tolstoy

text: Tolstoy believed that a true Christian could find lasting happiness by striving for inner perfection through following the Great Commandment of loving one's neighbor and God, rather than guidance from the Church or state. Another distinct attribute of his philosophy based on Christ's teachings is nonresistance during conflict. This idea in Tolstoy's book "The Kingdom of God Is Within You" directly influenced Mahatma Gandhi and therefore also nonviolent resistance movements to this day.


title: Leo Tolstoy

text: Tolstoy believed that the aristocracy was a burden on the poor. He opposed private land ownership and the institution of marriage, and valued chastity and sexual abstinence (discussed in "Father Sergius" and his preface to "The Kreutzer Sonata"), ideals also held by the young Gandhi. Tolstoy's passion from the depth of his austere moral views is reflected in his later work. One example is the sequence of the temptation of Sergius in "Father Sergius". Maxim Gorky relates how Tolstoy once read this passage before him and Chekhov, and Tolstoy was moved to tears by the end of the reading. Later passages of rare power include the personal crises faced by the protagonists of "The Death of Ivan Ilyich", and of "Master and Man", where the main character in the former and the reader in the latter are made aware of the foolishness of the protagonists' lives.


title: Leo Tolstoy

text: In 1886, Tolstoy wrote to the Russian explorer and anthropologist Nicholas Miklouho-Maclay, who was one of the first anthropologists to refute polygenism, the view that the different races of mankind belonged to different species: "You were the first to demonstrate beyond question by your experience that man is man everywhere, that is, a kind, sociable being with whom communication can and should be established through kindness and truth, not guns and spirits."


title: Leo Tolstoy

text: Tolstoy had a profound influence on the development of Christian anarchist thought. The Tolstoyans were a small Christian anarchist group formed by Tolstoy's companion, Vladimir Chertkov (1854–1936), to spread Tolstoy's religious teachings. From 1892 he regularly met with the student-activist Vasily Maklakov who would defend several Tolstoyans; they discussed the fate of the Doukhobors. Philosopher Peter Kropotkin wrote of Tolstoy in the article on anarchism in the "1911 Encyclopædia Britannica":Without naming himself an anarchist, Leo Tolstoy, like his predecessors in the popular religious movements of the 15th and 16th centuries, Chojecki, Denk and many others, took the anarchist position as regards the state and property rights, deducing his conclusions from the general spirit of the teachings of Jesus and from the necessary dictates of reason. With all the might of his talent, Tolstoy made (especially in "The Kingdom of God Is Within You") a powerful criticism of the church, the state and law altogether, and especially of the present property laws. He describes the state as the domination of the wicked ones, supported by brutal force. Robbers, he says, are far less dangerous than a well-organized government. He makes a searching criticism of the prejudices which are current now concerning the benefits conferred upon men by the church, the state, and the existing distribution of property, and from the teachings of Jesus he deduces the rule of non-resistance and the absolute condemnation of all wars. His religious arguments are, however, so well combined with arguments borrowed from a dispassionate observation of the present evils, that the anarchist portions of his works appeal to the religious and the non-religious reader alike.


title: Leo Tolstoy

text: Tolstoy denounced the intervention by the Eight-Nation Alliance in the Boxer Rebellion in China, the Filipino-American War, and the Second Boer War.


title: Leo Tolstoy

text: Tolstoy praised the Boxer Rebellion and harshly criticized the atrocities of the Russian, German, American, Japanese, and other troops of the Eight-Nation alliance. He heard about the looting, rapes, and murders, and accused the troops of slaughter and "Christian brutality." He named the monarchs most responsible for the atrocities as Tsar Nicholas II and Kaiser Wilhelm II. He described the intervention as "terrible for its injustice and cruelty". The war was also criticized by other intellectuals such as Leonid Andreyev and Gorky. As part of the criticism, Tolstoy wrote an epistle called "To the Chinese people". In 1902, he wrote an open letter describing and denouncing Nicholas II's activities in China.


title: Leo Tolstoy

text: The Boxer Rebellion stirred Tolstoy's interest in Chinese philosophy. He was a famous sinophile, and read the works of Confucius and Lao Zi. Tolstoy wrote "Chinese Wisdom" and other texts about China. Tolstoy corresponded with the Chinese intellectual Gu Hongming and recommended that China remain an agrarian nation, and not reform like Japan. Tolstoy and Gu opposed the Hundred Day's Reform by Kang Youwei and believed that the reform movement was perilous. Tolstoy's ideology of non-violence shaped the thought of the Chinese anarchist group Society for the Study of Socialism.


title: Leo Tolstoy

text: In hundreds of essays over the last 20 years of his life, Tolstoy reiterated the anarchist critique of the state and recommended books by Kropotkin and Proudhon to his readers, while rejecting anarchism's espousal of violent revolutionary means. In the 1900 essay, "On Anarchy,” he wrote: "The Anarchists are right in everything; in the negation of the existing order, and in the assertion that, without Authority, there could not be worse violence than that of Authority under existing conditions. They are mistaken only in thinking that Anarchy can be instituted by a revolution. But it will be instituted only by there being more and more people who do not require the protection of governmental power ... There can be only one permanent revolutiona moral one: the regeneration of the inner man." Despite his misgivings about anarchist violence, Tolstoy took risks to circulate the prohibited publications of anarchist thinkers in Russia, and corrected the proofs of Kropotkin's "Words of a Rebel", illegally published in St Petersburg in 1906.


title: Leo Tolstoy

text: In 1908, Tolstoy wrote "A Letter to a Hindu" outlining his belief in non-violence as a means for India to gain independence from colonial rule. In 1909, Gandhi read a copy of the letter when he was becoming an activist in South Africa. He wrote to Tolstoy seeking proof that he was the author, which led to further correspondence. Tolstoy's "The Kingdom of God Is Within You" also helped to convince Gandhi of nonviolent resistance, a debt Gandhi acknowledged in his autobiography, calling Tolstoy "the greatest apostle of non-violence that the present age has produced". Their correspondence lasted only a year, from October 1909 until Tolstoy's death in November 1910, but led Gandhi to give the name Tolstoy Colony to his second ashram in South Africa. Both men also believed in the merits of vegetarianism, the subject of several of Tolstoy's essays.


title: Leo Tolstoy

text: Tolstoy also became a major supporter of the Esperanto movement. He was impressed by the pacifist beliefs of the Doukhobors and brought their persecution to the attention of the international community, after they burned their weapons in peaceful protest in 1895. He aided the Doukhobors to migrate to Canada. He also provided inspiration to the Mennonites, another religious group with anti-government and anti-war sentiments. In 1904, Tolstoy condemned the ensuing Russo-Japanese War and wrote to the Japanese Buddhist priest Soyen Shaku in a failed attempt to make a joint pacifist statement.


title: Leo Tolstoy

text: Towards the end of his life, Tolstoy become occupied with the economic theory and social philosophy of Georgism. He incorporated it approvingly into works such as "Resurrection" (1899), the book that was a major cause for his excommunication. He spoke with great admiration of Henry George, stating once that "People do not argue with the teaching of George; they simply do not know it. And it is impossible to do otherwise with his teaching, for he who becomes acquainted with it cannot but agree." He also wrote a preface to George's journal "Social Problems". Tolstoy and George both rejected private property in land (the most important source of income for Russian aristocracy that Tolstoy heavily criticized). They also rejected a centrally planned socialist economy. Because Georgism requires an administration to collect land rent and spend it on infrastructure, some assume that this embrace moved Tolstoy away from his anarchist views. However, anarchist versions of Georgism have been proposed since then. Tolstoy's 1899 novel "Resurrection" explores his thoughts on Georgism and hints that Tolstoy had such a view. It suggests small communities with local governance to manage the collective land rents for common goods, while still heavily criticising state institutions such as the justice system.


title: Leo Tolstoy

text: Tolstoy died on 20 November, 1910 at the age of 82. Just before his death, his health was a concern of his family, who cared for him daily. In his last days, he spoke and wrote about dying. Renouncing his aristocratic lifestyle, he left home one winter night. His secretive departure was an apparent attempt to escape from his wife's tirades. She spoke out against many of his teachings, and in recent years had grown envious of his attention to Tolstoyan "disciples".


title: Leo Tolstoy

text: Tolstoy died of pneumonia at Astapovo railway station, after a day's train journey south. The station master took Tolstoy to his apartment, and his personal doctors arrived and gave him injections of morphine and camphor.


title: Leo Tolstoy

text: The police tried to limit access to his funeral procession, but thousands of peasants lined the streets. Still, some were heard to say that, other than knowing that "some nobleman had died", they knew little else about Tolstoy.


title: Leo Tolstoy

text: According to some sources, Tolstoy spent the last hours of his life preaching love, non-violence, and Georgism to fellow passengers on the train.


title: Leo Tolstoy

text: Although Leo Tolstoy was regarded as a Christian anarchist and not a socialist, his ideas and works still influenced socialist thinkers throughout history. He held an unromantic view of governments as being essentially violent forces held together by intimidation from state authority, corruption on behalf of officials, and the indoctrination of people from a young age. In regard to his view of economics, he advocated for a return to subsistence agriculture. In his view, a simplified economy would afford a lesser need for the exchange of goods, and as such, factories and cities – the centers of industry – would become obsolete.


title: Leo Tolstoy

text: In 1944, literary historian and Soviet medievalist Nikolai Gudzii wrote a biography of Tolstoy that spanned 80 pages. It was designed to show readers that Tolstoy would have revised his pacifistic and anti-patriotic sentiments if he were alive amid World War II. At around the same time, literary scholar and historian Boris Eikhenbaum – in a stark contrast from his earlier works on Tolstoy – portrayed the Russian novelist as someone whose ideas aligned with those of early utopian socialists such as Robert Owen and Henri Saint-Simon. Eikenbaum suggested that these influences can be seen in Tolstoy's emphases on individual happiness and peasant welfare. The discrepancies in Eikenbaum's portrayals of Tolstoy can be attributed to the political pressure in Soviet Russia at the time: public officials pressured literary scholars to conform with party doctrine.


title: Leo Tolstoy

text: From Tolstoy's writings the Tolstoyan movement was birthed, and its members used his works to promote non-violence, anti-urbanism and opposition to the state. While Tolstoy himself never associated with the movement, as he was opposed to joining any organization or group, he named his thirteenth daughter Alexandra (Sasha) L'vovna Tolstaya the heir to his works with the intention that she would publish them for the Russian people. Meanwhile, Tolstoy designated Vladimir Chertkov – who kept many of Tolstoy's manuscripts – as the editor of his works. Originally Tolstoy wanted to make the Russian people the heirs to his writings, but Russian law at the time decreed that property could only be inherited by one individual.


title: Leo Tolstoy

text: Following the Russian Civil War in 1917, writings that were formerly censored could now be published, since the all literary works were nationalized in November 1918. Alexandra worked during these years to publish sets of Tolstoy's works: from 1917 to 1919, she worked with Zadruga Publishing House to publish thirteen booklets on Tolstoy's writings, which had previously been censored under Russia's imperial rule. However, publishing a complete collection of Tolstoy's works proved to be more difficult. In December 1918, the Commissariat of Education granted Chertkov a 10 million rouble subsidy to publish a complete edition of his works, but it never materialized due to government control of publication rights. Cooperatives were additionally made illegal in Russia in 1921, creating another obstacle for Alexandra and Chertkov.


title: Leo Tolstoy

text: In the 1920s, Tolstoy's estate, Yasnaya Polyana, was sanctioned by the Soviet state to exist as a commune for Tolstoyans. The government permitted this Christian-oriented community because they felt as if religious sects like the Tolstoyans were models for the Russian peasantry. The Soviet government owned the estate, which was deemed a memorial for the late Russian writer, but Alexandra had jurisdiction over the education offered at Yasnaya Polyana. Unlike most Soviet schools, the schooling at Yasnaya Polyana did not offer militaristic training and did spread atheistic propaganda. Over time, though, local communists – as opposed to the state government, which financially supported the institution – often denounced the estate and called for frequent inspections. After 1928, a change in cultural policy in the Soviet regime led to a takeover of local institutions, including Tolstoy's estate. When Alexandra stepped down from her role as head of Yasnaya Poliana in 1929, the Commissariat of Education and Health took control.


title: Leo Tolstoy

text: In 1925, the Soviet government created its first Jubilee Committee to celebrate the centennial of Tolstoy's birth, which originally consisted of 13 members but grew to 38 members after a second committee formed in 1927. Alexandra was not content with the funds provided by the government, and met with Stalin in June 1928. During the meeting, Stalin said the government could not provide the one million roubles requested by the committee. However, an agreement was reached with the State Publishing House in April 1928 for the publishing of a 92-volume collection of Tolstoy's works. During the Jubilee Celebration, Anatoly Luncharsky – the head of the People's Commissariat for Education – gave a speech in which he refuted reports that claimed the Soviet government was hostile towards Tolstoy and his legacy. Instead of focusing on the aspects of Tolstoy's works that pitted him against the Soviet regime, he instead focused on the unifying aspects, such as Tolstoy's love for equality and labor as well as his disdain for the state and private property. More than 400 million copies of Tolstoy's works have been printed in the Soviet Union, making him the best-selling author in Soviet Russia.


title: Leo Tolstoy

text: Vladimir Lenin wrote several essays about Tolstoy, suggesting that a contradiction exists within his critique of Russian society. According to Lenin, Tolstoy – who adored the peasantry and voiced their discontent with imperial Russian society – may have been revolutionary in his critiques, but his political consciousness was not fully developed for a revolution. Lenin uses this line of thinking to suggest that the 1905 Russian Revolution, which he called a "peasant bourgeois revolution," failed because of its backwardness: the revolutionaries wanted to dismantle the existing medieval forms of oppression and replace them with an old and patriarchal village-commune. Tolstoy's concept of non-resistance to evil additionally hindered the 1905 revolution's success, Lenin thought, because the movement was not militant and had thus allowed the autocracy to crush them. Nevertheless, Stalin concludes in his writings that despite the many contradictions in Tolstoy's critiques, his hatred for feudalism and capitalism mark the prelude to proletarian socialism.


title: Leo Tolstoy

text: Additionally, Tolstoy's philosophy of non-resistance to evil made an impact on Mahatma Gandhi's political thinking. Gandhi was deeply moved by Tolstoy's concept of truth, which, in his view, constitutes any doctrine that reduces suffering. For both Gandhi and Tolstoy, truth is God, and since God is universal love, truth must therefore also be universal love. The Gujarati word for Gandhi's non-violent movement is "satyagraha," derived from the word "sadagraha" – the "sat" portion translating to "truth," and the "agraha" translating to "firmness." Gandhi's conception of satyagraha was birthed from Tolstoy's understanding of Christianity, rather than from Hindu tradition.


title: Leo Tolstoy

text: A 2009 film about Tolstoy's final year, "The Last Station", based on the 1990 novel by Jay Parini, was made by director Michael Hoffman with Christopher Plummer as Tolstoy and Helen Mirren as Sofya Tolstoya. Both performers were nominated for Oscars for their roles. There have been other films about the writer, including "Departure of a Grand Old Man", made in 1912 just two years after his death, "How Fine, How Fresh the Roses Were" (1913), and "Lev Tolstoy", directed by and starring Sergei Gerasimov in 1984.


title: Leo Tolstoy

text: There is also a famous lost film of Tolstoy made a decade before he died. In 1901, the American travel lecturer Burton Holmes visited Yasnaya Polyana with Albert J. Beveridge, the U.S. senator and historian. As the three men conversed, Holmes filmed Tolstoy with his 60-mm movie camera. Afterwards, Beveridge's advisers succeeded in having the film destroyed, fearing that the meeting with the Russian author might hurt Beveridge's chances of running for the U.S. presidency.


title: Intersex

text: Intersex people are individuals born with any of several sex characteristics including chromosome patterns, gonads, or genitals that, according to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, "do not fit typical binary notions of male or female bodies".


title: Intersex

text: Sex assignment at birth usually aligns with a child's anatomical sex and phenotype. The number of births with ambiguous genitals is in the range of 1:2000–1:4500 (0.022%–0.05%). Other conditions involve atypical chromosomes, gonads, or hormones. Some persons may be assigned and raised as a girl or boy but then identify with another gender later in life, while most continue to identify with their assigned sex. The number of births where the baby is intersex has been reported differently depending on who reports and which definition of intersex is used. Anne Fausto-Sterling and her co-authors suggest that the prevalence of "nondimorphic sexual development" might be as high as 1.7%. A study published by Leonard Sax reports that this figure includes conditions such as Klinefelter syndrome (XXY) which most clinicians do not recognize as intersex, and that if the term is understood to mean only "conditions in which chromosomal sex is inconsistent with phenotypic sex, or in which the phenotype is not classifiable as either male or female", the prevalence of intersex is about 0.018%.


title: Intersex

text: Terms used to describe intersex people are contested, and change over time and place. Intersex people were previously referred to as "hermaphrodites" or "congenital eunuchs". In the 19th and 20th centuries, some medical experts devised new nomenclature in an attempt to classify the characteristics that they had observed, the first attempt to create a taxonomic classification system of intersex conditions. Intersex people were categorized as either having "true hermaphroditism", "female pseudohermaphroditism", or "male pseudohermaphroditism". These terms are no longer used, and terms including the word "hermaphrodite" are considered to be misleading, stigmatizing, and scientifically specious in reference to humans. In biology, the term "hermaphrodite" is used to describe an organism that can produce both male and female gametes. Some people with intersex traits use the term "intersex", and some prefer other language. In clinical settings, the term "disorders of sex development" (DSD) has been used since 2006, a shift in language considered controversial since its introduction.


title: Intersex

text: Intersex people face stigmatization and discrimination from birth, or following the discovery of intersex traits at stages of development such as puberty. Intersex people may face infanticide, abandonment, and stigmatization from their families. Globally, some intersex infants and children, such as those with ambiguous outer genitalia, are surgically or hormonally altered to create more socially acceptable sex characteristics. However, this is considered controversial, with no firm evidence of favorable outcomes. Such treatments may involve sterilization. Adults, including elite female athletes, have also been subjects of such treatment. Increasingly, these issues are considered human rights abuses, with statements from international and national human rights and ethics institutions (see intersex human rights). Intersex organizations have also issued statements about human rights violations, including the 2013 Malta declaration of the third International Intersex Forum. In 2011, Christiane Völling became the first intersex person known to have successfully sued for damages in a case brought for non-consensual surgical intervention. In April 2015, Malta became the first country to outlaw non-consensual medical interventions to modify sex anatomy, including that of intersex people.


title: Intersex

text: There is no clear consensus definition of intersex and no clear delineation of which specific conditions qualify an individual as intersex. The World Health Organization's International Classification of Diseases (ICD), the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), and many medical journals classify intersex traits or conditions among disorders of sex development (DSD).


title: Intersex

text: In 1917, Richard Goldschmidt created the term "intersexuality" to refer to a variety of physical sex ambiguities. However, according to "The SAGE Encyclopedia of LGBTQ Studies", it wasn't until Anne Fausto Sterling published her article "The Five Sexes: Why Male and Female Are Not Enough" in 1993 that the term reached popularity.


title: Intersex

text: Some intersex organizations reference "intersex people" and "intersex variations or traits" while others use more medicalized language such as "people with intersex conditions", or people "with intersex conditions or DSDs (differences of sex development)" and "children born with variations of sex anatomy". In May 2016, interACT published a statement recognizing "increasing general understanding and acceptance of the term 'intersex'".


title: Intersex

text: Australian sociological research on 272 "people born with atypical sex characteristics", published in 2016, found that 60% of respondents used the term "intersex" to self-describe their sex characteristics, including people identifying themselves as intersex, describing themselves as having an intersex variation or, in smaller numbers, having an intersex condition. Respondents also commonly used diagnostic labels and referred to their sex chromosomes, with word choices depending on audience.


title: Intersex

text: Research on 202 respondents by the Lurie Children's Hospital, Chicago, and the AIS-DSD Support Group (now known as InterConnect Support Group) published in 2017 found that 80% of Support Group respondents "strongly liked, liked or felt neutral about intersex" as a term, while caregivers were less supportive. The hospital reported that the use of the term "disorders of sex development" may negatively affect care.


title: Intersex

text: Another study by a group of children's hospitals in the United States found that 53% of 133 parent and adolescent participants recruited at five clinics did not like the term "intersex". Participants who were members of support groups were more likely to dislike the term. A "dsd-LIFE" study in 2020 found that around 43% of 179 participants thought the term "intersex" was bad, 20% felt neutral about the term, while the rest thought the term was good.


title: Intersex

text: Historically, the term "hermaphrodite" was used in law to refer to people whose sex was in doubt. The 12th-century "Decretum Gratiani" states that "Whether an hermaphrodite may witness a testament, depends on which sex prevails" ("Hermafroditus an ad testamentum adhiberi possit, qualitas sexus incalescentis ostendit."). Similarly, the 17th-century English jurist and judge Edward Coke (Lord Coke), wrote in his "Institutes of the Lawes of England" on laws of succession stating, "Every heire is either a male, a female, or an hermaphrodite, that is both male and female. And an hermaphrodite (which is also called "Androgynus") shall be heire, either as male or female, according to that kind of sexe which doth prevaile."


title: Intersex

text: During the Victorian era, medical authors attempted to ascertain whether or not humans could be hermaphrodites, adopting a precise biological definition for the term, and making distinctions between "male pseudohermaphrodite", "female pseudohermaphrodite" and especially "true hermaphrodite". These terms, which reflected histology (microscopic appearance) of the gonads, are no longer used. Until the mid-20th century, "hermaphrodite" was used synonymously with "intersex". Medical terminology shifted in the early 21st century, not only due to concerns about language, but also a shift to understandings based on genetics.


title: Intersex

text: The Intersex Society of North America has stated that hermaphrodites should not be confused with intersex people and that using "hermaphrodite" to refer to intersex individuals is considered to be stigmatizing and misleading.


title: Intersex

text: Estimates of the number of people who are intersex vary, depending on which conditions are counted as intersex. The now-defunct Intersex Society of North America stated that:


title: Intersex

text: Anne Fausto-Sterling and her co-authors broadly said in 2000 that "[a]dding the estimates of all known causes of nondimorphic sexual development suggests that approximately 1.7% of all live births do not conform to a Platonic ideal of absolute sex chromosome, gonadal, genital, and hormonal dimorphism"; these publications have been widely quoted by intersex activists. Of the 1.7 percent, 1.5 percentage points (88% of those considered "nondimorphic sexual development" in this figure) consist of individuals with late onset congenital adrenal hyperplasia (LOCAH) which may be asymptomatic but can present after puberty and cause infertility.


title: Intersex

text: In response to Fausto-Sterling, Leonard Sax estimated that the prevalence of intersex was about 0.018% of the world's population, after discounting several conditions including LOCAH, Klinefelter syndrome (47,XXY), Turner syndrome (45,X), the chromosomal variants of 47,XYY and 47,XXX, and vaginal agenesis. Sax reasons that in these conditions chromosomal sex is consistent with phenotypic sex and phenotype is classifiable as either male or female.


title: Intersex

text: In a 2003 letter to the editor, political scientist Carrie Hull analyzed the data used by Fausto-Sterling and said the estimated intersex rate should instead have been 0.37%, due to many errors. In a response letter published simultaneously, Fausto-Sterling welcomed the additional analysis and said "I am not invested in a particular final estimate, only that there BE an estimate". A 2018 review reported that the number of births with ambiguous genitals is in the range of 0.02% to 0.05%.


title: Intersex

text: Intersex Human Rights Australia says it maintains 1.7% as its preferred upper limit "despite its flaws", stating both that the estimate "encapsulates the entire population of people who are stigmatized – or risk stigmatization – due to innate sex characteristics," and that Sax's definitions exclude individuals who experience such stigma and who have helped to establish the intersex movement.


title: Intersex

text: Prevalences of specific conditions can vary across regions. In the Dominican Republic, 5-alpha-reductase deficiency is not uncommon in the town of Las Salinas, resulting in social acceptance of the intersex trait. Men with the trait are called "güevedoces" (Spanish for "eggs at twelve"). 12 out of 13 families had one or more male family members that carried the gene. The overall incidence for the town was 1 in every 90 males were carriers, with other males either non-carriers or non-affected carriers.


title: Intersex

text: From early history, societies have been aware of intersex people. Some of the earliest evidence is found in mythology: the Greek historian Diodorus Siculus wrote of the mythological Hermaphroditus in the first century BC, who was "born with a physical body which is a combination of that of a man and that of a woman", and reputedly possessed supernatural properties. He also recounted the lives of Diophantus of Abae and Callon of Epidaurus. Ardhanarishvara, an androgynous composite form of male deity Shiva and female deity Parvati, originated in Kushan culture as far back as the first century AD. A statue depicting Ardhanarishvara is included in India's Meenakshi Temple; this statue clearly shows both male and female bodily elements.


title: Intersex

text: Hippocrates ( – BC Greek physician) and Galen (129 – AD Roman physician, surgeon and philosopher) both viewed sex as a spectrum between men and women, with "many shades in between, including hermaphrodites, a perfect balance of male and female". Pliny the Elder (AD 23/24–79) the Roman naturalist described "those who are born of both sexes, whom we call hermaphrodites, at one time "androgyni"" (from the Greek , "man," and , "woman"). Augustine (354 – 28 August 430 AD) the influential Catholic theologian wrote in "The Literal Meaning of Genesis" that humans were created in two sexes, despite "as happens in some births, in the case of what we call androgynes".


title: Intersex

text: In medieval and early modern European societies, Roman law, post-classical canon law, and later common law, referred to a person's sex as male, female or hermaphrodite, with legal rights as male or female depending on the characteristics that appeared most dominant. The 12th century states that "Whether an hermaphrodite may witness a testament, depends on which sex prevails". The foundation of common law, the 17th Century "Institutes of the Lawes of England" described how a hermaphrodite could inherit "either as male or female, according to that kind of sexe which doth prevaile." Legal cases have been described in canon law and elsewhere over the centuries.


title: Intersex

text: Some non-European societies have sex or gender systems that recognize more than the two categories of male/man and female/woman. Some of these cultures, for instance the South-Asian Hijra communities, may include intersex people in a third gender category. Although–according to Morgan Holmes–early Western anthropologists categorized such cultures "primitive," Holmes has argued that analyses of these cultures have been simplistic or romanticized and fail to take account of the ways that subjects of all categories are treated.


title: Intersex

text: During the Victorian era, medical authors introduced the terms "true hermaphrodite" for an individual who has both ovarian and testicular tissue, "male pseudo-hermaphrodite" for a person with testicular tissue, but either female or ambiguous sexual anatomy, and "female pseudo-hermaphrodite" for a person with ovarian tissue, but either male or ambiguous sexual anatomy. Some later shifts in terminology have reflected advances in genetics, while other shifts are suggested to be due to pejorative associations.


title: Intersex

text: The term "intersexuality" was coined by Richard Goldschmidt in 1917. The first suggestion to replace the term "hermaphrodite" with "intersex" was made by Cawadias in the 1940s.


title: Intersex

text: Since the rise of modern medical science, some intersex people with ambiguous external genitalia have had their genitalia surgically modified to resemble either female or male genitals. Surgeons pinpointed intersex babies as a "social emergency" when born. An 'optimal gender policy', initially developed by John Money, stated that early intervention helped avoid gender identity confusion, but this lacks evidence. Early interventions have adverse consequences for psychological and physical health. Since advances in surgery have made it possible for intersex conditions to be concealed, many people are not aware of how frequently intersex conditions arise in human beings or that they occur at all.


title: Intersex

text: Dialogue between what were once antagonistic groups of activists and clinicians has led to only slight changes in medical policies and how intersex patients and their families are treated in some locations. In 2011, Christiane Völling became the first intersex person known to have successfully sued for damages in a case brought for non-consensual surgical intervention. In April 2015, Malta became the first country to outlaw non-consensual medical interventions to modify sex anatomy, including that of intersex people. Many civil society organizations and human rights institutions now call for an end to unnecessary "normalizing" interventions, including in the Malta declaration.


title: Intersex

text: Human rights institutions are placing increasing scrutiny on harmful practices and issues of discrimination against intersex people. These issues have been addressed by a rapidly increasing number of international institutions including, in 2015, the Council of Europe, the United Nations Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and the World Health Organization (WHO). These developments have been accompanied by International Intersex Forums and increased cooperation amongst civil society organizations. However, the implementation, codification, and enforcement of intersex human rights in national legal systems remains slow.


title: Intersex

text: Stigmatization and discrimination from birth may include infanticide, abandonment, and the stigmatization of families. The birth of an intersex child was often viewed as a curse or a sign of a witch mother, especially in parts of Africa. Abandonments and infanticides have been reported in Uganda, Kenya, South Asia, and China.


title: Intersex

text: Infants, children and adolescents also experience "normalising" interventions on intersex persons that are medically unnecessary and the pathologisation of variations in sex characteristics. In countries where the human rights of intersex people have been studied, medical interventions to modify the sex characteristics of intersex people have still taken place without the consent of the intersex person. Interventions have been described by human rights defenders as a violation of many rights, including (but not limited to) bodily integrity, non-discrimination, privacy, and experimentation. These interventions have frequently been performed with the consent of the intersex person's parents, when the person is legally too young to consent. Such interventions have been criticized by the WHO, other UN bodies such as the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, and an increasing number of regional and national institutions due to their adverse consequences, including trauma, impact on sexual function and sensation, and violation of rights to physical and mental integrity. The UN organizations decided that infant intervention should not be allowed, in favor of waiting for the child to mature enough to be a part of the decision-making – this allows for a decision to be made with total consent. In April 2015, Malta became the first country to outlaw surgical intervention without consent. In the same year, the Council of Europe became the first institution to state that intersex people have the right not to undergo sex affirmation interventions.


title: Intersex

text: People born with intersex bodies are seen as different. Intersex infants, children, adolescents and adults "are often stigmatized and subjected to multiple human rights violations", including discrimination in education, healthcare, employment, sport, and public services. Several countries have so far explicitly protected intersex people from discrimination, with landmarks including South Africa, Australia, and, most comprehensively, Malta.


title: Intersex

text: Claims for compensation and remedies for human rights abuses include the 2011 case of Christiane Völling in Germany. A second case was adjudicated in Chile in 2012, involving a child and his parents. A further successful case in Germany, taken by Michaela Raab, was reported in 2015. In the United States, the Minor Child ("M.C. v Aaronson") lawsuit was "a medical malpractice case related to the informed consent for a surgery performed on the Crawford's adopted child (known as M.C.) at [Medical University of South Carolina] in April 2006". The case was one of the first lawsuit of its kind to challenge "legal, ethical, and medical issues regarding genital-normalizing surgery" in minors, and was eventually settled out of court by the Medical University of South Carolina for $440,000 in 2017.


title: Intersex

text: Access to information, medical records, peer and other counselling and support. With the rise of modern medical science in Western societies, a secrecy-based model was also adopted, in the belief that this was necessary to ensure normal physical and psychosocial development.


title: Intersex

text: The Asia Pacific Forum of National Human Rights Institutions states that legal recognition is firstly "about intersex people who have been issued a male or a female birth certificate being able to enjoy the same legal rights as other men and women." In some regions, obtaining any form of birth certification may be an issue. A Kenyan court case in 2014 established the right of an intersex boy, "Baby A", to a birth certificate.


title: Intersex

text: Like all individuals, some intersex individuals may be raised as a certain sex (male or female) but then identify with another later in life, while most do not. Recognition of third sex or gender classifications occurs in several countries, However, it is controversial when it becomes assumed or coercive, as is the case with some German infants. Sociological research in Australia, a country with a third 'X' sex classification, shows that 19% of people born with atypical sex characteristics selected an "X" or "other" option, while 75% of survey respondents self-described as male or female (52% as women, 23% as men), and 6% as unsure.


title: Intersex

text: Intersex conditions can be contrasted with transgender gender identities and the attached gender dysphoria a transgender person may feel, wherein their gender identity does not match their assigned sex. However, some people are both intersex and transgender; though intersex people by definition have variable sex characteristics that do not align with either typically male or female, this may be considered separate to an individual's assigned gender, the way they are raised and perceived, and their internal gender identity. A 2012 clinical review paper found that between 8.5% and 20% of people with intersex variations experienced gender dysphoria. In an analysis of the use of preimplantation genetic diagnosis to eliminate intersex traits, Behrmann and Ravitsky state: "Parental choice against intersex may ... conceal biases against same-sex attractedness and gender nonconformity."


title: Intersex

text: The relationship of intersex people and communities to LGBTQ communities is complex, but intersex people are often added to the LGBT acronym, resulting in the acronym LGBTI. Emi Koyama describes how inclusion of intersex in LGBTI can fail to address intersex-specific human rights issues, including creating false impressions "that intersex people's rights are protected" by laws protecting LGBT people, and failing to acknowledge that many intersex people are not LGBT. Organisation Intersex International Australia states that some intersex individuals are homosexual, and some are heterosexual, but "LGBTI activism has fought for the rights of people who fall outside of expected binary sex and gender norms." Julius Kaggwa of SIPD Uganda has written that, while the gay community "offers us a place of relative safety, it is also oblivious to our specific needs". Mauro Cabral has written that transgender people and organizations "need to stop approaching intersex issues as if they were trans issues", including use of intersex conditions and people as a means of explaining being transgender; "we can collaborate a lot with the intersex movement by making it clear how wrong that approach is".


title: Intersex

text: An intersex character is the narrator in Jeffrey Eugenides' Pulitzer Prize-winning novel "Middlesex".


title: Intersex

text: The memoir, "Born Both: An Intersex Life" (Hachette Books, 2017), by intersex author and activist Hida Viloria, received strong praise from "The New York Times Book Review", "The Washington Post", "Rolling Stone", "People Magazine", and "Psychology Today", was one of "School Library Journal"'s 2017 Top Ten Adult Books for Teens, and was a 2018 Lambda Literary Award nominee.


title: Intersex

text: Television works about intersex and films about intersex are scarce. The Spanish-language film "XXY" won the Critics' Week grand prize at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival and the ACID/CCAS Support Award. "Faking It" is notable for providing both the first intersex main character in a television show, and television's first intersex character played by an intersex actor.


title: Intersex

text: Intersex peer support and advocacy organizations have existed since at least 1985, with the establishment of the Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome Support Group Australia in 1985. The Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome Support Group (UK) was established in 1988. The Intersex Society of North America (ISNA) may have been one of the first intersex civil society organizations to have been open to people regardless of diagnosis; it was active from 1993 to 2008.


title: Intersex

text: Intersex Awareness Day is an internationally observed civil awareness day designed to highlight the challenges faced by intersex people, occurring annually on 26 October. It marks the first public demonstration by intersex people, which took place in Boston on 26 October 1996, outside a venue where the American Academy of Pediatrics was holding its annual conference.


title: Intersex

text: Intersex Day of Remembrance, also known as Intersex Solidarity Day, is an internationally observed civil awareness day designed to highlight issues faced by intersex people, occurring annually on 8 November. It marks the birthday of , a French intersex person whose memoirs were later published by Michel Foucault in "."


title: Intersex

text: The intersex flag was created in July 2013 by Morgan Carpenter of Intersex Human Rights Australia to create a flag "that is not derivative, but is yet firmly grounded in meaning". The circle is described as "unbroken and unornamented, symbolising wholeness and completeness, and our potentialities. We are still fighting for bodily autonomy and genital integrity, and this symbolises the right to be who and how we want to be."


title: Intersex

text: In Judaism, the Talmud contains extensive discussion concerning the status of two types of intersex people in Jewish law; namely, the androgynous, who exhibit both male and female external sexual organs, and the , who exhibit neither. In the 1970s and 1980s, the treatment of intersex babies started to be discussed in Orthodox Jewish medical halacha by prominent rabbinic leaders, such as Eliezer Waldenberg and Moshe Feinstein.


title: Intersex

text: Erik Schinegger, Foekje Dillema, Maria José Martínez-Patiño and Santhi Soundarajan were subject to adverse sex verification testing resulting in ineligibility to compete in organised competitive competition. Stanisława Walasiewicz was posthumously ruled ineligible to have competed.


title: Intersex

text: The South African middle-distance runner Caster Semenya won gold at the World Championships in the women's 800 metres and won silver in the 2012 Summer Olympics. When Semenya won gold in the World Championships, the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) requested sex verification tests. The results were not released. Semenya was ruled eligible to compete.


title: Intersex

text: Katrina Karkazis, Rebecca Jordan-Young, Georgiann Davis and Silvia Camporesi have claimed that IAAF policies on "hyperandrogenism" in female athletes are "significantly flawed", arguing that the policy does not protect against breaches of privacy, requires athletes to undergo unnecessary treatment in order to compete, and intensifies "gender policing", and recommended that athletes be able to compete in accordance with their legally-recognised gender.


title: Intersex

text: In April 2014, the "BMJ" reported that four elite women athletes with XY chromosomes and 5-ARD were subjected to sterilization and "partial clitoridectomies" in order to compete in sport. The authors noted that partial clitoridectomy was "not medically indicated" and "does not relate to real or perceived athletic 'advantage'." Intersex advocates regarded this intervention as "a clearly coercive process". In 2016, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on health, Dainius Pūras, criticized "current and historic" sex verification policies, describing how "a number of athletes have undergone gonadectomy (removal of reproductive organs) and partial clitoridectomy (a form of female genital mutilation) in the absence of symptoms or health issues warranting those procedures."


title: Intersex

text: The notion of intersex individuals can be understood in the context of sexual system biology that varies across different types of organisms. Most animal species (~95%, including humans) are gonochoric, in which individuals are of either a female or male sex. Hermaphroditic species (some animals and most flowering plants) are represented by individuals that can express both sexes simultaneously or sequentially during their lifetimes. Intersex individuals in a number of gonochoric species, who express both female and male phenotypic characters to some degree, are known to exist at very low prevalences.


title: Intersex

text: Although "hermaphrodite" and "intersex" have been used synonymously in humans, a hermaphrodite is specifically an individual capable of producing female and male gametes. While there are reports of individuals that seemed to have the potential to produce both types of gamete, in more recent years the term hermaphrodite as applied to humans has fallen out of favor, since female and male reproductive functions have not been observed together in the same individual.


title: Intersex

text: Research in the late 20th century led to a growing medical consensus that diverse intersex bodies are normal, but relatively rare, forms of human biology. Clinician and researcher Milton Diamond stresses the importance of care in the selection of language related to intersex people: