Occupation Professor | ||
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Employer University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee Known for Transgender and intersex advocacy Books Professional Identity Crisis: Race, Class, Gender, and Success at Professional Schools Alma maters Yale College, Harvard Law School, University of California, Berkeley | ||
Cary Gabriel Costello is an intersex trans male professor and advocate for transgender and intersex rights. His areas of study include identity, sexuality, privilege, and marginalization.
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Career and personal life
Assigned female at birth, Costello first attempted a gender transition in 1991, while working as an attorney in Washington, D.C. Due to the discrimination he experienced, he postponed his transition, and left the legal profession to pursue a degree and career in sociology. He transitioned to male after securing tenure as an associate professor of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, where he leads the LGBT Studies program.
Costello has advocated for transgender and intersex people on issues including intersex surgery, eugenics, bathroom bills, TSA airline passenger screening, and the sometimes fraught relationships between intersex and transgender communities. He has analyzed the controversy over the gender testing of South African athlete Caster Semenya from an intersex perspective. Costello has suggested using the term ipso gender instead of cisgender for intersex people who agree with their sex assigned at birth.
Costello is the gestational father of a daughter, and is married to an intersex trans woman.