As I made my way through my legal transition, I discovered something odd: I wasn't able to record a change to my gender marker because I was already assigned female at birth.

Investigating why and how led me to eventually have multiple karyotypes done, from different regions of my body, and that showed that I'm a genetic chimera - a person whose cells have different chromosomes in different places. It's essentially the reverse of twins: instead of one embryo splitting into multiple, two or more embryos fuse into a single fetus. In my case, I have some cells that are XX and some cells that are XY, which makes me intersex.

This is potentially more common than we might think: geneticists estimate that approximately 10% of the current population are chimeras, though getting an accurate figure is difficult owing to the fact that so few people ever have their karyotype read, and fewer still test multiple locations to see if there's more than one karyotype present.

However, if the estimate is anywhere near correct, and considering that transgender people make up <2% of the population, it is entirely possible that many or even most transgender people ARE chimeras of an intersex type. My existence is proof of concept.

So I'm currently attempting research on the hypothesis: transgender people exhibit a higher rate of intersex chimerism than cisgender individuals. 

To conduct this research, I need to do multiple karyotypes on both trans and cis people. A single karyotype is prohibitively expensive, so I need help. My current study design requires a minimum of two tests on 20 individuals, 10 trans and 10 cis, to establish a better approximate rate of chimerism and whether it is more common in the trans population, and if so, whether it favors intersex genetics in the trans population. That's minimum viability for the study: more tests on wider sample groups would of course be preferable.

My goal is to answer the question of whether being transgender is itself an intersex condition, and even if that proves not to be the case, not only will we have learned something, we'll also gain valuable data on the real rates of non-intersex chimerism, which is something sorely lacking in our knowledge base. This study will have value however the results turn out. If it shows indications of the hypothesis being correct, we can use it to fund a much wider study, and get more solid data.

But I do need help to do it. The minimum viable study will cost approximately $6,000 to carry out to peer review, at minimum. If you think this research is worthwhile, please contribute, share this with others who might contribute, or both. Here's the fundraiser: GoFundMe