Aleksander Berezkin

Aleksander Berezkin is a Russian intersex nonbinary person, refugee, and intersex human rights activist. He is a founder of the first Russian intersex human rights organization Association of the Russian Speaking Intersex (ARSI).

Early life

Aleksandr was born in Novokuznetsk, Russia.

He has graduated with a BA in Sociology from Kemerovo State University and an MA in Sociology from Far Eastern State Technical University.

Aleksandr has stated that his physician told him he would never find someone else with his intersex variation, that he should keep it a secret, and never talk about his identity with anyone.

Activism Aleksandr started his advocacy in 2013, following a talk with Hida Viloria, working on intersex and LGBTI issues, organizing educational events for the LGBT community in Vladivostok. In 2014 Berezkin had to leave Russia as a result of a homophobic campaign against him. He sought political asylum in the United States on the basis that he was an LBGTQI activist. He was granted asylum in 2017.

Since 2021, Aleksander has been working on their Doctoral dissertation in Psychology, "A Micro-phenomenological Inquiry into Lived Embodied Experience and Consciousness of Intersex/Variations of Sex Characteristics (VSC) Migrants in the United States" at the California Institute of Integral Studies (San Francisco, CA)