Magnus Hirschfeld was a gay activist and doctor who established the first known transgender healthcare clinic in Berlin in 1919.
The Institute for Sexual Science was a place where queer people could learn about themselves and heal both physically and emotionally. Hirschfeld, a pioneer of transgender rights and advocate for the acceptance of trans and intersex people, used the clinic to establish safe and gender-affirming transgender healthcare.
In the 1930s, the clinic began helping trans women receive gender-affirming care, including hormone treatment, and the world’s first vaginoplasty surgery, according to Scientific American. Phalloplasty surgeries for trans men would not be practiced until the late 1940s.
Dora Richter was Hirschfeld’s patient and the first trans woman to undergo a surgical transition. Richter had been repeatedly arrested for wearing women’s clothing and was forced to serve her time behind bars with men, the latter being a problem still often faced by trans people. It was a judge who placed her under Hirschfeld’s care, where she was able to live authentically, according to an article by Them.
Hirschfeld’s history of supporting queer rights stretches back to 1897 when he established the Scientific Humanitarian Committee. The organization is largely regarded as the world’s first LGBTQ+ rights group and was established to abolish Paragraph 175, Germany’s law banning gay sex.
Hirschfeld also founded the Yearbook of Intermediate Sexual Times in 1899. It was the world’s first Journal to discuss sexual variants — known today as queer people — and was regularly published until 1923.
In 1910, Hirschfeld published a study on cross-dressing, called “the transvestites”, which is now often seen as outdated and offensive. And he helped produce the film “Different from Others” in 1919, which called for the decriminalization and acceptance of homosexuality.
The film was banned by the German government within a year of its release but a copy of the film was found in Berlin in the 1980s, and a New York Times article from 1986 even quotes the final moments of the film:
“An actor portraying Dr. Hirschfeld informs a public gathering: ‘The time will come when such tragedies will be no more, for knowledge will conquer prejudice, truth will conquer lies, and love will triumph over hatred.’”
In 1928 Hirschfeld founded the World League for Sexual Reform, which was an international conference calling for the rights to contraception and sex education and for legal and social equality of the sexes.
Despite Hirschfeld’s many contributions, he wasn’t a saint by any means and held several racist views, which unfortunately taint his legacy.
Laurie Marhoefer, a historian of queer and trans people in Weimar and Nazi Germany, wrote a book on his racism.
“His thought contains a persistent and strong anti-Black racism,” Marhoefer said in an interview with the University of Toronto Press. “He was misogynistic. His ideas about disabled people were horrible. We have to confront all that.”
“He was so important in the history of gay rights. The guy basically invented gay rights politics as it came to be in the 20th Century. We have to confront his racism and his other bad ideas.”
Marhoefer addresses the complexity of Hirschfeld’s views, crediting him with calling out racism in Nazi Germany and being able to see gay rights in the context of anti-racism and anti-imperialism.
Still, he was one of the founders of the Medical Society for Sexual Science and Eugenics, which was established in 1913.
Eugenics is a racist and ableist system of thought that proposes only certain types of people reproduce to create a society of “desirable” people. While the Nazis weren’t so keen on queerness, they fully adopted the ideas of eugenics, which took an even more extreme form in Hitler’s desire for a white Christian Europe.
This same Nazi extremism would eventually drive Hirschfeld out of Germany. As right-wing sentiments grew in Germany in the 1920s and ’30s, Hirschfeld and the queer community became faced with increasing danger.
As a Jewish gay man, he was a regular target of violence. He was first assaulted by right-wing extremists in 1920, and in the following years, the attacks became more common, including disruptions to his speaking events, according to Britannica.
As a critic of Paragraph 175 and an advocate for abortion access and women’s rights, the Nazis despised Hirschfeld. Hitler personally called him out as being protected by the state, according to scholar Liz Tracey.
(Side note: If Hitler is personally singling you out, you’re probably doing something right!)
By 1932, Hirschfeld was unable to return to Germany following an international lecture tour. The following year, the Nazis raided the Institute for Sexual Science and burned the contents of its library, a treasure trove of pro-LGBTQ+ writings and one-of-a-kind transgender medical research. In the years that followed, they tortured and murdered millions of Jewish people, including queer and disabled people.
Hirschfeld didn’t live to see the full horrors of the Holocaust. He died of sudden medial complications in 1935 while living in France. While his legacy remains complicated, there is no denying the positive impact he’s made on Trans healthcare.
London_resistance
Did not the blokes this monster experimented on all die?
These mentally ill men needed therapy and/or psychiatric help not fvkcing surgery! just like most blokes who feel the same nowadays should be getting mental help not being castrated and pumped full of profitable hormone drugs
wikidBSTN
The only “mentally ill” person that should be under discussion is YOU, bloke. Take your morning meds.
cc423
Where did you get your degree in neurobiology?
monty clift
He did a lot for gay rights, but it seems he didn’t know how to help feminine or gender-confused gay men. Trying to convert them into “straight women” should never have been the answer.
dbmcvey
Who did he experiment on? What are you talking about?
Joshooeerr
It’s interesting that Queerty can acknowledge that Hirschfeld, however well intentioned in some areas, was highly problematic, and caused great harm. Yet there’s no such nuance around equally problematic (and didactic) current approaches to trans issues.
kish
Please follow your own advice and get some help.
wikidBSTN
And what do YOU have to offer on the current approaches to trans health – and what woudl be your qualifications to do so?
ScottOnEarth
Thank you for sharing this info. Mr. Hirschfeld was an amazing, fearless person who was many decades ahead of his time in regards to his research, studies, writings and advocacy for what we now call Queer people. He is THE maverick on these things…..unfortunately, he did have very misguided – and simply wrong – views on race. The above article mentions that he was misogynistic; however, he has a long history of advocating for women on every level, including decriminalization of abortion and birth control, and being a strong proponent of gender equality. His unabashed, highly-visible advocacy for Queer people – and the help & respite he provided many such folks- was unprecedented in his day and is just remarkable.
decrans
That’s the beauty of my political evolution, Dave. I learned that the conservatives were correct all along. Left-wing handout fantasyland? That’s just basic run-of-the-mill, pie-in-the-sky liberalism! It’s not based in capitalist reality. Homeless people need to get a job. That’s how America works. You’re the ones saying, “It takes a village, Hillary!” So, does it?
decrans
It would be fascinating to dissect the nuance of his eugenics viewpoints with his thoughts on gender ideology: “Like many scientists of his time, Hirschfeld was influenced by theories of eugenics. While he disagreed with some aspects of eugenics, he supported others. For example, Hirschfeld rejected ideas about racial hierarchy. However, he did accept the idea that people diagnosed with chronic alcoholism or certain mental disabilities should not reproduce.”
inbama
We’ve all been taught a distorted view of eugenics as if it were what the Nazis practiced in the death camps.
Eugenics was a widespread movement. Jewish intellectuals and scientists actually embraced it as a way to improve their own racial stock.
My only disagreement with the article is the claim that Hirschfeld’s study of transvestites is “dated.” Actually, it perfectly aligns with the work on autogynephilia by Ray Blanchard and Anne Lawrence which has recently been validated by studies that show while androphilic transsexuals show brain atypicality in the gender region (as do gay men), (auto)gynephilic transgenders do not but may have atypicality in the body dysmorphic regions. That’s 100 years of research in sexology, psychology and now NEUROLOGY that all point to the same distinctions.
decrans
That’s interesting. I’m being pitched to gay conservative journalists. I’ll read up on that.
dbmcvey
What would you do Jarod? What do you do to help trans people find work or healthcare? Making them illegal and pariahs certainly won’t help.
decrans
Again, I ask: “What is your party doing for this beyond press releases and photo ops?” Your party is the one who wants this to be a foundation for their platform. Not the Republicans. I see an un-workable system for the vast majority of trans people. That’s not on the Republicans to fix. That’s on the party who takes up airspace talking incessantly about these issues. As it stands for the past decade, it’s highly unworkable for a considerable chunk of individuals. Not on the Republicans. They’re not the ones saying it’s possible for people to get the help they need.
dbmcvey
You ask that because you have no answer for what you and your party are doing. Actually, my party is standing up for them and funding services while your party demonizes them.
It’s not enough but it’s better than you villainizing them.
decrans
As I demonstrated on another thread with LGBTQ LA Center horror stories, that isn’t necessarily the case, Dave Matthews. Your party funds it ‘in theory.’ A system filled with incompetence, bureaucracy, and mixed results. A good segment of Americans isn’t co-signing on mixed results. You have to do better when it comes to the lives of children.
dbmcvey
Hey Jarod, why are so many trans people unhoused and unemployed?
It’s because their parents kick them out as teenagers, which is what your party is promoting.
Your hero DeSantis even promotes taking trans kids away from thier parents if they’re supportive. That’s a sure way to make homeless people.
What are you doing about that?
decrans
Read it and weep, Dave Matthews. From the California Healthcare Foundation.
SACRAMENTO — California’s homelessness crisis is a homegrown problem that is deepening amid a shortage of affordable housing and emergency shelter, and it’s often the brutal conditions of living on the street that trigger behavioral health problems, such as depression and anxiety, researchers found in a comprehensive study on homelessness.
The new findings by leading researchers at the University of California show that at least 90% of adults who are experiencing homelessness in the state became homeless while living in California due primarily to the dire lack of affordable housing.
“This idea that homeless people are rushing into California is just not true,” said Margot Kushel, a physician who treats homeless people and the lead investigator of the study for the UC-San Francisco Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative. “There’s so much myth-making around this magnet theory that people who are homeless flock to California, but this is our own problem.”
“These are our own policies,” Kushel added, referring to the state and federal governments. “We did this to people.”
California Health and Human Services Secretary Mark Ghaly, who asked for an analysis of the state’s homelessness crisis, said the findings underscore where it must improve. The study could inform the state’s approach to expanding its behavioral health system.
“As we drive toward addressing the health and housing needs of Californians experiencing homelessness, this study reinforces the importance of comprehensive and integrated supports,” Ghaly said in a statement. “California is taking bold steps to address unmet needs for physical and behavioral health services, to create a range of housing options that are safe and stable, and to meet people where they are.”
Kushel said the findings point to the increasing demands for adequate mental health and addiction treatment — and more low-income housing. While some people reported heightened mental health and substance use problems before becoming homeless, the trauma of being on the streets, Kushel said, can lead to, or amplify, behavioral health conditions, including drug use and depression.
A staggering 82% of people experiencing homelessness said they had a mental health condition or substance use challenge in their lifetime. And 66% said they were currently experiencing mental health problems, such as depression, anxiety, hallucinations, or trouble remembering things.
Sage Johnson, 28, was homeless in Los Angeles and lived for years in shelters before getting into low-income housing. Despite working graveyard shifts at Walgreens and other minimum-wage jobs at the time, she said, she couldn’t find anything affordable and experienced heightened depression and anxiety while homeless.
“Being out there unmedicated, without therapy, you spiral out of control,” Johnson said, who was among the formerly homeless who helped guide the research.
The findings show the limits of California’s unprecedented spending to combat its homelessness crisis. Newsom’s administration has poured more than $20 billion into the crisis since he took office in 2019, much of that distributed to local governments to provide services and build housing.
That’s on top of billions the state is pouring into improving its mental health system and a $12 billion social services-based initiative called CalAIM, which offers housing security deposits and sobering centers to help vulnerable populations, including homeless people.
But the study found that expanding health coverage and adding social services isn’t serving all those in need. Specifically, 83% of homeless people surveyed said they had health insurance mostly through Medi-Cal, California’s Medicaid program for low-income people. Yet more than half relied on the emergency room for care and nearly a quarter said they couldn’t access the care they needed. A majority who said they were experiencing mental health problems either weren’t being treated or got care through emergency rooms.
In some ways, the policies Newsom is steering may make the problem worse. For example, his administration has backed removing homeless encampments in exchange for shelter and services. But homeless people say those promises are often unmet.
Forced displacement, the report found, and confiscation of belongings when clearing encampments can hurt the state’s ability to find housing for people, Kushel said.
“It sometimes feels like one part of government is working against the other part,” she said.
decrans
How about this? You stop worrying about what DeSantis is doing. Focus on your backyard. Since Gavin Newsom has said that California is the progressive model state for America, the sky’s the limit! Start getting everything into tip-top shape for Daddy Gavin’s prospects. That’s the beauty of state rights, Dave Matthews. And honestly, I’d rather have parents to kick me out of the house into the wilds of capitalism. It’s better than your worldview of ‘the state/medical system is capable of handling it, but no really, though.” Time and time again on thread after thread, I’ve proven what a poop show it is in California. So if it’s progressive utopia, I suggest you get bizz-ay, Dave Matthews. Don’t worry about the conservative parents in Florida. According to the Healthcare Foundation of California, that’s not affecting your data. The phone call is from WITHIN the HOUSE, girl.
dbmcvey
DeSantis wants to take children away from their parents if they support the possibility of them being trans. Weren’t you talking about parents being punished at one point?
Oh, Jared, so many words with so little meaning.
decrans
I agree with him. Due to the mixed outcomes that we see with ‘trans health care,’ the state has every right to step in and investigate.
dbmcvey
Jarod, how do trans people become homeless?
Many of them are kicked out by their conservative, religious parents, or they run away from their abusive conservative, religious parents.
This also means they don’t complete their education sow they can’t find meaningful employment. Organizations like LGBT Centers help them as much as they can.
Your hero DeSantis’ plans will make all of this worse.
Stop pretending you care about trans people because, clearly, you don’t.
decrans
Oh Dave Matthews. Stop pretending you care. Earlier, you told me to get a job. And that’s the capitalist reality of what the trans homeless people need to do in a system where ‘it takes a village’ is a mere pipe dream as I’ve illustrated over various threads. You said the same thing conservatives say, Dave!
decrans
And the thing is: If they can’t find a job due to being visibly trans, they need to further acquiesce to capitalist reality with proper dress codes. Millions of people do that every day, Dave Matthews. We don’t cry about it like little children. You acquiesced to capitalism yourself as you admitted in past threads. Because they have a wig, they get a get-out-of-jail free card? Capitalism doesn’t work that way baby.
decrans
Dr. Hirschfeld did travel to America to further his career while his first MTF patient died of a botched sex change. In some ways, things haven’t changed. These trans doctors chase clout in a capitalist system and some patients unnecessarily suffer because of their profit-driven motives. The only difference? We have the far-left LGBTQ+ demographic cheerleading this procedure at all costs even in the minority cases of malpractice and questionable healthcare. 2023 is something else, gang!
wikidBSTN
Get a life and a clue. Hirschfield was the only person in the world these people could turn to back then – and he didn’t do surgeries for profit. Go back to your book-burning and brown-shirt crowd.
decrans
He did go to America to chase clout while his first patient died. We also have trans doctors (Vanderbilt Transgender clinic) who chase profit and clout with similar circumstances. Perhaps, the one who should get a clue is yourself.
cc423
What a pathetic take. Since you’re incapable of understanding the science of gender and lack even the most basic modicum of compassion for others, how about you just stay in your lane.
decrans
Nope. I lived through it. I will keep talking about it. Don’t like it. Tough $hit. This is America. Not everyone agrees with you. Welcome to adulthood. And let me know when you get irrefutable proof that gender is malleable. Until then, you’re like those conservatives popping horse pills for COVID.
Bosch
“And let me know when you get irrefutable proof that gender is malleable. ”
You say you lived through it, yet you speak as if you don’t understand the distinction between sex, gender, and gender identity.
decrans
As I mentioned previously, this community says it’s a spectrum while concurrently saying it’s fixed at birth. Which is it? Do y’all even know at this point?
Bosch
“this community says it’s a spectrum while concurrently saying it’s fixed at birth”
These things aren’t mutually exclusive; a spectrum isn’t inherently dynamic or changeable.
And when you say “it”, do you mean sex, gender, or gender identity?
decrans
Bosch, that sounds like a desperate attempt to pull things from your butt.
dbmcvey
Jarod, you’re claiming you lived through Germany before and during WWII? Just how old are you?
decrans
I researched Dr. Hirschfeld to obliterate your arguments like Meghan McCain, Dave Matthews.
dbmcvey
Did you really Jarod? Your party is the Nazis who come along and make the trans people pariahs so they have no chance at all.
decrans
Well, as a former trans person, I gotta say we didn’t have much of a chance under Biden or Newsom either. I evolved into accepting my manhood, Dave. So again, it befalls on you to hold the line. And as I pointed out, the liberal line on trans issues is badly frayed. As for the Nazi label, y’all pulled the same crap with Dubya, Reagan, and John McCain. At a certain point in my adulthood, I started tuning out liberals crying wolf. Yes, everyone who doesn’t accept your worldview is a Nazi. Sure, Jan.
dbmcvey
Jared, there are a lot of people who detransition, but they don’t try to hurt other trans people. What are you doing?
Bosch
“Bosch, that sounds like a desperate attempt to pull things from your butt.”
Decrans, that sounds like you didn’t actually do enough research to be able to keep up this artificial ex-trans persona you’ve invented.
decrans
I’m making things better for mentally ill gay men who are swept up in trans medicalization because guess WHAT…this system lacks safeguards. That’s what I’m doing. You give $20 to the LA LGBT Center every Christmas. What are you doing to that litany of problems I laid out in various threads?
decrans
And Bosch, that’s another thing you do on various threads. You make statements. You don’t back them up with evidence or stats. That’s not how the adult world works, bud. That’s not how legislation gets passed, etc.
decrans
I realize y’all’s side has trouble with basic definitions now. A spectrum is defined as a whole range of possible ideas or qualities. There’s little room for nuances. A whole range of variables comes into play. Now, the earlier definition propagated by your movement defined gender as FIXED. That is the exact opposite of the word, ‘spectrum.’ Again, I know y’all have trouble with words. You have trouble defining woman and man. This is some of the work y’all need to be doing for the 63 percent of Americans who think this movement is cuckoo for cocoa puffs. I’m just telling you how it is for the vast majority of Americans in flyover country. Don’t like it? Keep losing Supreme Court battles. Be my guest by all means.
Bosch
“And Bosch, that’s another thing you do on various threads. You make statements. You don’t back them up with evidence or stats.”
Asking you whether you’re referring to sex, gender, or gender identity is not a statement. It’s a question. A question you’re doing your very best to avoid answering.
And no, “fixed” is not the opposite of the word “spectrum”. A “spectrum” describes a continuous scale of measurement, “fixed” describes whether a point can move along that scale.
dbmcvey
Jarod, Meghan McCain never obliterated arguments, she just screamed and whined louder than everyone else, so, yes, you are just like Meghan McCain.
decrans
A continuous scale of measurement is not fixed. You said it in your own sentence.
decrans
And if it’s a spectrum and can be changed, why are y’all are fighting tooth-and-nail for civil right protections? For the majority of Americans, that reads ‘gender identity is a CHOICE.’ As such, we shouldn’t have to re-write laws to accommodate a bunch of people wearing a wig. This is why the Supreme Court rulings are starting to go the way they are. Tough $hit.
decrans
Bosch and Dave Matthews, there’s a fascinating “Meet the Press: Special Reports” on artificial intelligence. The recurring theme? Governmental institutions have not properly laid the framework for these systems. We saw it with the rise in social media.
Since trans health care is relatively new in terms of public support options and childhood access, the technological frameworks around the medical industrial complex are rapidly changing and lawmakers can’t keep pace.
“Life and death decisions are being made by automated systems. They’re determining people’s access to government support for housing, food and medical care,” said University of Baltimore law professor, Michelle Gilman. She works with low-income people and the services denied to them and has found that medical algorithms are at fault. “I’ve been in rooms where nobody can describe how the algorithms work and what factors does it weigh. You’re really unable to make a case for your social work client in those terms.”
So when Gavin Newsom and your merry band of neoliberal rainbow capitalist Dems talk about trans health care for kids and the practicality, technology is an issue that belies the discussion. And the same liberal political correctness dictates that you can’t have a conversation about these issues on the margins LEST THE ENTIRE TRANS IDEOLOGY HOUSE OF CARDS TOPPLES OVER. In short, these are the gaps the conservatives are exploiting much to your detriment.
Just throwing up your hands and saying “Look at Gavin go!” ain’t getting it done.
inbama
@cc423
” Since you’re incapable of understanding the science of gender…”
The “science of gender?”
Gender, Gender Ideology, Queer Theory – none of that is science. It’s made up by people like Judith Butler in the biggest waste of college campus space known as Gender Studies. It used to be called “Women’s Studies” until like everything else, it was hijacked by transwomen.
Psychologists study disorders like autogynephilia or Gender Dysphoria. Neurologists study brain scans for function and atypicality. Evolutionary biologists study our origins as an anisogamus species with two – and only two – sexes.
Infinite identities and genders? That’s nothing but politics.
stropiano
Sadly, he witnessed the burning of his library when watching a newsreel in a Paris movie theatre.