Hirschfeld’s own predecessor in sexology, Richard von Krafft-Ebing, had claimed in the 19th century that homosexuality was natural sexual variation and congenital. Hirschfeld considered Socrates, Michelangelo and Shakespeare to be sexual intermediaries he considered himself and his partner Karl Giese to be the same. court decision in 2020 limiting trans rights, an editorial in the Economist argued that other countries should follow suit, and an editorial in the Observer praised the court for resisting a “disturbing trend” of children receiving gender-affirming health care as part of a transition.īut history bears witness to the plurality of gender and sexuality. Current anti-trans sentiments center on the idea that being transgender is both new and unnatural.
It was possibly even more forward than our own thinking, 100 years later. If this seems like extremely forward thinking for the time, it was. Most important for Hirschfeld, these people were acting “in accordance with their nature,” not against it. Perhaps even more surprising was Hirschfeld’s inclusion of those with no fixed gender, akin to today’s concept of gender-fluid or nonbinary identity (he counted French novelist George Sand among them). Credit: Magnus-Hirschfeld-Gesellschaft e.V., Berlin Magnus Hirschfeld, director of the Institute for Sexual Research, in an undated portrait. One soldier with whom Hirschfeld had worked described wearing women’s clothing as the chance “to be a human being at least for a moment.” He likewise recognized that these people could be either homosexual or heterosexual, something that is frequently misunderstood about transgender people today. Included under this umbrella were what he considered “situational” and “constitutional” homosexuals-a recognition that there is often a spectrum of bisexual practice-as well as what he termed “transvestites.” This group included those who wished to wear the clothes of the opposite sex and those who “from the point of view of their character” should be considered as the opposite sex. Hirschfeld proposed the term “sexual intermediaries” for nonconforming individuals. Hirschfeld, in contrast, argued that a person may be born with characteristics that did not fit into heterosexual or binary categories and supported the idea that a “third sex” (or Geschlecht) existed naturally. Many of his predecessors and colleagues believed that homosexuality was pathological, using new theories from psychology to suggest it was a sign of mental ill health. Hirschfeld sought to specialize in sexual health, an area of growing interest. These heartbreaking stories, Hirschfeld wrote in The Sexual History of the World War, “bring before us the whole tragedy what fatherland did they have, and for what freedom were they fighting?” In the aftermath of this lonely death, Hirschfeld left his medical practice and began a crusade for justice that would alter the course of queer history. The soldier bequeathed his private papers to Hirschfeld, along with a letter: “The thought that you could contribute to when the German fatherland will think of us in more just terms,” he wrote, “sweetens the hour of death.” Hirschfeld would be forever haunted by this needless loss the soldier had called himself a “curse,” fit only to die, because the expectations of heterosexual norms, reinforced by marriage and law, made no room for his kind. It was the eve of his wedding, an event he could not face. But the soldier had already made up his mind. Hirschfeld understood the soldier’s plight-he was himself both homosexual and Jewish-and did his best to comfort his patient.
#TRANSGENDER CHILDREN EVERYWHERE CODE#
The infamous “Paragraph 175” in the German criminal code made homosexuality illegal a man so accused could be stripped of his ranks and titles and thrown in jail. It explained the cover of darkness to speak of such things was dangerous business. Distraught and agitated, the man had come to confess himself an Urning-a word used to refer to homosexual men. Late one night on the cusp of the 20th century, Magnus Hirschfeld, a young doctor, found a soldier on the doorstep of his practice in Germany.
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