Dedicated to the acceptance, medical treatment, & legal protection of individuals in the process of correcting the misalignment of their anatomical sex, & supporting their transition into society.
Magnus Hirschfeld (May 14, 1868 - May 14, 1935) was a German physician, pioneering sexologist and gay rights advocate. He was born in Kolberg, Germany (now Kolbrzeg, Poland), began a medical career and founded the Scientific Humanitarian Committee (WhK) to study human sexuality (1897). Hirschfeld opened the Berlin Institute for Sexual Science in 1919, the first such institute in the world.
Hirschfeld became convinced that homosexuals belong to a third biological sex which stands mid-way between male and female (both mentally and physically). Although his theories soon lost favor with the rise of Freudian Psychology, recent advances in technology reopened the question of significant innate differences between the brains of gays and lesbians and the brains of heterosexuals.
Hirschfeld coined the term transsexualism to identify a clinical category that is separate from homosexuality. His theoretical concepts were later extended a century later to form the underlying foundation for research into the root causes of transsexuality. His scientific work influenced Havelock Ellis, Edward Carpenter, and ultimately Harry Benjamin, who would later more fully develop the work in the United States.
Harry Benjamin, MD (January 12, 1885 – August 24, 1986), a German-born sexologist, is best known for pioneering work with transsexualism. Benjamin was born in Berlin, but as a young physician left Germany in 1913 to study tuberculosis in the United States. In 1915 he began his medical practice in New York City, specializing in hormonal research.
Benjamin visited Vienna every summer throughout the 1920s and early 1930s, with frequent side trips to Berlin. He met Magnus Hirschfeld on one of his Berlin trips and participated in Hirschfeld's scientific congresses.
Benjamin also corresponded and became friends with Alfred Kinsey. Through Kinsey, Benjamin became acquainted with a young patient who had male genitalia but insisted he was really female. His interest in this patient, the first of many to come, led Benjamin to begin his research into innate sex identity and he later described as “transsexualism.”
Before television and the internet, without any books to read, without any other source of information, and assuming that he or she was alone and unlike anyone else in the world, Benjamin's earliest patients came to him self-diagnosed. Their early descriptions of what Benjamin termed transsexuality are identical to those given by HBS men and women today, especially the recognition of the condition very early in their lives.
The Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association (HBIGD) formed in 1979 and used Benjamin’s name by permission to issue the Harry Benjamin protocols for the diagnosis and treatment of transsexuality.
The World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) superseded HBIGD and changed the organization’s focus from transsexuality to transgenderism. WPATH coverage now includes crossdressers, transvestites, and other gender variants, with the reduction of the transsexual minority to a subject of minor interest. In response, many HBS men and women have disassociated themselves from WPATH and its goals.
Harry Benjamin died August 24, 1986, at the age of one hundred. Many of Harry Benjamin’s patients are still alive.
Springfield, VA, USA. In a democratic society – and everyone prefers a democratic society, don’t they? — many, if not most individuals will hold strong views on a multitude of different issues, personal views integral to the foundations on which they have constructed their lives. In a democracy, where freedom of speech is guaranteed, opposing views are common and frequently expressed in robust terms. None should be surprised that this is so or offended that someone else’s views do not agree with ours.
If left unchecked, the philosophical thrust of government, almost with out historical exception, is to legislate for and control every conceivable variable of human behavior. Lately the defense of Liberty has fallen victim to the madden clamor of identity politics driven by ivory tower theorists who believe that they, and only they, know best what democracy really needs.
Democracy grows quiet in the face of identity politics that would protect everything — Age, Disability, Ethnicity, Gender, Gender identity, Sexual orientation, and Religion and Belief — and would silence all others might wish to join the conversation. Everyday, self-appointed social engineers attempt to put themselves in positions of unmediated power to control what can and cannot be thought, written or said.
The American educational system teaches our youth to be able to articulate a sense of personal grievance born by mere membership in a myriad of originally random historical groupings and circumstances.
Wingnuts on both sides of the aisle take offense at the slightest deviation from their private expectations of politically correct diversity.
Neither extreme — the fundamental, conservative right or the socialist, liberal left — tolerates those with whom they do not agree. Nor are they willing live side by side with those they hate.
The foundation stone of a truly democratic society is the ability to accept our political, religious, and social differences. Institutional imposition of rigid social norms, whether by government, religion, university, or political advocacy is an anathema to both our liberty and our nation.
Labyrinthine social policy and legislation is proposed, if not in place, to legislate for and control every conceivable variable of human behavior.
Differences of thought and action are equally targeted for public scorn and legal imprisonment. The crime of “hurting someone’s feelings” becomes an offense punishable by social shunning if not legal actions undertaken by ever hungry lawyers. If the social engineers would have their way, criminal charges and proceedings will soon follow for the crime of “hurt feelings.”
The social police, the only ones capable of grasping the vagaries of political and religious correctness, would have us surrender our Liberty to the slim twisting threads of their flawless judgment. Hate legislation becomes a tool to silence those you disagree with. Hate crimes are defined as any criminal offence which is perceived by the victim or any other person as being motivated by prejudice or hate. In the world of the social engineers, perception victimhood is all.
One of the danger signs as a society moves towards fascism and away from a democratic approach is that the rule of law becomes unstable. Citizens can no longer rely upon the authorities to apply existing laws in anything but an arbitrary manner. As the laws become vague, enforcement depends on who is in power. Money and influence have more to do with being declared innocent of a social and criminal crime than actual behavior. Offense is magnified by the eye of the beholder.
The increasingly arbitrary nature of the law and its application poisons the democratic well and leaves citizens unable to defend themselves for fear of being identified as social outcasts or criminals. Teachers in schools dare not physically touch a child, even to hug and comfort a crying one, in case they are accused of child abuse and rendered unemployable; in other schools, teachers are attacked, and blamed for not being able to control the situation.
The imposition of politically correct social engineering on a democracy, enforced by handful of vocal, self-appointed experts produces a society that quickly becomes neurotic, passive, and wondering which behavior might provoke punishment from the current powers that be. Identity Politics threatens our mutual welfare by dividing us into hundreds of special interest groups instead of uniting us in our nation’s common good.
When everyone is looking over their shoulder, no one knows when or where the arbitrary hand of government will descend. People start to police themselves, self-censor their words and thoughts, wondering if they're allowed to say or do something before they finally decide that it is better, probably, not even to try.
This brings us to the men and women born with Harry Benjamin Syndrome (HBS), sometimes referred to as Hirschfeld-Benjamin Syndrome (Cf. sidebar). Identity Politics would make us say we are transgendered.
We are not transgendered.
Our sex identity was set in the womb before birth.
Post-partum we bring our birth medical condition — the outward genitals — into congruence with our brains.
Our physical, internal identity never changes even if society interprets otherwise.
Identity Politics would have us join common cause with social and political liberals, including, in many cases socialist theorists, as the natural order of the world.
HBS men and women are not a monolithic geo-political block that has suckled uniformly from the teat of liberal philosophy. HBS cuts across all strata and politics. Some are left wing activists, but others are bedrock, if not reactionary, conservatives. Some would tear down the structures of our democracy; others believe and support the constitution and the American Republic. Some HBS Americans have even been known to vote republican.
Identity Politics would have HBS men and women embrace transgenders and crossdressers as their natural comrades in arms.
HBS men and women are not fellow travelers on the gender spectrum. By definition, we believe in the sex binary, men and women, and the social implications of the sexual pair bond and childbirth. Most of us wish to live normal lives in the routine everyday existence of marriage, family, and jobs. For the most part, we are not cultural revolutionaries.
Identity Politics would have HBS men and women join a great crusade to tear down the patriarchy and restructure both American law and landscape.
HBS men and women, all in all, are not political revolutionaries. We live our quiet lives, not in desperation, but working the system the best we can, slowly changing what needs to changed without disrupting the general congress of society.
We would not impose our beliefs on the society as a whole any more than we would let society — or Identity Politics — impose their politically correct beliefs upon us. HBS women and men are individuals and still free under our constitution to speak for ourselves and exercise our political franchise as we may see fit.
Ms. Lisa Jain Thompson is the Co-Founder & President of TS-Si, Inc. She also serves as a Contributing Editor and columnist for the TS-Si website. Ms. Thompson's signed articles contain her own opinions and do not necessarily convey an official position of TS-Si, its partners, or affiliates.
Lisa welcomes your comments. You can use the public form below or send private correspondence via her TS-Si Contact Page. We will not divulge any personal details or place you on a mailing list without your permission.
Philosophers say a great deal about what is absolutely necessary for science, and it is always, so far as one can see, rather naive, and probably wrong.
The Human Genome Project (HGP). The HGP identified all of the genes in the human genome and mapped their individual sequencing. Basic work began in 1990 and reached completion in 2005, sparking continuous refinements and new projects. Though the HGP is finished, data analyses will continue for many years.
A genome is all the DNA in an organism, including its genes and other materials. Genes carry information for making all the proteins required by all organisms. These proteins determine, among other things, how the organism looks, how well its body metabolizes food or fights infection, and to an extent even how it behaves.
DNA is made up of four similar chemicals (called bases and abbreviated A, T, C, and G) that are repeated millions or billions of times throughout a genome. The human genome, for example, has 3 billion pairs of bases. The particular order of As, Ts, Cs, and Gs is extremely important.
The order underlies all of life's diversity, even dictating whether an organism is human or another species such as yeast, rice, or fruit fly, all of which have their own genomes and are themselves the focus of genome projects. Because all organisms are related through similarities in DNA sequences, insights gained from nonhuman genomes often lead to new knowledge about human biology.
Video:An introduction to the ongoing Human Genome Project, courtesy of the US National Institutes of Health NIH) (18 May 2007). Time: 00:03:33. Creative Commons license: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs.
Magnus Hirschfeld (May 14, 1868 - May 14, 1935) was a German physician, pioneering sexologist and gay rights advocate. He was born in Kolberg, Germany (now Kolbrzeg, Poland), began a medical career and founded the 
Harry Benjamin, MD (January 12, 1885 – August 24, 1986), a German-born sexologist, is best known for pioneering work with transsexualism. Benjamin was born in Berlin, but as a young physician left Germany in 1913 to study tuberculosis in the United States. In 1915 he began his medical practice in New York City, specializing in hormonal research. 
Wingnuts on both sides of the aisle take offense at the slightest deviation from their private expectations of politically correct diversity. 
Ms. Lisa Jain Thompson
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