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. There is no law against someone making you feel uncomfortable, no constitutional right to life free from discomfort, no overriding declaration asserting life, liberty, and deliverance from unpleasant annoyances like this column.
The First Amendment to the United States Constitution provides for Freedom of Expression not Freedom from Expression. [C1]
I speak, you speak, he, she, and it speak. We all speak, even they speak, them of all people. Damn communist white patriarchal radical feminist right wing leftist Trotskyite cross-dressing gender frigging black separatist honky racist Islamic terrorist academic republican overlord democratic socialist libertarian nihilistic pseudo revolutionary the new boss is the same as the old boss spoiled self-centered egotistical power hungry politicized social engineering wingnut middle of the road it’s only a matter of time until they act on their thoughts self-appointed moral police.
We at TS-Si get numerous complaints — some considered and well written, some emotional rants — that we don’t represent some particular faction, some distinct and meticulous point of view, some narrow banded section of political philosophy that purports to be the real truth (unlike all that other crap out there). We are charged with a whole list of offenses that says we are:
Separatists (ever-popular with the transgendered set and cross-dressers)
Elitists (usually aimed at us by spoiled white guilt-ridden middle class products of a minimalist post-modern education, the ones who always want to enforce their politically correct rules on the rest of us)
Fascists and totalitarians (a favorite of the left)
Immoral sexual perverts (the Judaic-Islamic-Christian Coalition)
Irrelevant (by those who dismiss us out of hand)
Mentally unstable for pursuing Sex Reassignment Surgery — SRS (usually comes from cross-dressers and transvestites who need to believe that they are the normal ones)
Autogynephilic (by anesthesiologists and social psychologists who are angry that their peers discredited their “research” findings as misleading at best, unsupportable by the data they collected, and their science as just plain wrong and ill-advised — still, a girl needs a career, I guess, even if she might suffer from autogynephelia herself). [C2]
You can look through the articles on this site — by us, by others — and the thousands of scientific research papers — you will not find one instance where we are separatists. [C3] You will, however, find us stating that being born with Harry Benjamin Syndrome (HBS, aka transsexuality) is different from being transgendered. One is about changing your genitalia, the other, your social role and presentation.
They’re not the same thing at all. It is misleading and deceitful to knowingly confuse sex and gender presentation, while pretending that HBS is just a another, more extreme form of transgenderism. No matter what the political gain might be for the transgendered, HBS men and women are harmed by a political philosophy that tells them that the gender costume is everything and the SRS operation is an optional life style choice that can be avoided if only the confused HBS pre-op would learn to dress properly. Fashion becomes all and medical treatment unnecessary alteration that need not be covered by medical insurance until male cross-dressers can enter public women’s restrooms indiscriminately.
Likewise, we are not elitist when we focus on the needs of HBS men and women. We are not elitist when we work to get medical treatment and legal protection for those born with HBS while they are under a doctor’s care and transitioning. We are not elitists when we put the science out there and let the research and the papers speak for themselves. We are not a full spectrum, one across the world political movement. We are not the Workers Party or Transgender Anonymous. We are men and women born with HBS working to better the lives of other HBS men and women.
We force no one to be born with HBS just as we do not deny any transgendered person their rights. But we oppose anyone and everyone — political parties, the medical establishment, or left or right wing pressure groups — who would bring harm to those born with HBS, whether that harm comes from religious beliefs, political philosophies or expediency, personal opinion masquerading as science, or the active denial of proper medical treatment to HBS men and women.
We are called fascists and totalitarians because we dare to disagree with those who are transgendered, the cross-dressers, and fetish transvestites who would make us one big family, who infiltrate HBS email lists and support groups and attempt to change their focus to transgendered concerns and discussions of passing, who try to dominate public conversation by talking over HBS men and women and refocusing the public discussion on the need of anatomically male transgenders to use the ladies’ room when they are out for a night on the town. As we will not let them speak unquestioned and unopposed, so we are label fascist totalitarians as they attempt to silence our voices.
If your religion or moral beliefs requires you to call HBS women and men sexual perverts, that is your personal problem. This is America, not a religious state under the Sharia or run by the whim of the popular televangelist of the moment, and the science, the biology, and the medicine are on our side. You can believe you are at the center of the universe, that the ocean is flat and the sun revolves around the world, but the earth still moves despite your godly opinions.
To those who might believe us irrelevant, why do you complain so loudly? Why do you scream and yell and try to shout us down and shut us out of the public forum?
Why do you assault us with denials of service or attacks from porn sites and their ilk? What are you afraid of?
We will not surrender. We will not go away.
For if we are to start looking for who is mentally unstable, we need not look any farther than emotional states you attempt to project on us.
We are not the ones who feel so guilty about our desires that we periodically trash our clothes then rebuy them and start all over again.
We are not the ones who must wear specific costumes to excite us sexually so that we can get ourselves off in the safety of our bedrooms.
We are not the ones who greatest thrill is to sneak into a women’s restroom and get back out without being noticed.
Don’t project your own psychosexual insecurities on those of us born with HBS – keep them in your own closet along with everything else.
And now finally, last and least, we do not suffer from autogynephelia, the Stepford child of bad science and ego tripping psycho-babbling social shrinks more interested in being media stars than being correct. Peer-review in the reputable medical and scientific journal discredited the original autogynephelia research for the misuse and misinterpretation of subject data, promulgation of conclusions that were not supported by the data, and willful departure from accepted scientific methods and standards.
Bottom line: autogynephelia does not have enough supporting data to even be considered a testable theory, being, at the moment, merely a collection of unsupported personal opinion and invective that has little, if anything, to do with HBS.
But if you want to believe that transgenders, transvestites, or cross-dressers suffer from HBS (or if you think you do yourself), go right ahead. Just don’t include HBS men and women in your little colonial empire building.
If I’ve rattled your tree or shaken your particular personal universe and removed some of that arrogant smugness from that face, I’ve done my job and it’s time to let the science speak for itself once again. Let the games begin.
[C1] Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
[C2] Autogynephilia is an unscientific gender social belief that people previously diagnosed as having Harry Benjamin Syndrome (transsexuality) are in reality just men who are sexually aroused and attracted to the idea of themselves as women. This discredited concept has been peer reviewed and found to be unsupported by any scientific data. In any event, autogynephilia fails to offer an explanation for people born HBS who want to become men (Female to Male HBS).
[C3] Separatist, noun. (1) One who secedes or advocates separation, especially from an established church; a sectarian or separationist. (2) One who advocates disjunction of a group from a larger group or political unit: Basque separatists. (3) One who advocates cultural, ethnic, or racial separation. Source: American Heritage Dictionary.
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.
Richard Smith, Editor-in-Chief, introduces Cases Journal. Dr. Smith urges all physicians to submit their case reports to the new open access Cases Journal, which publishes case reports from any area of healthcare.
Cases Journal will publish any case report that is understandable, ethical, authentic, and includes all essential information. A more selective companion, the Journal of Medical Case Reports, publishes original and interesting case reports that contribute significantly to medical knowledge. Article submissions are subject to potential publication by either journal. All reports will be entered in a common and open access database.
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. 
Ms. Lisa Jain Thompson
Subscribe to this comment's feed
Show/Hide comments
Show/Hide comment form
Copyright © 2005-2008 TS-Si, Inc. • Except where noted, this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 2.5 License. • Some rights reserved. • TS-Si is a nonprofit organization 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.