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Today is the anniversary of the Nazi book burnings, when the entire research library at Hirschfeld’s Institute of Sexology was publicly burned. Almost all scientific research into trans lives went kaput. People who think we appeared yesterday: there’s a reason you think that.
I have Extremely Mixed feelings about science wrt trans lives and the ongoing legacy and consequences of the (psycho)(medical) model, but as a general rule when it comes to picking which side might be less murderous for minorities you pick the one who aren’t _literal Nazis_
But interesting random factoid: they didn’t kill off that European research. Manuscripts don’t burn. See, Hirschfeld’s work had attracted this young German-American endocrinologist - who studied under him and later organised the US chunk of his world tour - named Harry Benjamin..
If it makes you feel any better they mostly thought we were gay dudes with mommy issues and Benjamin’s other major line of work was grafting slices of monkey testicle into old people to grant them immortality. So, you know. We weren’t set THAT far back?
I accidentally picked the perfect time to start this work on the early history of medicalisation, I have alll the trivia. Benjamin grafted monkey testicles into people! He only ended up in America because he showed up to pitch quack tuberculosis cures and lost his return ticket!
Just to clarify for anyone reading: reverse-jenga’ing the world’s most disgusting pepperoni to your testicles will not, in fact, make you immortal, mostly it will make you That Guy Who Paid Some Dude To Glue Monkey Balls To His Sack
Apparently the other downside of doing this research is that cosmic irony shows me how many other trans people are falling back on psychomedical discourse to legitimise themselves which: this is not an inconsequential thing to do! I will send you some Dean Spade if you ask!
(this is not hyperbole, I fucking love redistributing my whole library of trans-related papers and book PDFs to anyone who asks, it's our lives not bloody Elsevier's, hmu)
The Purest Academic Piracy Story: a few days ago I was interviewing someone for this study on non-binary experiences of infrastructure and asked their coming out to self narrative and the...answer was they'd received a copy of a copy of a copy of my "traaaans .zip" library dump❤️
Fact of the matter is access to knowledge is important for people who don't have the words to articulate their out-of-placedness. It's why I send that out. It's why I do guest lectures for classes with incredibly shitty professors. It's us or tumblr truscum.
