Thread by @hatpinwoman

I shook the cobwebs off Magnus Hirschfeld’s 1910 work “The Erotic Urge To Crossdress”. I will do several threads on this book as I read it.

Hirschfeld was one of the founding fathers of gender ideas we still see today. Honestly, make a cuppa and buckle up. It is already a LOT

He was into monism which means he thought there was essentially one sex&we’re all variations on the theme.He was a proponent of eugenics.His book opens with the assertion bio sex is not straightforward.He says he can prove it&this thread covers the first 13 case studies he offers

He seems to think breaking social role alters/confuses your sex (we hear that idea daily still). With modern eyes he, swiftly, manages to prove Autogynephilia has been with us since his day and long before it was named as such. All 13 of these are clearly AGP

He exhibited the binging/purging stages of cross dressing modern AGPs tend to&violated the boundaries of others. Firstly when, despite having ladies underwear of his own he tried to steal from his landlord’s daughter &second with his following
of women for HOURS.

Magnus sent him to a hotel in lady dress. 1 described the rustle of his silk slip& later wrote of his erotic enjoyment of getting undressed. It’s like time travel as this testimony would fit exactly into Lawrence’s “Men Trapped in Men’s Bodies” &is like narcissist erotic fiction

He, like many AGPs today, was a masochist. At one point he, apparently, also even ejaculated at simply the sight of himself as a woman. We are on case study one and all the bells are ringing the alarm.

Case study 2 stole his sisters skirts when young

When older, 2 took to piercing his ears over and over again because it gave him a sexual thrill. (Weirdly, ear piercing for arousal is a recurring theme in other case studies). He also, inadvertently, referenced the pseudo bisexuality Blanchard noted
decades later,

By saying he had no inclination towards men but when dressed as a woman wanted male attention. Others say similar, too. Case study 3 found his urges so overwhelming they interfered with married life. He also thought that to put on women’s clothes was to take on the role of women

There’a a lot of delusion from these men that they understand the psychology of women even as they approach what a woman is from the perspective of male desire. 3 knows he should be a woman because he likes housekeeping& “all kinds of work that belong in the domain of women”

3, like 2 and others in this book, wanted to be a succubus (female demon) during sex. He also had the deep desire to be pregnant.

4 put on his mother’s# damask dress&got his first erection. His wife, like for many modern AGPs, seemed just like a sexual prop during sex:

5 told a story where he seemed to suggest his inflatable breasts collapsed in horror when another woman (thinking he was a woman) asked if he wanted to try on her fancy underwear. I suspect there might be invention here. Instead, he helped her out of her clothes and into the lace

This may be true given women frequently had other women help them with their toilette back in the day and he had duped her. He pounced on her while she stood there barely dressed, pulling her onto the carpet,&she had to fight him off. She was horrified& afraid.

She also realised he was secretly a man. He said she later invited him back for dinner having felt she had misjudged him: an awkward evening that ended with him tripping and ripping his dress, her laughing,then sewing it for him.

Id bet you 5 shillings a lot of his testimony is just performing a masochism fetish because in his next story he is trying on a dress and his “air cushions” fall out and she laughs at him again. He then says they had a sexual affair which he details
He also said she shot at him.

Later, at a female employment agency he joined (!) he claimed a woman asked him if he might like to be a wet nurse because of his excellent breasts. Like hell she did. For one, you have to have had a baby in order to be a wet nurse and for two, stop it.

He then met his wife while dressed as a woman and married her without her knowing that he was the same person as her “lady friend”. This is like a Spanish soap opera. Case 6 talked about how much easier it was to masturbate in women’s clothes. AGP all the way down.

As well as wearing his mother’s clothes he physically attacked girls whose footwear he wanted and took it from them. His wife ran off with someone else as did other lovers because he admits he “tyrannised” women. Case 7 was sexually aroused by his sister from a young age

He fished her worn clothes out of the washing basket and ejaculated into them. He liked to put milk on his nipples to pretend to be a feeding mother for sexual gratification and was also sexually excited by cows. Certain words caused him to spontaneously ejaculate

He became a civil servant but was fired after he got in trouble with the law because he left obscene letters in various locations. Even addressing them to well known dairies which he liked to visit to see cows being milked. He made prostitutes pariticipate in his fantasies.

Case 8 could only enjoy sex if it was “like rape”. He liked the quote “go you to a woman,do not forget the whip!” &any suggestion of enthusiasm from a woman left him cold. Case 9 and 10 were agps with no exceptional details except 10 listed every item of women’s clothes he owned

Case 11 stole sisters clothes for arousal. Later in life,he dragged his wife into his paraphilia&when she told female friends&became outraged at his behaviour he had her put in an insane asylum for at least 3 years for her “paranoia” that he would sexually abuse the children

Case 12 was a compulsive masturbator, openly doing so at home and secretly at school. This book is ridiculous but so full of information. He blacked himself up (yes, in blackface) and was caught like that by his family, wearing his mother’s dressing gown and masturbating.

He is also an early documented example of a man who is into forced feminisation (quotes pictured). A long piece of his erotic fiction is included in this book and Magnus edited bits out because he just went on forever. 12, like AGPs today, wanted to be called “dumb” and a “slut”

Case 13 wrote to an ante natal magazine whinging long about how he, with the mental sex of a female, is an example that woman-men (men who are mentally women) should be raised as girls as children.

His first sexual experience was raping a woman.

Before this,he stole the clothes&identity of a woman&left the country under her name.He says he later became a nanny to children.He was obsessed with children,describing take care of one,particularly,in quite concerning ways, &he had erotic dreams about giving birth&breastfeeding

I cannot begin to convey how exactly these men behave like the men today threatening us, taking our spaces and thinking that to be female is some sexist,parodying,sexualised nonsense

More case studies tomorrow

How any of this “proves” bio sex is complicated, so far, who can say

Added clarification about monism of the sexes!