forgotten history of the first Trans Clinic #46
S3 Podcast
English - May 20, 2021 23:00 - 20 minutes - 18.6 MBPersonal Journals Society & Culture Homepage Download Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
The first gender affirmation surgeries took place in 1920s, at a facility which employed transgender technicians and nurses, and which was headed by a gay Jewish man. The forgotten history of the institute, and its fall to Nazis bent on the euthanasia of homosexuals and transgender people, offers us both hope—and a cautionary tale—in the face of oppressive anti-trans legislation in the United States.
This story begins late one night in Berlin, on the cusp of the 20th century. Magnus Hirschfeld, a young doctor recently finished with his military service, found a German soldier on his doorstep. Distraught and agitated, the young man had come to confess himself an urning, a word used in Germany to refer to homosexual men. It explained the cover of darkness; to speak of such things was dangerous business. 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 imprisoned.
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