Magnus Hirschfeld: Right and Wrong

Magnus Hirschfeld was a gay, Jewish, transvestite sexologist with a foot fetish. The 1930s media dubbed him "the Einstein of Sex". There's even a Germany movie with that title -- The Einstein of Sex -- which shows Hirschfeld as a gay hero.

The movie (yes, I've watched it) quotes Hirschfeld as quipping that perhaps it would be more proper to call Einstein the Hirschfeld of mathematics.

While he was in the middle of a world lecture tour in 1933, the Nazis burned most of the books housed in Hirschfeld's Institute for Sexual Science. In 1934, the Nazis took away his German citizenship. Hirschfeld is considered one of the first major fighters for gay rights in modern times.

What I'm trying to say is Magnus Hirschfeld is completely awesome.

Like most things, I came across him completely at random. I'd never heard of him before. Why don't people tell me about these things? Why am I forced, for example, to discover Serge "monkey testicles" Voronoff all by myself? Why aren't we all pouring through history books, looking for these amazing people, worshipping them as gods?

I recently bought a copy of Hirschfeld's book, "Sexual Anomalies and Perversions". The first few chapters were fairly dull, as they described normal sexual development. There were no case studies, of course. Why would we need case studies to describe normal people?

Then the book started describing the perverts. Things got much more enjoyable. The case studies alone made me giddy.

- A man whose testicles never descended, but give off enough hormones to give him some wispy facial hair. He can get an erection, but not orgasm.

- A hermaphrodite presenting primarily male genitalia, who menstruates through his penis.

- A hermaphrodite presenting with primarily female genitalia, who produces a white fluid upon orgasm. When checked, it's viable sperm. This "woman" could get another woman pregnant.

Did you know labia are basically testicle sacks, minus the testicles? In some hermaphrodites, you can feel under developed testicles inside the labia. Isn't that great? Aren't you thrilled I told you this?

I am slowly working my way through the book, savouring it. There's so much there, and I want to experience all of it.

I've also purchased a copy of "Sexual History of the World War". One chapter has already piqued my curiosity -- "sex in the trenches". It had never occurred to me such things would happen. They never cover that sort of thing in old war movies.

When I hit page 376 of "Sexual Anomalies and Perversions", I came across the following passage. It shocked me. All historical heroes have their flaws. Finding them is the risk you take when you read old books. Of course, the sensibilities of today are not the sensibilities of yesterday. The book was originally published in 1938. The edition I am reading is a reprint from 1966.

All the same, I think it's worth reproducing on the Internet, if only to show where we once were.

Here's the passage, written by Magnus Hirschfeld.

* * *

Twenty-five years of practice in forensic medicine has convinced me that no allegation deserves to be treated with greater suspicion than that frequently made by girls, including pregnant girls, that they have been violated or raped. Even the statement that they have been deprived of the power of resistance or rendered helpless by seduction must always be received with a certain amount of caution.

Genuine experts on the subject are all agreed that it is extraordinarily difficult, if not impossible, to deflorate a woman or make her pregnant by the employment of sheer physical force, except where the woman's arms and legs are held by others or, as frequently happened during the First World War, she is tied down on a piece of furniture or the like.

The imagination is frequently inclined to a gruesome elaboration of such processes and to convert comparatively mild attacks into brutality. In the field of sex, rumour is particularly apt to exaggerate and upon investigation one is surprised to find what detailed and circumstantial stories develop out of some trifling incident.

The allegations of young girls that they have been surprised and violated in their sleep are also rarely credible, just like the allegations of young men, which are by no means less frequent, that someone has carried out coitus in anum on them while they slept and they only awoke as ejaculatio in recto occurred.

During the First World War courts martial submitted to me several cases in which soldiers resolutely stuck to their allegations that they were fast asleep. Although in reality the process was in most cases preceded by alcoholic excess on the part of the complainant, there was no question of unconsciousness.

The performance of anal intercourse always depends on a certain degree of consent on the part of the passive party. More successful than physical coercion is psychological coercion, such as -- principally -- the weakening or elimination of the sexual will by means of hypnosis, suggestion, threats, stupefaction, and narcosis with chloroform.

[three pages later, the book quotes "State Attorney Wulffen (whoever that is) as saying the following...]

The man expects even from the so-called 'respectable girl' a certain passive resistance to his urgent love-making. Women themselves are imbued with the instinctive feeling that they must not surrender too easily, and that resistence intensifies the man's sexual excitement. Thus a man will not consider a little sparring on the part of a woman as serious resistance in the sense of criminal law.

Everything depends on whether the woman has made seriousness of her resistance sufficiently clear, though even then then this fact does not necessarily prove rape.

There are girls who, although they wish to be conquered, do not want this to happen without serious physical resistance. They act in this way partly from vanity and partly from fear of pregnancy, but, at all events they want a test of masculine strength. Hence, in many cases the man has to overcome a resistance which, though considerable, is not seriously meant.

But if the girl concerned is asked before the court whether she has resisted seriously she may answer in the affirmative, either from shame or because she lacks a knowledge of her own unconscious motives, and an unjust sentence for rape may result. In such cases, therefore, a most careful sifting of evidence is essential.

* * *

End of quoted passage. Bizarre. Strange. And downright fucked up.