1933 May Legal Medical The Nazis closed down the Institute fur Sexualwissenschaft and destroyed Hirschfeld’s writings while he was out of the country on a speaking tour, which began in 1931. He never returned. The Hamburg police were directed to send transvestites to concentration camps. Some of the more famous photos of Nazi’s burning books are of those from Hirschfeld’s institute. It is assumed that Dora Richter either died in the raid or subsequently in a concentration camp. This lengthy Twitter thread details the fate of a number of trans people under the Nazis. This article further details the fate of trans people in Nazi Germany. Eli Erlick further chronicles Trans Holocaust History with colorized photographs and records of trans people killed or otherwise persecuted by the Nazis.
1934: After the Hirschfeld Institute
1930s Culture - Jazz musician and bandleader Billy Tipton socially transitions and is seen as male through the rest of his life. He was outed upon his death in 1989.
1935 Medical Enrest Lacquer isolated testosterone from bull testes in Amsterdam. In the same year testosterone was chemically synthesized independently by Adolf Butenandt in Göttingen and Leopold Ruzicka in Basel. In the 1920s, prior attempts at androgenic hormone therapy involved transplanted animal testicles or less refined extracts from testicles.
1938 Legal - Nazi medical journals recommend the “phenomena of transvestism” be eliminated from public life, endorsing the continued practice of sending trans people to the concentration camps.
1938 Medical Dr. Michael Dillon begins testosterone hormone therapy.
1938-1939 Medical Diethyl-stilbestrol, a synthetic estrogen, is synthesized and produced in pill form.
Circa. 1939-1940s: Medical Cosmetic companies began incorporating estrogens into topical creams for various applications (eg: facial beauty, breast enhancement) for women.
1941 Medical Premarin pill manufacturing begins, its name coming from the estrogen being harvested from pregnant horses’ urine. It and diethyl-stilbestrol begin to be used for estrogen replacement therapy in cisgender women.
1942 Culture U.S. Army soldiers performed in drag for other troops in regular soldier shows with manuals known as Blueprint Specials for how to put them together. This was done throughout the war as well as during World War I.
1945 Legal Lucy Hicks Anderson was a Black trans woman who, having preferred dresses as a child, was recommended to be raised as a girl by her family doctor. Her second marriage, to Reuben Anderson in 1944 was voided by the courts in 1945 after an investigation of a VD outbreak was traced to her establishment, and she was given jail time for perjury and fraud, exiled from Oxnard, and legally constrained from wearing women’s clothing until her death in Los Angeles in 1954. At her trial she proclaimed “I defy any doctor in the world to prove that I am not a woman. I have lived, dressed, and acted just what I am—a woman.” Her story was featured in the 2020 HBO Max documentary mini-series Equal.
1945-1949 Medical Dr. Michael Dillon aka Lobzang Jivaha, becomes the first trans male to complete a phalloplasty in England. He had been taking testosterone since 1938 and had top surgery in 1942. In 1950 he secretly performed an orchiectomy on Roberta Cowell, giving her the legal cover to claim she was intersex in order for her to become the first trans woman in Britain to have vaginoplasty in 1951.
1948 Medical Alfred Kinsey publishes Sexual Behavior in the Human Male which includes his famous zero to six scale of sexual attraction. This scale was later used as a model for Harry Benjamin’s scale for classifying trans people.
1948 Medical Louise Lawrence, a trans woman, began working with Kinsey and aids in his research on transvestism and transsexuals. She had an extensive national network of social contacts among the trans community which she drew upon both to educate Kinsey and later to establish her periodical, Transvestia. Lawrence also put Harry Benjamin in contact with those in her network who were seeking medical transition. She avoided such measures herself, having transitioned socially and kept the label “transvestite” even after “transsexual” became a more widely known term.
1949 Medical Kinsey asked Harry Benjamin to consult with him about Sally Barry aka “Val”, an AMAB 22 year-old “who wants to be a girl”, leading Benjamin to believe there needs to be a distinction made between transvestites (cisgender crossdressers) and transgender people. Benjamin prescribed her hormone therapy, x-ray depilation on her face, and recommended going to Germany for surgeries. Barry had lived as a girl throughout elementary school and when her high school opposed it she stopped attending.
1949 Medical David Oliver Cauldwell defines “transsexual” in its contemporary meaning as distinct from intersex people and recommends no surgical interventions for non-intersex people. He published this in an essay titled Psychopathia Transsexualis echoing Krafft-Ebbing’s book title. Louise Lawrence introduced Harry Benjamin to the term and to Cauldwell’s work after which Benjamin also adopted the term. Cauldwell was also the Q&A editor for Sexology magazine.
Circa. 1948-1950:Medical Christian Hamburger in Denmark and Harry Benjamin in the U.S. began using hormone therapy as a regular part of their treatment for transgender individuals. Benjamin had been doing so as early as 1928 occasionally for patients such as Otto Spengler. Hamburger later became Christine Jorgenson’s surgeon.