Gender Clinics Outside the United States

Outside the United States, efforts to medically alter sex originated with surgical experiments on animals in the early 1900s. Some individuals (then labeled “inverts”) were at that time requesting and receiving surgeries for removal of testicles, breasts, or uteri. The Institute of Sexual Science in Berlin developed and offered what was then called gender reassignment surgery (GRS) up until May 1933, when it was looted by the National Socialist Party police and Nazi student groups. There are a few reports of continuing surgeries in Europe (namely, Norway and Denmark) during World War II, but more commonly, gender-diverse persons were prosecuted and subjected to experimentation under Nazi rule. After the war, clinics outside Germany moved to prominence in providing GRS, and developments in the use of ...