Benjamin, Harry

Harry Benjamin (1885–1986), German American endocrinologist and author of The Transsexual Phenomenon (1966), is often remembered as the “father of transsexualism.” He was a strong advocate for medically treating transsexual people at a time when accepted expert opinion was that being trans was a mental illness that should not be accommodated in any way.

Benjamin, born in Berlin, studied tuberculosis for his medical degree, which he received in 1912, cum laude. While a student, Benjamin met Magnus Hirschfeld, one of the leading sexologists of the early 20th century, who became a strong influence on Benjamin. Along with a senior police officer, Hirschfeld took Benjamin on tours through bars populated by people then known as homosexuals and transvestites. Benjamin also spent much time at Hirschfeld’s Institute for Sex Research and admired Hirschfeld’s bold advocacy on behalf of sexual and gender minorities. Another influence on Benjamin was Eugen Steinach, who became famous for his experiments demonstrating the effects of sex hormones in animals and for the “Steinach operation,” which was reputed to rejuvenate elderly men by increasing testosterone production. Other lesser influences included Sigmund Freud, Albert Moll, Albert Ellis, and Margaret Sanger. However, it was Benjamin’s meeting with Alfred Kinsey that propelled him into his work with trans people.

Benjamin relocated to New York City when complications related to the outbreak of World War I prevented him from returning to Germany after a trip abroad. He opened an endocrinology and geriatrics practice in New York, largely doing Steinach operations, and opened a second office in San Francisco. Benjamin met Kinsey when they stayed at the same hotel in San Francisco while Kinsey conducted interviews for his famous sexuality studies. Kinsey asked Benjamin to consult on a case of a young man who wanted to become a girl and whose mother supported this desire. Benjamin treated the patient with estrogen, observed that it had a “calming effect,” and recognized that the condition was something other than crossdressing. This marked a turning point in Benjamin’s career.

Over the next 30 years, Benjamin’s practice included over 1,500 people with experiences that would now be known as gender incongruence or gender dysphoria. At over 60 years of age, Benjamin rapidly became the world’s leading expert on people who wished to change their sex, lecturing and publishing widely on the topic for both professionals and the public. Contrary to accepted professional opinion of the day, Benjamin considered transsexualism to be a biological condition, not a mental illness, and actively advocated for acceptance and accommodation of trans people and their transition requests. Furthermore, he argued that psychological treatments were more often damaging than helpful.

Far ahead of his time, he wrote in a 1953 paper in the International Journal of Sexology, “It would frequently be wiser and more constructive to ‘treat’ society, educationally, so that logic, understanding, and compassion might prevail” (p. 14). Additionally, he was ahead of his time in his view that there were multiple kinds of sex—chromosomal sex, anatomical sex, legal sex, endocrine sex, germinal sex, psychological sex, and social sex—and that all humans were a mixture of male and female. Contrary to contemporary thinking, Benjamin did not see hormone treatments or what he called “conversion” operations as changing a person’s sex. Rather, he believed that such treatments made people into “neuters” and were necessary for the peace that they brought. True to his times, he encouraged people who transitioned to be as inconspicuously gender conforming as possible.

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