Yes, I’m so glad to see people talking about Erickson! He’s such a crucial part of our past. I’d like to add a few more details, both on Erickson and earlier transmasculine history. (Historical note: many of the primary sources in the next few paragraphs use the term “transvestite.” Please recognize that language has evolved significantly over the past 100 years, and what is today a pejorative term began as a word that trans people identified with and built community around).
Erickson was able to fund medical research of transition after inheriting his father’s highly successful lead-smelting company, Schuylkill Industries, in 1962. He began his transition immediately after receiving this inheritance, and reached out to Dr. Harry Benjamin in 1963 for medical care. In the following years, Erickson both directly funded Benjamin’s research and provided funding for research programs at major universities, including UCLA, Johns Hopkins, and Stanford, that would focus on the study of trans health. Furthermore, he provided critical funding for the National Transsexual Counseling Unit (NTCU), an organization that fielded letters from around the world, provided walk-in counseling, and performed on-the-street outreach work. His interest in the NTCU sparked from discussions with Dr. Benjamin, who was directly connected to the trans scene at NTCU’s San Francisco headquarters.
Dr. Benjamin actually studied trans healthcare under the man who coined much of the language and conceptualization of trans identity that we use today: Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld. In 1911(!), Hirschfeld defined der Transvestit (the transvestite) as any individual “faced with the strong drive to live in the clothing of that sex that does not belong to the relative build of the body.” He pulled the word from the latin words trans, meaning opposite, and vestis, meaning clothing. His recommended treatment for this “drive,” as he called it? To aid the patient in presenting as the gender they understood themselves as– a radical departure from existing “treatments” which aimed to shunt the trans patient back into their birth sex, Hirschfeld’s approach centered the happiness and comfort of his trans patients. As he describes it in The Transvestites:
In the apparel of their own sex the feel confined, bound up, oppressed; they percieve [the clothing] as something strange, something that does not fit them, does not belong to them; on the other hand, they cannot find enough words to describe the feeling of peace, security and exaltation, happiness and well-being that overcomes them when in the clothing of the other sex
Now, as a historian of trans life in the early 20th century, I do want to contest Making Gay History’s argument that the EEF was “the first organization in the world” to provide support for trans people in the form of newsletters and in-person consultations. While it was certainly one of the earliest organizations of this nature in the U.S., the trans community is much older– and geographically speaking, much broader– than this.
There were multiple trans-inclusive and even trans-centered magazines in Europe through the 1920s, including Die Freundin, Garconne, and Das Dritte Geschlecht, to name a few. Weimar-era Berlin alone had a thriving trans community: der Internationaler Transvestiten-Bund (International League of Transvestites) was a prominent trans-rights activist organization, and it was common to see ads for trans social clubs in the gay magazines of the time. See for example, the weekly meetings held at der Zauberflöte (the Magic Flute, a gay bar) for “women living as men,” or the Transvestiten-Gruppe (transvestite’s group) lead by the transmasculine lesbian bar-owner Lotte/Lothar Hahm).
As for more medically-focused support, Hirschfeld’s Institut für Sexualwissenschaft (Institute for the Study of Sexuality) provided jobs and therapy to trans people from 1919-1933, and conducted medical research that was foundational to developing the hormone therapy and surgical techniques used today. Unfortunately, large swaths of this research was lost when Hirschfeld’s institute was burned by the Nazis, primarily due to Hirschfeld himself being both a Jewish man and a staunch civil rights activist for both gay and trans communities.
I recognize that I’ve veered away from Erickson himself a bit, but I really want to showcase how far back the trans past stretches– even the pieces of history I’ve centered on today have focused on Western Europe in the 20th c, when the truth is that there is evidence of trans life stretching back thousands of years, across many other parts of the world (Southeast Asia comes to mind, as do the Cree and Ojibwe tribes of North America; honestly, anywhere you look, you’ll find trans people). I also send you one-thousand heart emojis for your specific focus on trans men, as too often I see our stories sidelined.
Die Freundin. April 9, 1930.
Hirschfeld, Magnus. Transvestites, trans. Michael Lombardi-Nash (New York: Prometheus Books, 1991): 124-125.
Stryker, Susan. Transgender History: The Roots of Today’s Revolution. (New York: Seal Press, 2017): 56, 63-64, 100-105. (note: in my opinion, this book serves largely as a history of white trans women in America. however, you can find some useful leads on trans men if you’re willing to dig).
Recommended reading for more transmasculine history:
Hirschfeld, Magnus. The Sexual History of the World War. trans. Andreas Gaspar et al. (New York: Falstaff Press, 1937). See chapter 6.
Skidmore, Emily. True Sex: The Lives of Trans Men at the End of the 20th Century. (New York: NYU Press, 2017).
Smith, Brice. Lou Sullivan: Daring to Be a Man Among Men. (Oakland: Transgress Press, 2018).
Sullivan, Louis. From Female to Male: The Life of Jack Bee Garland. (New York: Alyson Books, 1990)
