Institute for Sexology

[EndtheMadnessNow]

Given my confusion on this whole subject matter, I wasn't sure which forum best fit, so landed here.

Almost everyone in the US has seen photos at some point of Nazi book burnings, burnt into our national psyche as the quintessential expression of fascist tyranny. But, do you know what books they were burning, beyond the fact that many of the books authors were Jewish, pacifists and other books not considered sufficiently fascist.?? I'm sure some of you do know, but I'll admit I did not. It seems so much of our war/genociding/isolation/ideology history, including the occult side, and aside from religion & skin color is about sexual orientation. That seems so crazy to me. Now we're in an era where it's becoming harder & harder to believe anyone or almost anything from mass media to independent talking heads to so-called academia experts to even the quiet corners of the Internet that are one-sided. I'm not sure what to call it, but there has been a paradigm shift of mindset inversion going on due to forgotten history? Perhaps the only way to try and make sense of it is to look back in history.

Not that long ago, actually, there was...



This I did not know...

The books in question are from the archives of the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft (“Institute for Sexology/Sexual Science”) in Berlin, a pioneering center for research into gay and trans experiences, gender-affirming treatment including surgeries & early advocacy for gay/trans rights.

For some context, the Institute was a private research organization, founded by Magnus Hirschfeld in Berlin in July 1919. Its research centered around the study of sexology and what we would today call “LGBTQIA+ rights”. The origins of the Institute are rooted in the more liberal climate of the Weimar Republic, prior to the rise of the Third Reich’s censorship of anything not deemed “proper” for the empire. During the first years of the Institute, its archive was home to thousands of academic and artistic works, as well as clinical consultations for individuals who could not otherwise have access to healthcare due to their identity.

...
West Germany determined under Paragraph 175 (the sweeping criminal regulation on homosexual relations that existed from 1871 to 1994) that the seizure of property by the Nazi party was legal, denying the community any sort of restitution after the fact (Steakley 1975).
...
Resources like the Institut are targeted to this day. Particularly in today’s political climate, when the word “Transgender” can be banned from the CDC’s official documents by the Trump Administration (Sun, Eilperin 2017), censorship and gender are in constant struggle. Before this, even, the Reagan Administration did something similar with the AIDS crisis (Barnes 1989), leading many to die or be ostracized. Just this past month, there has been a movement against Mermaids Gender, a nonprofit organization designed to help trans people in the UK. Not only is the information about transness censored, the resources we desperately need are also assailed. Don’t even get me started on the trans military ban.

There are big ways and little ways to disrupt information about trans people. We can’t always fix them, but we can do our best to try to chip away at them. It’s why I started Trans Narrative in the first place: people–trans and cis alike–need to hear trans voices. We need to learn our histories so we can protect ourselves better in the future. We need to make sure that what the Nazi Party wanted–the erasure of trans people, for one–doesn’t succeed.

So if you’re cis, I wish you take all of this to heart. I hope you go off and research more about the Institut and about Paragraph 175, and about so much more. Trans people have been around for a while, and we’re not going anywhere. What can you do to help us?

Trans Narrative, L. A. Lanquist blog

Hirschfeld advocated for the revision of Paragraph 175.

The story of its downfall bears parallels to events today. Its founder, the physician Magnus Hirschfeld, became a favorite target of the Nazi Party from the early 1920s and was physically assaulted on many occasions including an attack in Munich in 1920 when he was badly injured.

The far-right newspaper Deutschnationale Jugendzeitung (German national youth newspaper) said it was “regrettable” he hadn’t died. He was later shot at in Vienna. By 1929 he found it nearly impossible to appear in public anymore due to Nazi targeting. He was forced into exile in France, where he died of a heart attack in 1935 at age 67.

Deutsche Studentenschaft (German student body), controlled by Nazis, finally arrived to ransack and loot the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft on May 6, 1933. They brought a brass band to accompany them as they stormed the building and hauled out tens of thousands of documents related...



...to trans, gay and intersex experience, new conceptions of gender and sexuality, contraception, women’s liberation and more. 4 days later the contents of the archives were hauled out & burned publicly on the Opernplatz while Joseph Goebbels gave a speech to a crowd of 40,000.

The "un-German Spirit" of the institute was denounced in the press and its advocacy of sexual reform and contraception was deemed a threat to the German (“Aryan”) birth rate.

100 years ago Dora Richter, a trans woman who had been the first person in the world to undergo a particular gender-affirming surgery, was either killed during the attack on the institute or was arrested and died in custody—we don’t know which. The institute’s extensive list of names and addresses was also seized by the Nazis, and we don’t know how many of those named died in the concentration camps on this evidence.

The bigotry and hatred we face today is not new; nor are trans and nonbinary people, who have existed throughout history and will always exist. Calls for violence against trans people are reaching the mainstream, and again doctors and their trans patients are being targeted and vilified, held up by reactionaries as examples of the decadence and perversion of modernity and feminism, a threat to the family, etc., and hundreds of laws are proposed nationwide targeting trans children out of sheer cruelty and bloodlust. Well, I guess very recently some of the laws are changing, but not the twisted rhetoric & violent behavior.

Some pundits as well as some cisgender people say/fear we are in the early days of a genocide and it is unknown know how many cis people will stand up for the transgender side. So now I know it was part of our history that was being burned which over the decades has fueled the complex, twisted mess we find ourselves in today. Who do you identify with in these photographs: the people in the books, or the people burning them?

Books were also burned in occupied territories during the war. The burnings took place barely a month after the German Student Union released its Twelve Theses declaration in April 1933, posted at campuses across Germany. Unfortunately, you'll recognize some of the language. Guess I've sorta started red-pillin myself, but have barely scratched the surface.

It would help if all this gender pronoun insanity was limited to 2 or 3 that are majority accepted and not all the nonsense of 'I identify as XYZ' propaganda. I mean do these trans people pushing this want us straight people to hate them? I'm sure there is nefarious agenda behind it being pushed by few, but the confusion just makes it all the more worse, for both sides, all sides.

Other Sources:

The first Institute for Sexual Science (1919-1933)

Magnus Hirschfeld (Holocaust Encyclopedia)

Wiki

[Freija]

I'll be back later this evening to comment.

[SimeonJ]

I did it for the NWO.

[Freija]

The one thing I think this illustrates is that the scientific and medical study of trans and gender variant people is not some new invention of modern society nor are the culture wars and societal ignorance surrounding this subject. As noted, trans, gender non-confirming and homosexual people have existed throughout history and across every culture on the planet and are likely to continue doing so for eternity in spite of efforts of elimination and/or “genocide”.

FYI, the fascists are at it again. 1600 books have been banned in 5000 schools over the last year. 41% of them were targeted due to LGBT content. 370 anti-LGBT bills were filed in 2022, with many of them passing into law. The overwhelming majority of them targeted trans youth. Having the actual lived experiences of a trans child and teen, this concerns me greatly.

I’m sure everyone here already knows my story but briefly for those that don’t, I was determined to be male at birth but somehow knew from my earliest memories that this was a mistake, that I was not meant to be a boy and that I understood myself to be a girl in spite of the obvious contradictions. I never pretended to be anything other than what I knew myself to be which made my childhood extremely tumultuous to say the least. Even starting in kindergarten, schools didn’t want me, kids hated me and I was bullied, abused, ostracized and outcast for being different but I didn’t care because I knew to my very core what I was supposed to be and who I was. I was one stubborn and determined little shit, no doubt.

Switching to the TL;DR version, from a place of androgyny I began openly living as a girl in 1970 at 15 with my parents fully supportive because nothing else made any sense but due to the times, I still had to be that boy who looked and acted like a girl in order to stay in school which drove me into some pretty dark places.

I had been schlepped around to psychiatrists and psychologists from the time I was 10 years old but it wasn’t until I was 17 (1972) that one was found who could explain to me and my folks what the hell was going on or why I was born male but grew up to be a girl which sounds like the dumbest thing ever. I was diagnosed with “primary transsexualism”. (This was several years before the sketchy concept and terminology of “gender dysphoria” was developed.) I began taking cross-sex hormones (estrogen) before my senior year of high school and managed to graduate with obvious breast growth and long blonde hair down to my waist. Talk about being a freak or maybe I’ve just always been a Rogue? 

After that I was never know as a boy again. I have never been a man and have quietly lived and worked the entirety of my adult life as the person I am today and taking a 6-week medical leave from work, I had sex reassignment surgery in 1977. It’s a long story I’ve shared before but at 19 I was blessed with the care of a newborn that is now 48 that I have always been mom to and I have been married to and divorced from a great guy that’s still a part of my life so all in all and for the most part, my life has been pretty normal.

This board is the only place I am “out” or talk about my transsexual history and I do so for the purpose of helping others have a better understanding of the phenomenon. A few of my close friends know and of course what little family I have does but I am otherwise what they call “stealth”.  I am not actively part of the trans or LGBxyz community although I monitor what goes on there because it has become such a hot button topic and I want to stay abreast of the issues even if I am not directly affected but I will tell you that the trans thing being used as a political tool full of outright lies and misinformation has me concerned for others that have to deal with these things in today’s climate.

Because of my old school views, I am not welcome in today’s modern transgender whatever it is and in fact, think much of what is being pushed by activists is near if not pure bullshit. Even the popularization of word transgender irks me as it is so nebulous and all encompassing that it doesn’t mean anything or maybe it means everything? If I can’t figure it out or tell what is what, it is no wonder that cisgender heterosexuals can’t either.

It would help if all this gender pronoun insanity was limited to 2 or 3 that are majority accepted and not all the nonsense of 'I identify as XYZ' propaganda. I mean do these trans people pushing this want us straight people to hate them? I'm sure there is nefarious agenda behind it being pushed by few, but the confusion just makes it all the more worse, for both sides, all sides.

I don’t disagree about the pronoun thing but I have to ask, have you ever actually encountered someone wanting to use some made up pronoun or is this just something you have read about on the internet? I haven’t. I don’t have a problem with they/them but when venturing into the realm of neo-pronouns, I am probably as reluctant and confused by it all as you are but if pronouns and pushy activists are the biggest complaint you have against trans and gender divergent people, I can live with that.

However, if you’ve been sucked into the save-the-children anti-trans hysteria, believe kids are being sex changed and “mutilated” by affirming care protocols and that all LGBTx people are groomers and pedophiles because Matt Walsh, Ben Shapiro or Libs of TicToc, FOX News etc. says so, then we need to have a more thorough discussion.

[EndtheMadnessNow]

I don’t disagree about the pronoun thing but I have to ask, have you ever actually encountered someone wanting to use some made up pronoun or is this just something you have read about on the internet? I haven’t. I don’t have a problem with they/them but when venturing into the realm of neo-pronouns, I am probably as reluctant and confused by it all as you are but if pronouns and pushy activists are the biggest complaint you have against trans and gender divergent people, I can live with that.

However, if you’ve been sucked into the save-the-children anti-trans hysteria, believe kids are being sex changed and “mutilated” by affirming care protocols and that all LGBTx people are groomers and pedophiles because Matt Walsh, Ben Shapiro or Libs of TicToc, FOX News etc. says so, then we need to have a more thorough discussion.

After thinking about that, you are correct...I have not ever encountered a person out on the streets or face-to-face that preferred any of these bogus pronouns. The unreal part is many of these made-up terms are being endorsed by Governments, especially Trudeau's social justice team, to even English dictionaries, which I assume are being indoctrinated into various public schools. Crazy upside down times.

Mucho appreciate you sharing your story & thoughts. I honestly had no idea, still a bit speechless and I can't even imagine all that trauma you had to endure through school. Holy shit! Still much I do not know nor understand. I'll get there eventually.

Mass media to shills & larpers, various politicians and those high strung evangelicals have created a fake alt reality via the Internet/TV.

Yes, I did for a while get "sucked into the save-the-children anti-trans hysteria" nonsense that was and still is being pushed. Finally, after doing a bit of research, scanning the landscape of various actors who have a loud reaching anti trans voice to the masses, who have ulterior motives for doing so and listening to a few people who are neutral on the whole subject I came to the realization the whole thing is a con job being used as a political tool against so many people. Matt Walsh and many others like him need a good swift kick to head. Perhaps a waterboarding exercise with historical facts.

I can live with people who dare to be different, but don't push that stuff on me like it's a religion. Nobody has to date, except various media pundits & the many delusional (paid) activists, whom I'm betting don't care either side, until the gravy train one day comes to an end.

[Ninurta]

Nope, it's nothing new. About 3 or 4 generations back from me, around or just before the turn of the 20th century, I had two great uncles who were "intersexed" I think, according to modern terminology. Back then, they were "hermaphrodites", which I think is now a term reserved mostly for plants.

They were brothers, and one day were seen at the cabin splitting fire wood in dresses, as they had been raised as girls, but sporting beards. The sheriff was sicced on them, and they had to flee hearth and home for the great beyond ahead of the arresting officers. It was illegal in those days for a man to wear women's clothes, and from the evidence of the beards, they were determined by observers to be men dressed as women - but, in reality, had both boy parts and girl parts to some degree, and so they had to go on the run. They ended up at a logging camp as "men", and became the camp cooks.

From there, they went farther west where there was no one who ever had known of them, and lived their lives out as men, both getting married, and one adopting the daughter of his wife by a previous husband. I knew nothing of any of this until 5 or 6 years ago, when an elderly female cousin who knew all of the family secrets and where all the bodies are buried told me.

That life has never been easy, and it has been around for millennia.

I think, personally, that using it as a political football to ramp up fear and loathing - and that is being done by BOTH sides, each trying to one-up the other - does a disservice not only to the people actually involved, but to society as a whole. We have so much more to worry about than who sticks what where, or who has girl parts or boy parts and can certify it. It's a useless distraction on the part of both parties, and I have to wonder what it is that each is trying to distract us FROM. I bet nothing good.

I also think that it is nowhere near as common as the MSM would have us believe. Kids and teens live during an already confusing time of life, and it's downright criminal to flood their already complicated worlds with such nonsense. Those who have an actual vested interest in the matter already know they do, and no one else has any business interfering in their decisions. It's not a goddamned spectator sport, it's a private matter for them to wrestle with and get sorted out. It's between them, their doctors and support people, and their families, and NO ONE else.

Splashing it all over the evening news doesn't help anyone other than political operatives trying to submerge logic beneath emotional response, and that emotional response is being elicited in folks with no damned say in the matter at all.

I think, personally, there are two genders, and no more. There are "he's" and "she's", and unless I'm going to get involved with an individual myself, it ain't none of my damned business which plumbing they have. If I'm not personally going to be exploring around down there, I ain't got no dog in that fight. It does, however, confuse the hell out of me to hear someone referred to as a "trans-man" or a "trans-woman". Why can't they be just a man or a woman? Throwing "trans-" into the mix just leaves me wondering if the latter designation is the beginning stage or the end product, and since I don't know which, I don't know whether to refer to them as "ma'am" or "sir". For the love of God, just introduce yourself as "Mr." or "Ms.", and I can take it from there. Identifying as "trans" just means to me that you are still in a transition from one to the other, and I don't know which direction that transition is moving in.

And those silly-assed "evangelicals" need to finally meet their God, and stop worrying over anyone else's life. They've got their own worries to deal with, since they are claiming a God they've never met. That won't go well for them in the hereafter, and they ought to be seeing to THAT, rather than running everyone else's life.

In the matter of "same-sex marriage", I've always been for it, to the extent that I care at all. This is NOT a "Christian nation" - Gods do not play politics. If "Evangelicals" ever bothered to crack open their Bibles, they'd be surprised to find that right there in their own claimed book, it says that God's Kingdom is "not of this world" - it's spiritual, not temporal, and that is why gods do not play politics - it's not in their lane. It also says that God "allows the sun to shine on the Just and the Unjust alike", so who the hell do they think they are to override God's own decisions just because they can be infected with fear of the "Other"? 

With that being the case, the Constitution guarantees equal treatment and equal rights to all citizens, and if heterosexuals can get married to one another, homosexuals have that same right as any other citizens. End of. The only right they don't have is to force a clergyman to endorse a Civil matter (marriage - It's "civil" rather than a "religious" matter, since one has to get permission from the State in the form of a license in order to engage in it)) against his own scruples, any more than I have a right to force a Catholic priest to perform my marriage - they won't, because I've been married so many times before, and that is something I must respect, a personal matter of their own that I cannot breach or force.

What a fuckin' clown world we live in today!

.

[Freija]

Busy once again at the moment but will follow up later. I appreciate this conversation.

[Freija]

Mucho appreciate you sharing your story & thoughts. I honestly had no idea, still a bit speechless and I can't even imagine all that trauma you had to endure through school. Holy shit! Still much I do not know nor understand. I'll get there eventually.

Haha! I even left out one of the best parts, the one where I was assaulted by a group of homophobic boys my sophomore year in high school sending me to the hospital with multiple broken ribs, bruised organs, contusions all over and 50+ stitches from head to toe. Today we would think of this as a hate crime. The police were involved and it was quite a mess. I was out of school a month recovering and was still in pain when I went back. Broken ribs hurt forever!

I also didn’t mention I was in 14 different schools in 3 different states and put my parents through hell to make it through the 6th grade because my presence was too distracting, my hair was too long or the bullying became dangerous and intolerable. Then in the 7th grade (junior high) at a new school in a new state my folks brought threats of a lawsuit against the school board because they wouldn’t let me in unless I cut my hair that had been growing since the 3rd grade. I was a week late getting started (sans boy haircut) then a few days later, was suspended for fighting a teacher that was trying to force me into the boy’s locker room. I was bad news. I also got permanently excused from P.E. class so I never have been inside a boy’s locker room!

But, that’s all water under the bridge and things that happened over 50 years ago that only strengthened my resolve. Keep in mind, things aren’t like they are today. I had no idea at all there were other kids like me, no words to explain or describe it and I thought I was the only person in the world to be dealing with such a vexing situation and it was pretty isolating. Add to the fact that after my assault, I wasn’t allowed to leave the house ever without being escorted by one of my parents except to go to school where they could drop me off and pick me up because they feared someone would try to kill me again so needless to say, I did not have a normal childhood or teenage years until I got out of HS and left home which I think reflects in a lot of my adult behavior or it’s at least comforting way to attribute some of my less than desirable qualities to? LOL!

My point here is twofold, if kids and teachers and schools had known and understood back then that some kids, even little kids can be different (trans), things might have been less messed up and secondly, information and knowledge being available today like it wasn’t back then would have been a godsend to me because I had no idea why I was the way I was. I only knew that deep within the very depths of my heart and spirit I was a girl with no confusion or question other than why I was born with boy parts?

That was a real mind-bender for me as a kid that I just assumed it all to be some grand cosmic mistake, a cruel joke of nature and a biological error. In spite of my parent’s heroic efforts to help me not feel that way, I often felt broken and defective and that something was seriously wrong with me. I sometimes wonder how I ended up not nearly as screwed up as I could have been or how I was able to go on to live a wonderful, rewarding and pretty amazing life? That stubborn, determined and outspoken about what I knew to be true little kid turned out to be pretty strong after all, I guess?

[Freija]

NOTE: I experienced technical issues with this post and the one above. I had intended for my reply to EndtheMadnessNow and Ninurta to be in one post but the quotes weren't working properly so I tried splitting it into two posts. I posted the first message to EndtheMadnessNow and it looked fine.

Although started as a new reply with the quotes from Ninurta, The quotes didn't display as quotes when previewed but it did display as a single post but when posted, kept appending to the post above I wrote to EndtheMadnessNow breaking all the quoted sections again and confusing the heck out of me because it was supposed to be two separate posts. I edited the post to ETMN to remove what was appended and re-posted it. It looked okay so I moved on to make the second post.

I created a New Reply for my comments with quotes from Ninurta. When previewing, more than two quotes in the post didn't properly display the quoted part as quotes. When returning to the editor in source code mode, the quote="Ninurta" turned into quote='"Ninurta"' (with brackets, of course) for the first two. In switching to the non source code view, the first two quotes showed up okay with the third not showing as a quote. Manually changing the '" to " didn't fix it either. I logged out and restarted my browser and was able to make the 2nd post without it appending but the quotes weren't quoting.

For clarity, I color coded what I wanted to quote.



[quote="Ninurta"]
I think, personally, that using it as a political football to ramp up fear and loathing - and that is being done by BOTH sides, each trying to one-up the other - does a disservice not only to the people actually involved, but to society as a whole.
[/quote]

I will agree with you to some extent. Yes, all the nonsense around this transgender business is detrimental to those youth that are actually and genuinely suffering and in need of care who are able to access treatment and go on to live happy, normal and productive lives but because the trans movement has so clouded the issues, some real trans kids are falling through the cracks and some kids that aren’t classically trans are getting swept up in the hysteria. Girls, who now outnumber boys 2 to 1 presenting at gender clinics are particularly susceptible to social influences but there are other factors for them as well that I can completely understand so the transgender thing has become a shitshow.

Where I tend to disagree is the holding of “both sides” as equally responsible for making the trans thing the political football that it is today. It was started by the conservative religious Republican right as a common rally cry to energize their base with the Democratic left only responding to counter attack. It is ugly AF and I have consistently said how much I hate all of it.

[quote="Ninurta"]
Those who have an actual vested interest in the matter already know they do, and no one else has any business interfering in their decisions. It's not a goddamned spectator sport, it's a private matter for them to wrestle with and get sorted out. It's between them, their doctors and support people, and their families, and NO ONE else.
[/quote]

We’ve had this discussion before and I couldn’t agree with you more.

[quote="Ninurta"]
I think, personally, there are two genders, and no more. There are "he's" and "she's", and unless I'm going to get involved with an individual myself, it ain't none of my damned business which plumbing they have. If I'm not personally going to be exploring around down there, I ain't got no dog in that fight. It does, however, confuse the hell out of me to hear someone referred to as a "trans-man" or a "trans-woman". Why can't they be just a man or a woman? Throwing "trans-" into the mix just leaves me wondering if the latter designation is the beginning stage or the end product, and since I don't know which, I don't know whether to refer to them as "ma'am" or "sir". For the love of God, just introduce yourself as "Mr." or "Ms.", and I can take it from there. Identifying as "trans" just means to me that you are still in a transition from one to the other, and I don't know which direction that transition is moving in.[/quote}

LOL! We’ve also had this discussion before too. I can pretty much guarantee you’ve never heard me refer to myself as a “trans woman”. As a transsexual, maybe occasionally even though that term is considered obsolete and not politically correct but historically, it does refer to someone that has had a “sex change”.  As transgender? Practically never as this doesn’t mean anything and has become more of a political term and statement and for some, their whole identity. As a person of trans experience or history seems much more fitting and works for me if I am going to talk about it at all, which I don’t in the real world except very rarely.

For sure there are only two sexes and while some seem to think separating sex and gender into separate categories is some modern newfangled idea or perversion of language, sexologists, psychologists and researchers have been making the distinction between the two in published works since the late 1950s. Sex is pretty clear cut but what we think of as gender is less so as it involves how someone expresses themselves, their role in society and although it’s a dirty word, how someone feels about their level of femininity or masculinity or in other words, psychologically so there is a lot more room for variance in genders beyond just the male and female binary and the criteria varies across different cultures and different time periods.

Unfortunately, rather than just more feminine males or more masculine females, some have decided to label these variances with xenogenders that range from the absurd to the ridiculous which I completely agree is confusing (and stupid) AF. Although it has never happened to me, if someone tells me they are non-binary, internally I still want to know what sex they are if it isn’t obvious although statistically, 80% of those claiming to be non-binary, i.e. neither a man or a woman, are biologically female.

I am not any less confused by some of this than you are.

[Ninurta]

Although it has never happened to me, if someone tells me they are non-binary, internally I still want to know what sex they are if it isn’t obvious although statistically, 80% of those claiming to be non-binary, i.e. neither a man or a woman, are biologically female.

I am not any less confused by some of this than you are.

If someone tells me they are "non-binary", then clearly they must be analog, and I proceed accordingly, usually by exiting stage left, in order to keep myself out of trouble. I'm not going to even try to read their levels trying to figure out what the gauges are reading. It's just not that important to me to figure out where they sit in the Battle of the Sexes if they can't just come right out and declare a major. I'll just think of them as the old SNL character "Pat".

I commiserate with your posting troubles, and note that in my reply here, at least for now before it's posted, the part of your reply I quoted is nested within TWO quote boxes when there should be only one. I've been unable to get to the index page myself for a couple days now - I keep getting a server SQL error that seems not to be troubling anyone else, so I dunno if it's a browser problem or an operating system problem on my end. All I DO know is that it's making site navigation a chore for me.

That's also why I've not been in the shoutbox - I can't get to it.

To get here this evening, I had to enter through the portal, search through ETM's threads, and find the one that rang a bell.

.