:Harry Benjamin

Benjamin was born in Berlin, and raised in a German Lutheran home.{{Cite web |title=Walter Benjamin's Berlin |url=http://www.slowtravelberlin.com/walter-benjamins-berlin/ |access-date=2024-08-29 |website=Slow Travel Berlin |language=en-US}} His mother was German and his father at least part-Jewish in ancestry. He joined a regiment of the Prussian Guard.Person, Ethel Spector, The Sexual Century. New Haven: Yale University Press. 1999. He received his doctorate in medicine in 1912 in Tübingen for a dissertation on tuberculosis.{{Cite web |title=The Harry Benjamin Collection, 1891-1986 - Archives Online at Indiana University |url=https://archives.iu.edu/catalog/VAC1594 |access-date=2024-08-29 |website=archives.iu.edu}} Sexual medicine interested him, but was not part of his medical studies. In a 1985 interview he recalled:

{{quote|I do remember going, as a young person, to a lecture by Auguste Forel, whose book The Sexual Question was a sensation at the time and which impressed me greatly. I also met Magnus Hirschfeld very early on through a girl friend, who knew the police official Kopp, who was in charge investigating of sexual offenses. He, in turn, was a friend of Hirschfeld's, and so I met both men. That was around 1907. They repeatedly took me along on their rounds through the homosexual bars in Berlin. I especially remember the 'Eldorado' with its drag shows, where also many of the customers appeared in the clothing of the other sex. The word "transvestite" had not yet been invented. Hirschfeld coined it only in 1910 in his well-known study.[http://www2.hu-berlin.de/sexology/GESUND/ARCHIV/TRANS_B5.HTM Hu-Berlnin.de] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20041227133920/http://www2.hu-berlin.de/sexology/GESUND/ARCHIV/TRANS_B5.HTM |date=2004-12-27 }}.}}

Benjamin visited the United States in 1913, to work with a quack doctor who claimed to have found a cure for tuberculosis.Stein, Marc. Encyclopedia of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender history in America. New York, NY: Charles Scribner's Sons/Thomson/Gale, 2004. page 133 {{ISBN|0-684-31427-4}}, 978-0-684-31427-3 The liner in which Benjamin was returning to Germany was caught mid-Atlantic both by the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, and the Royal Navy. Given the choice of a British internment camp, as an "enemy alien", or returning to New York, he used his last dollars to travel back to America, where he made his home for the rest of his life.{{cite book |last1=Schechter |first1=Loren S. |title=Surgical management of the transgender patient |date=2017 |publisher=Elsevier |location=Philadelphia, Pennsylvania |isbn=978-0-323-48089-5 |chapter=History |quote=Following a professional visit to the United States in 1913, Dr Benjamin’s return to Germany was disrupted when the ship on which he was traveling was caught mid-Atlantic by the Royal Navy during the outbreak of World War I. Preferring to return to the United States rather than be treated as an enemy alien in a British internment camp, Dr Benjamin began practicing general medicine in New York in 1915.}} However, he maintained and built many international professional connections and visited Europe frequently when wars allowed.

After several failed attempts to start a medical career in New York, in 1915 Benjamin rented a consulting room, in which he also slept, and started his own general medical practice.{{cite book |author=Alison Li |title=Wondrous Transformations: A Maverick Physician, the Science of Hormones, and the Birth of the Transgender Revolution |chapter=That Which Sets in Motion |date=2023 |page=2 |publisher=University of North Carolina Press |jstor=10.5149/9781469674872_li.5 |isbn=978-1-4696-7485-8 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5149/9781469674872_li.5 |access-date=2023-06-06}}{{Cite web |last=Zagria |date=2022-01-14 |title=The Offices of Harry Benjamin. Part I: to 1968 |url=https://zagria.blogspot.com/2022/01/the-offices-of-harry-benjamin-part-i-to.html |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231121123006/https://zagria.blogspot.com/2022/01/the-offices-of-harry-benjamin-part-i-to.html |archive-date=2023-11-21 |access-date=2023-12-24 |website=A Gender Variance Who's Who}} In 1937 he moved his practice to a ground floor office suite at 728 Park Avenue in Manhattan, then briefly to 125 East 72nd Street in 1957, and sometime between 1959 and 1962 he moved his practice again to 44 East 67th Street before finally relocating to 1045 Park Avenue in 1963 where he continued to practice until his retirement in 1968.{{Cite web |title=728 Park Avenue Manhattan - Trans Medical Care at the Office of Dr. Harry Benjamin |url=https://www.nyclgbtsites.org/site/trans-medical-care-at-the-office-of-dr-harry-benjamin/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230926031500/https://www.nyclgbtsites.org/site/trans-medical-care-at-the-office-of-dr-harry-benjamin/ |archive-date=2023-09-26 |access-date=2023-12-24 |website=NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project}} Sometime before 1948, he also began maintaining an office in San Francisco where he practiced during the summer of every year (at 450 Sutter Street, Suite 2232),{{Cite web|last=Kane|first=Peter Lawrence|date=2015-07-22|title=The Tenderloin Museum Has Ceiling Lights in the Shape of the Tenderloin|url=https://www.sfweekly.com/culture/the-tenderloin-museum-has-ceiling-lights-in-the-shape-of-the-tenderloin/ |access-date=2021-07-05|website=SF Weekly|language=en-US}} with many of his patients coming from the nearby Tenderloin neighborhood{{Cite web|last=Conway|first=Lynn|author-link=Lynn Conway|title=Lynn Conway's Career Retrospective, Part II|url=https://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/Retrospective2.html |access-date=2021-07-05|website=University of Michigan}}).

Prior to arriving in the United States, Benjamin studied at the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft; from about this time onward he began to encounter and treat patients who he would later describe as transsexuals.{{Cite book |last=Goldberg |first=Abbie E. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=736zDAAAQBAJ |title=The SAGE Encyclopedia of LGBTQ Studies |date=2016-05-10 |publisher=SAGE Publications |isbn=978-1-4833-7129-0 |pages=509–510 |language=en}}{{Cite book |last=Green |first=Jamison |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=5qbNDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA2 |title=Gender Confirmation Surgery: Principles and Techniques for an Emerging Field |date=2020-01-31 |publisher=Springer Nature |isbn=978-3-030-29093-1 |editor-last=Schechter |editor-first=Loren S. |pages=1–22 |language=en |chapter=History, Societal Attitudes, and Contexts}} In the 1930s he studied in Austria with Eugen Steinach. In 1948, in San Francisco,{{Cite web |title=Trans Medical Care at the Office of Dr. Harry Benjamin – NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project |url=https://www.nyclgbtsites.org/site/trans-medical-care-at-the-office-of-dr-harry-benjamin/ |access-date=2024-06-10 |website=www.nyclgbtsites.org}} Benjamin was asked by Alfred Kinsey, a fellow sexologist, to see a young patient who was anatomically male but insisted on being female.The Sisterhood: Dr. Harry Benjamin

{{Cite web |url=http://www.the-sisterhood.net/thepinknazi/id13.html |title=Dr. Harry Benjamin |access-date=2021-07-05 |archive-date=2005-04-07 |url-status=usurped |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20050407024752/http://www.the-sisterhood.net/thepinknazi/id13.html}}. Kinsey had encountered the child as a result of his interviews for Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, which was published that year. This case rapidly caused Benjamin's interest in what he would come to call transsexualism, realizing that there was a different condition to that of transvestism, under which adults who had such needs had been classified to that time.{{Cn|date=July 2021}}

Despite the psychiatrists Benjamin involved in the case not agreeing on a path of treatment, Benjamin eventually decided to treat the child with estrogen (Premarin, introduced in 1941), which had a "calming effect", and helped arrange for the mother and child to go to Germany, where surgery{{specify|date=July 2021}} to assist the child could be performed but, from there, they ceased to maintain contact, to Benjamin's regret.{{Cn|date=July 2021}} However, Benjamin continued to refine his understanding and went on to treat several hundred patients with similar needs in a similar manner, often without accepting any payment.

Many of his patients were referred by David Cauldwell, Robert Stoller, and doctors in Denmark. These doctors received hundreds of requests from individuals who had read about their work connected with changing sex, as it was then largely described.

However, due to the personal political opinions of the American doctors and a Danish law prohibiting sex reassignment surgery on noncitizens, these doctors referred the letter-writers to the one doctor of the era who would aid transsexual individuals, Harry Benjamin.{{cite book |last=Meyerowitz |first=Joanne |title=How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States |location=Cambridge, Mass. |publisher=Harvard University |year=2002 |page=143 |isbn=0-674-00925-8 }} Benjamin conducted treatment with the assistance of carefully selected colleagues of various disciplines (such as psychiatrists C. L. Ihlenfeld and John Alden, electrologist Martha Foss, and surgeons Jose Jesus Barbosa,[http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/Retrospective2.html University of Michigan]. Roberto C. Granato, and Georges Burou).

Benjamin's patients regarded him as a man of immense caring, respect and kindness, and many kept in touch with him until his death. He was a prolific and assiduous correspondent, in both English and German, and many letters are archived at the Magnus Hirschfeld Archive for Sexology, Humboldt University, Berlin.{{cite web|url=http://www2.hu-berlin.de/sexology/GESUND/ARCHIV/COLLBEN.HTM|title=Archive for Sexology|work=hu-berlin.de|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071204181920/http://www2.hu-berlin.de/sexology/GESUND/ARCHIV/COLLBEN.HTM|archive-date=2007-12-04}}

The legal, social and medical background to this in the United States, as in many other countries, was often a stark contrast, since wearing items of clothing associated with the opposite sex in public was often illegal, anything seen as homosexuality was often persecuted or illegal, and many doctors considered all such people (including children) at best denied any affirmation of their gender identity, or involuntarily subjected to treatments such as drugged detention, electroconvulsive therapy, or lobotomy.{{citation needed|date=June 2023}}.

Though he had already published papers and lectured to professional audiences extensively, Benjamin's 1966 book, The Transsexual Phenomenon, was especially important as the first large work describing and explaining the affirmative treatment path he pioneered.Michie, Jonathan. Reader's guide to the social sciences. London: Fitzroy Dearborn, 2001 {{ISBN|978-1-57958-091-9}} Publicity surrounding his patient Christine Jorgensen brought the issue into the mainstream in 1952 and led to a great many people presenting for assistance, internationally. In the preface of Christine Jorgensen's autobiography, Dr. Benjamin also gives Jorgensen credit for the advancement of his studies. He wrote, "Indeed Christine, without you, probably none of this would have happened; the grant, my publications, lectures, etc."Jorgensen, Christine, and Susan Stryker. "Preface." Christine Jorgensen: A Personal Autobiography. 1st ed. Cleis, 2000.

Similar cases in other countries (such as that of Roberta Cowell, whose surgery by Harold Gillies in England was in 1951 but was not publicised until 1954; Coccinelle[http://www.coccinelleshow.com Coccinelle Show]. who received much publicity in France in 1958, and April Ashley, whose exposure in 1961 by the British tabloid press was reported worldwide) fuelled this. But most of Benjamin's patients lived (and many still live) quiet lives.{{Cn|date=July 2021}}

Reed Erickson (1917–1992), a successful industrialist, sought treatment from Benjamin in 1963. Erickson was the founder and funder of the Erickson Educational Foundation, which published educational booklets, funded medical conferences, counselling services, and the establishment of gender clinics. The EEF funded the Harry Benjamin Foundation.{{cite web|last1=Devor|first1=Aaron H.|author-link=Aaron Devor|title=Reed Erickson and The Erickson Educational Foundation|url=http://web.uvic.ca/~erick123/|website=web.uvic.ca|publisher=University of Victoria|access-date=5 June 2017|date=September 18, 2013}}

Apart from endocrinology and sexology, he worked on life extension and now would be described as a gerontologist. Benjamin lived to be 101.

Benjamin dedicated his 1966 major work to Gretchen. They were married for 60 years.{{cite journal |last1=Person |first1=Ethel |title=Harry Benjamin: Creative Maverick |journal=Journal of Gay & Lesbian Mental Health |date=2008 |volume=12 |issue=3 |page=259-275 |doi=10.1080/19359700802111619|s2cid=142619491 }} They were married December 23, 1925. Gretchen revealed to Charles L. Ihlenfeld that "about six months after they were married Harry brought his mother from Germany to live with them" and that "from then on their bedroom door remained open".

In 1979, the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association was formed, using Benjamin's name by permission. The group consists of therapists and psychologists who devised a set of Standards of Care (SOC) for the treatment of gender dysphoria, largely based on Benjamin's cases, and studies.Brien, Jodi. Encyclopedia of gender and society. London: SAGE, 2009 {{ISBN|978-1-4129-0916-7}} It later changed its name to The World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH).

• The Sex Problem and the Armed Forces (1944) [https://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=ASIN%3A+B0056ASJFW ASIN: B0056ASJFW]
• {{cite journal | pmid = 21020395 | volume=50 | title=A contribution to the endocrine aspect of the impotence problem; a report of thirty-nine cases | year=1946 | journal=Urol Cutaneous Rev | pages=139–43 | last1 = Benjamin | first1 = H}}
• {{cite journal | pmid = 20991360 | volume=12 | title=Endocrinology in the aged | date=July 1946 | journal=Interne | pages=465–9 | last1 = Benjamin | first1 = H}}
• {{cite journal | pmid = 20264999 | volume=2 | title=Biologic versus chronologic age | date=July 1947 | journal=J Gerontol | pages=217–27 | last1 = Benjamin | first1 = H | issue=3 | doi=10.1093/geronj/2.3.217}}
• {{cite journal | pmid = 18147194 | volume=4 | title=Endocrine gerontotherapy; the use of sex hormone combinations in female patients | date=July 1949 | journal=J Gerontol | pages=222–33 | last1 = Benjamin | first1 = H | issue=3 | doi=10.1093/geronj/4.3.222}}
• {{cite journal | pmid = 18147407 | volume=3 | title=Two years of sexology | date=July 1949 | journal=Am J Psychother | pages=419–27 | last1 = Benjamin | first1 = H | issue=3 | doi=10.1176/appi.psychotherapy.1949.3.3.419}}
• {{cite journal | pmid = 18133520 | volume=3 | title=Outline of a method to estimate the biological age with special reference to the role of the sexual functions | date=August 1949 | journal=Int J Sexol | pages=34–7 | last1 = Benjamin | first1 = H| issue=1 }}
• {{cite journal | pmid = 14803776 | volume=6 | title=Endocrine gerontotherapy. The use of steroid hormone combinations in male patients | year=1950 | journal=J Insur Med | pages=12–7 | last1 = Benjamin | first1 = H| issue=1 }}
• {{cite journal | pmid = 13148376 | volume=8 | title=Transsexualism and transvestism as psychosomatic and somatopsychic syndromes | date=April 1954 | journal=Am J Psychother | pages=219–30 | last1 = Benjamin | first1 = H | issue=2 | doi=10.1176/appi.psychotherapy.1954.8.2.219}}
• {{cite journal | pmid = 14128591 | volume=72 | title=Nature and management of transsexualism, with a report on thirty-one operated cases | year=1964 | journal=West J Surg Obstet Gynecol | pages=105–11 | last1 = Benjamin | first1 = H}}
• {{cite journal | pmid = 14173773 | volume=18 | title=Clinical aspects of transsexualism in the male and female | date=July 1964 | journal=Am J Psychother | pages=458–69 | last1 = Benjamin | first1 = H | issue=3 | doi=10.1176/appi.psychotherapy.1964.18.3.458}}
• {{cite journal | pmid = 14320022 | volume=35 | date=November 1964 | journal=Nervenarzt | pages=499–500 | last1 = Benjamin | first1 = H| title=Transsexualism, ITS Nature and Therapy }}
• Introduction to Prostitution and Morality: a Definitive Report on the Prostitute in Contemporary Society and an Analysis of the Causes and Effects of the Suppression (Robert E.L. Masters, 1964) [https://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=ASIN%3A+B000WG6JF2 ASIN: B000WG6JF2]
• Introduction to Forbidden Sexual Behavior and Morality: An Objective Re-Examination of Perverse Sex Practices in Different Cultures (Robert E.L. Masters, 1964) {{ISBN|978-1-258-02436-9}}
• {{cite journal | pmid = 5926775 | volume=42 | title=[Sexual problems at the consultation hour of the general practitioner] | date=July 1966 | journal=Landarzt | pages=885–90 | last1 = Benjamin | first1 = H| issue=20 }}
• The Transsexual Phenomenon; a Scientific Report on Transsexualism and Sex Conversion in the Human Male and Female, (1966) [https://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=ASIN%3A+B0007HXA76 ASIN: B0007HXA76]
• Introduction to Christine Jorgensen; Personal Autobiography (Christine Jorgenssen, 1967) {{ISBN|978-0-8397-1640-2}}
• {{cite journal | pmid = 5233741 | volume=29 | title=The transsexual phenomenon | date=February 1967 | journal=Trans N Y Acad Sci | pages=428–30 | last1 = Benjamin | first1 = H | issue=4 Series II | doi=10.1111/j.2164-0947.1967.tb02273.x}}
• {{cite journal | pmid = 5539832 | volume=25 | title=Should surgery be performed on transsexuals? | date=January 1971 | journal=Am J Psychother | pages=74–82 | last1 = Benjamin | first1 = H | issue=1 | doi=10.1176/appi.psychotherapy.1971.25.1.74}}
• {{cite journal | pmid = 4486125 | volume=73 | title=Transsexualism | date=March 1973 | journal=Am J Nurs | pages=457–61 | last1 = Benjamin | first1 = H | last2 = Ihlenfeld | first2 = CL | issue=3 | doi=10.2307/3422704| jstor=3422704 | s2cid=263676562 }}

• Benjamin scale
• List of transgender-related topics
• Eugen Steinach
• Second Serve

{{reflist|2}}

• {{Cite web

|first = Walter

|last = Meyer

|author2 = Walter O. Bockting

|author3 = Peggy Cohen-Kettenis

|title = The Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association's Standards Of Care For Gender Identity Disorders, Sixth Version

|version = 6th

|publisher = Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association

|date = February 2001

|url = http://www.wpath.org/Documents2/socv6.pdf

|access-date = 2009-04-22

|display-authors = etal

|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20070610012909/http://www.wpath.org/Documents2/socv6.pdf

|archive-date = 2007-06-10

}}

• {{Cite web

|first = Eli

|last = Coleman

|author-link = Eli Coleman

|author2 = Richard Adler

|author3 = Walter Bockting

|others = Marsha Botzer, George Brown, Peggy Cohen-Kettenis, Griet DeCuypere, Aaron Devor, Randall Ehrbar, Randi Ettner, Evan Eyler, Jamie Feldman, Lin Fraser, Rob Garofalo, Jamison Green, Dan Karasic, Gail Knudson, Arlene Istar Lev, Gal Mayer, Walter Meyer, Heino Meyer-Bahlburg, Stan Monstrey, Blaine Paxton Hall, Friedmann Pfaefflin, Katherine Rachlin, Bean Robinson, Loren Schechter, Vin Tangpricha, Mick van Trotsenburg, Anne Vitale, Sam Winter, Stephen Whittle, Kevan Wylie, Ken Zucker

|title = The World Professional Association for Transgender Health's Standards of Care for the Health of Transsexual, Transgender, and Gender Nonconforming Peoples, Seventh Version

|version = 7th

|publisher = World Professional Association for Transgender Health

|date = September 2011

|url = http://www.wpath.org/documents/Standards%20of%20Care_FullBook_1g-1.pdf

|access-date = 2012-07-09

|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20120523064935/http://www.wpath.org/documents/Standards%20of%20Care_FullBook_1g-1.pdf

|archive-date = 2012-05-23

}}

• [https://archive.today/20130105202900/http://www2.rz.hu-berlin.de/sexology/ECE6/html/benjamin/ The Transsexual Phenomenon; a Scientific Report on Transsexualism and Sex Conversion in the Human Male and Female] online at the Magnus Hirschfeld Archive for Sexology, Humboldt University, Berlin which [https://web.archive.org/web/20071204181920/http://www2.hu-berlin.de/sexology/GESUND/ARCHIV/COLLBEN.HTM houses] many items associated with Harry Benjamin.
• [http://sexsmartfilms.com/premium/film/763/45/33/harry-benjamin--m-d-#videoContainer A video tribute to Harry Benjamin] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161031213443/http://sexsmartfilms.com/premium/film/763/45/33/harry-benjamin--m-d-#videoContainer |date=2016-10-31 }} by SexSmartFilms.com, an organization dedicated to the promotion of sexual literacy.

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Benjamin, Harry}}

Category:1885 births

Category:1986 deaths

Category:American men centenarians

Category:American sexologists

Category:American people of German-Jewish descent

Category:German men centenarians

Category:German people of Jewish descent

Category:German endocrinologists

Category:German sexologists

Category:Transgender studies academics

Category:Emigrants from the German Empire to the United States

Category:Transgender health care

Category:Jewish centenarians