Why Our Elites Embraced a Crazy Idea
How did an idea as ludicrous as 'gender identity' become a modern gospel? The truth is it served powerful interests in ways other equally madcap ideas from the 1950s and 60s could not.
‘Gender identity’ is now so established in our institutions it’s sometimes hard to recall how outlandish an idea it used to be considered. Yet in the early 1960s, ‘gender identity’, the notion that someone could be ‘born in the wrong body’, was just one of dozens of bizarre, fringe notions competing for attention.
These ideas shared similar tropes and were often connected in ways that have since been largely forgotten. It’s only by looking afresh at the links between these fruity ideas we can help shed light on the deep strangeness of ‘gender identity’ as a concept. It may also help us answer the question why it alone, of a family of far-fetched ideas, became an establishment darling, respect for which is now enforced by government and corporate diktat, while the others all withered on the vine.
The years 1960-65 are crucial in this story. I’ve written in the past about the seminal role the transman Reed Erickson (born Rita Alma Erickson) played in the ascent of gender identity. In 1962, at age 45, she inherited a vast fortune from her father’s lead-smelting business when he died. Up until then, Erickson had been involved in lesbian relationships. She now decided it was time to …"become a man". Here she is with her pet leopard, Henry. Erickson travelled everywhere with Henry, including on business flights.
That same year, 1962, Erickson started hormone treatment under Dr Harry Benjamin. Before WW2, Benjamin had been involved in a series of quack medical projects, from claiming to cure TB with turtle fluids, to using tiny grafts of testicle to reverse ageing in men. He changed course after a story broke that transformed the public discourse about sex and gender.
Christine Jorgensen (a former GI) had a ‘sex change’ in Denmark in 1952 and returned to America in a blaze of publicity the following year. The news coverage of Jorgensen in 1953 assumed he was “all woman” now. In fact, months later it would be revealed he’d only had his male genitals removed. The press soured on him and he was dubbed “a morbid transvestite”.
What Christine needed was a “vagina”. Any kind of vagina, frankly. Luckily, Benjamin had already sought Jorgensen out and with his extensive connections helped arrange a vaginoplasty.
Newly.…err…equipped Jorgensen applauded Benjamin and the good doctor now became an authority on ‘sex change’; which is why a rich, leopard-owning lesbian turned to him. The relationship, which she and Benjamin forged, was to be the driving force in the evolution of ‘gender identity’ from a fringe concern into one that was taken seriously by politicians, a cadre of scientists and the cultural elite.
In 1964, Reed Erickson established her own Educational Foundation (EEF) and through it began to pour money into transsexual research and ‘medicine’. One of its earliest recipients was Harry Benjamin himself whom she encouraged to set up an Institute named after him. This would eventually become today’s World Association for Professional Transgender Health (or WPATH). In 1965, Erickson started to pay Benjamin $1500 a month which in today’s terms is $15000. Yes, a month!