Human Nature

What if Sexology Research wasn’t set back 30 years?

In 1919, a group of researchers and humanitarians founded the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft or the Institute of Sexology in Berlin. For the next 14 years, this center of learning would pioneer research into human sexuality and gender, including queer, transgender, and intersex topics. It offered treatment for alcoholism, gynecological examinations, relationship counselling, treatment for venereal diseases, and access to contraceptives. It was open for the education of healthcare workers and the average person. And in 1933, the Nazis burned it to the ground.

The Nazi party’s “German Student Union” parade in front of the Institute for Sexual Research in 6 May 1933 shortly before destroying it.

The destruction of the Institute of Sexology and its library set the study of sexology and gender back decades. It would not be until the opening of the Kinsey Institute in 1947 that an equivalent body of research would be formed. Priceless medical and anthropological documents, data charting cases of intersexuality, even artistic works were lost. All of which was being prepared for presentation at the International Medical Congress.

But what if the researchers at the Institute managed to escape Germany with their work? What if the study of the most basic elements of human nature survived the Nazis and were disseminated to the wider world?

The point of divergence is simple, Magnus Hirschfeld, the institute’s founder, realizes the writing is on the wall and flees Germany much earlier than in OTL, sneaking his body of work into France in 1933. Hirschfeld, and his partners Karl Giese and Li Shiu Tong bounce around from France, to England, and finally settle in Chicago shortly before Hirschfeld’s death in 1935. A new university in his name is chartered, supported by a small endowment from ex-members of the Society for Human Rights and headed by Giese and Tong. Humanitarian and Sexology researchers from around the globe slowly congregate there and continue the work and research of their late founder.

The Hirchfeld Institute gains an intense following from the Chicago gay community, which had grown during prohibition using speakeasies for drag shows and gay/lesbian bars. The media frequently features the work and publications of the Institute as either curiosity or a sign of the vices and debauchery of Chicago, but in either case, the work does disseminate. Its researchers are attacked, its endowment threatened, and in 1937 the City Council attempts to ban it outright, but in doing so provokes the first large scale LGBT rights demonstration in the nations history. The Hirschfeld Institute is saved, barely, and its library eventually makes its way into the American Psychiatric Association.

During World War II, the Hirschfeld institute goes from being a minor curiosity in Chicago, to an essential partner of the War Department. The institute is contracted to study the spread of venereal diseases and recommend courses of action to contain their spread. Hirschfeld researchers and other sexologists generate a mountain of data on the spread of disease, the usefulness of proper sex and contraceptive education among soldiers, the mental well being of combatants, and indeed the prevalence of same sex relationships among members of the military. Their research ruffles a lot of feathers, particularly in Congress, but the War Department stands firm that this research has proven essential to keeping America’s troops healthy and in fighting condition.

When Buchenwald concentration camp is liberated in January 1945, several Army sexology doctors are dispatched to catalog the risk of disease among the victims. Along with their reports includes the first detailed documentation of the Nazis treatment of LGBT people and identified a death rate of 60%, the highest among any group persecuted by the Nazis. The report is controversial to say the least, and a majority of people either dismiss it as somehow being deserved. But among a minority of heteronormative people, the details breed the same sense of empathy felt towards Jews, Romani, and other victims of the Holocaust. Among the gay community in the Allied nations, a profound sense of solidarity emerges.

Post-war, the Hirschfeld Institute’s War Department contracts continue until 1948, with smaller grants being disseminated until the outbreak of the Korean War. In 1950, the military puts forward a recommendation that soldiers not be discharged for their sexual proclivities. Congress takes issue and drafts a report entitled “Employment of Homosexuals and Other Sex Perverts in Government” based on covert investigations of the sexual orientation of government employees. The military, never fans of Congressional meddling, offers a counter report which formally adopts a position among the armed forces that homosexuality is not a mental illness and constitutes no security risk to the nation. During the Korean War, the issue becomes a major focus of national debate, and after Eisenhower takes office the issue is put to bed with Executive Order 10450. The EO is essentially a “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy for the entire government.

Despite the government’s opposition, the gay community in the Free World continues to grow, and the Hirschfeld Institute ceased to be the only center of learning studying sexology and gender issues. By 1960, every major institution with a humanities or medical department had spun off a sexology and/or gender studies department. As the Civil Rights movement grew and with it the Society for Human Rights (SHR), gay rights became a major issue once again. In 1962, Illinois became the first state to institute marriage equality. In 1966, California passed one of the first laws extending equal-protection to transgendered people seeking medical care, a law echoed in 1969 by New York. The driving force for these decisions was a well organized gay community and their allies, particularly among Jewish Americans, the Women’s Liberation Movement, and students.

The WLM was in many ways the product of Hirschfeld’s willingness to provide education equally across the gender spectrum, producing many of the most pioneering thinkers of the Second Wave of the Feminist Movement. Betty Friedan was a featured speaker at the World League for Sexual Reform in 1964, and many elements of the WLSR platform could be found throughout The Feminine Mystique. The SHR was a principle organizer and its members featured speakers at the Second Congress to Unite Women in 1970, and the SHR’s alliance with the WLM proved to be a deciding factor in the adoption of the Equal Rights Amendment in 1974. Meanwhile, the WLM put political pressure on the Carter Administration to revoke Executive Order 10450.

In 1979, the queer community of the United States won its greatest victory when the Supreme Court narrowly struck down down bans on same-sex marriages as unconstitutional. While the SHR celebrated this victory, it proved to be a lightning rod for the Christian Right, and one Ronald Reagan was all too happy to use to vault him into the White House. However, Reagan proved to be largely ineffective at reversing the tide of feminism and marriage equality. The Republicans only controlled the Senate for much of Reagan’s presidency, while the Democrats controlled the House, and neither side was willing to make enemies of the well organized Flower Power movement. The most Reagan could achieve was a brief reinstatement of EO 10450, which was hotly opposed by the Pentagon, and ultimately struck down by the courts.

Reagan’s greatest fight with Congress would be over the AIDS epidemic. The disease had been identified fairly quickly by the CDC and the SHR worked with local medical providers to track its spread, but Reagan took a general disinterest in the epidemic. Worse, members of the Christian Right like Jerry Falwell called the disease “God’s Punishment” on the queer community. Pressure from the SHR with help from the WLM led to state and local governments adopting policies to contain the spread of the disease, and when that failed, coordinated their own Health and Safety Councils. Reagan would finally relent in early 1982 when longtime friend and openly gay movie icon Rock Hudson confronted Reagan about the disease that was now killing him. With political pressure mounting Reagan tasked the CDC to work with the SHR to contain the plague. Reagan would go onto create an organization similar to OTL PEPFAR, which helped contain the spread of the disease across the globe. Reagan’s decision was more than anything a response to a similar system established by the Soviets, which he feared would allow the spread of Communism in the Third World.

By 1990, 100,000 Americans had died of AIDS, and close to a million people globally. In San Francisco, a memorial wall stands for the victims, paid for by the SHR. While Reagan took credit for ultimately ending the plague, and the Christian Right continues to brush their pro-plague platform under the rug, posterity remembers the SHR as the true heros of the plague. Many researchers attribute the proliferation of proper sex education and contraceptives in the 1960s, and the SHR’s Health and Safety Councils to the disease not spreading further. By the 2020s, AIDS is a historical footnote for most people.

Despite continued pushback from the Christian Right, by the year 2000 queerfolk and transfolk enjoy greater freedoms than in OTL 2022. Gay and trans soldiers serve openly in the military, and women serve at every level of the armed forces. Further, Transfolk have enjoyed relatively easy access to gender affirming care since the 1930s, most of which was pioneered by the Hirschfeld Institute’s members during their days in Berlin. Surgical techniques and hormone therapy have made significant advancements, and changing one’s gender expression simply isn’t an issue for most people in much of the world. Finally, in 2019 countless American children celebrate a particularly significant “Grandparents Day;” the 40th wedding anniversary for millions of queer couples. For Millennials and Gen Z, there has never been a world without marriage equality or Equal Rights across the gender spectrum.

In 2021 the World League for Sexual Reform celebrated its 100th anniversary at the Hirschfeld Institute in Chicago, now one of the largest humanities universities in the world. They celebrated the progress made to their platform (sans the “Eugenic birth selection,” which was dropped in 1945). Speakers included Senator Harvey Milk, humanitarians and celebrities Freddie Mercury, Eazy-E, and Gia Carangi, and former SHR chairwoman Elizabeth Glaser. Glaser offered the closing remarks of the convention saying, “Our work will continue, until all 6 billion people can count themselves free.