#LGBTQI+ #Nazis #MagnusHirschfeld
"The Gay Doctor Who Fought Nazis
In the early 20th century, Magnus Hirschfeld was Europe’s foremost advocate for LGBTQ rights. Today, as the Right increasingly echoes Nazi ideas about gender and sexuality, we can learn from his example.
Once upon a time in Berlin, there lived a fat, gay, Jewish nerd named Magnus Hirschfeld. He was a medical doctor who had a revelation early in his career: gay men were killing themselves, and he could stop it. First, he devoted himself to getting a draconian anti-gay law repealed. Then he started providing affirming mental health therapy to LGBTQ+ people.
But he didn’t stop there. Magnus Hirschfeld could not see an injustice and leave it to fester. He started giving talks to other doctors worldwide about how OK it was to be queer. Then he started treating transgender people. He opened his own research institute in Berlin, where he brought in surgeons to conduct some of the world’s first gender-affirming surgeries, and suddenly, Berlin began to bloom as one of the queerest cities in the world.
One man, now almost forgotten by history, empowered an entire LGBTQ community, and not just in Germany. Hirschfeld’s mission was to show the world that queerness was normal, beautiful, important, good. He hated racism and gave hormones to trans people. He told parents that their queer kids were OK and gave classes on how to navigate the world as an LGBTQ+ person. He gave talks about birth control and kinks as the LGBTQ sexual research center that he founded became a community center, and a queer cultural and medical museum too. Nazis tried to kill him twice, and they burned his life’s work to the ground in 1933. Hitler once called him 'the most dangerous Jew in Germany.' In other words, he was the hardest rock star you’ve never heard of."
https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/the-gay-doctor-who-fought-nazis











