5 ms·

Out on the Town: Magnus Hirschfeld and Berlin’s Third Sex

59 points by prismatic 4y ago

pirminj 4y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=La7ZirXO2Ps&t=10 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=La7ZirXO2Ps&t=10 is a great documentary (in German)
gunfighthacksaw 4y ago
To put the current transgender moral panic in perspective, the Nazis persecuted Hirschfeld in the 30s for doing with surgical technology what we can do with hormones and puberty blockers (and better surgery) today.
- lelandfe 4y ago
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnus_Hirschfeld https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnus_Hirschfeld New to me, thanks.
curious-im 4y ago
Kinda crazy to read this in current context, with the wave of anti-trans and anti-LGBT legislations. We made such a big step forward, and yet... Early 20th century Berlin sounds like a fun place. And what time to be. Around that time Otto Weininger wrote his Sex and Character, defying sex/gender as a spectrum.
- teakettle42 4y ago
  - amanaplanacanal 4y ago
    Allowing people to live the lives they want to live seems like a positive thing. What steps backward would you like to see?
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - _0ffh 4y ago
    - Gibbon1 4y ago
      Not enough classes of people that's it's socially and legally acceptable to inflict suffering on.
    - YATA2 4y ago
    - YATA3 4y ago
  - anaisbetts 4y ago
    Ah yes, the moral Judeo-Christian values majority, known for their (checks notes) repeated protection of sexual assault perpetrators, particularly against children. Tell me more about the "decadent society" that queer people are causing by daring to exist in public
gurumeditations 4y ago
- dang 4y ago
  That's an extremely inaccurate description of HN. When I see those, I always feel like someone needs to respond. HN is a large public forum. Any such site gets a long tail of comments—every slot on the spectrum gets represented—but absolutely not to the same degree. A minuscule minority of egregious comments does not characterize the community. Not at all. Perceptions like this are strongly affected by cognitive biases. For example, people are far more likely to notice and remember painful data points than pleasurable ones. Therefore, a handful of (in this case) homophobic comments will make orders of magnitude more of an impression than tons of moderate, favorable, or loving ones. This is the way we're all wired [1], but it unfortunately leads people to highly distorted impressions of the community [2]. [1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20dislike%20notice&sort=byDate&type=story&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098
stuckinhell 4y ago
[flagged]
Lichtverschwend 4y ago
For those folks visiting Paris in Summer: consider visiting the current exhibition at the Centre Pompidou : Nouvelle Objectivité / August Sander It runs until beginning of September and covers the second part of the 1920s in Berlin.

59 points by prismatic 4y ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=La7ZirXO2Ps&t=10 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=La7ZirXO2Ps&t=10 is a great documentary (in German)

gunfighthacksaw 4y ago

To put the current transgender moral panic in perspective, the Nazis persecuted Hirschfeld in the 30s for doing with surgical technology what we can do with hormones and puberty blockers (and better surgery) today.

lelandfe 4y ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnus_Hirschfeld https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnus_Hirschfeld New to me, thanks.

curious-im 4y ago

Kinda crazy to read this in current context, with the wave of anti-trans and anti-LGBT legislations. We made such a big step forward, and yet... Early 20th century Berlin sounds like a fun place. And what time to be. Around that time Otto Weininger wrote his Sex and Character, defying sex/gender as a spectrum.

teakettle42 4y ago
- amanaplanacanal 4y ago
  Allowing people to live the lives they want to live seems like a positive thing. What steps backward would you like to see?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - _0ffh 4y ago
  - Gibbon1 4y ago
    Not enough classes of people that's it's socially and legally acceptable to inflict suffering on.
  - YATA2 4y ago
  - YATA3 4y ago
- anaisbetts 4y ago
  Ah yes, the moral Judeo-Christian values majority, known for their (checks notes) repeated protection of sexual assault perpetrators, particularly against children. Tell me more about the "decadent society" that queer people are causing by daring to exist in public

gurumeditations 4y ago

dang 4y ago
That's an extremely inaccurate description of HN. When I see those, I always feel like someone needs to respond. HN is a large public forum. Any such site gets a long tail of comments—every slot on the spectrum gets represented—but absolutely not to the same degree. A minuscule minority of egregious comments does not characterize the community. Not at all. Perceptions like this are strongly affected by cognitive biases. For example, people are far more likely to notice and remember painful data points than pleasurable ones. Therefore, a handful of (in this case) homophobic comments will make orders of magnitude more of an impression than tons of moderate, favorable, or loving ones. This is the way we're all wired [1], but it unfortunately leads people to highly distorted impressions of the community [2]. [1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20dislike%20notice&sort=byDate&type=story&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098

stuckinhell 4y ago

[flagged]

Lichtverschwend 4y ago

For those folks visiting Paris in Summer: consider visiting the current exhibition at the Centre Pompidou : Nouvelle Objectivité / August Sander It runs until beginning of September and covers the second part of the 1920s in Berlin.