Men and women have experienced the confusion and pain resulting from simplistic, forced conformity to
sexual dimorphism throughout recorded history. Aspects of gender variance have been part of biological,
psychological, and sociological debates amongst humans in modern history. The twentieth century
marked the beginning of a social awakening for men and women whose bodies imprisoned them in the
wrong gender. Harry Benjamin and Magnus Hirshfeld, who met in 1907, pioneered the medical responses
to those who sought relief and resolution of their torment, enabling the “transsexual,” a term
coined by Hirshfeld in 1923, to live a gender- appropriate life, occasionally facilitated by surgery.
