World League for Sexual Reform conference B

The World League for Sexual Reform was a League for coordinating policy reforms related to greater openness around sex. The initial groundwork for the organisation, including a congress in

Berlin Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...

which was later counted as the organisation's first, was orchestrated by

Magnus Hirschfeld Magnus Hirschfeld (14 May 1868 – 14 May 1935) was a German physician, Sexology, sexologist and LGBTQ advocate, whose German citizenship was later revoked by the Nazi government.David A. Gerstner, ''Routledge International Encyclopedia of Queer ...

in 1921. It officially came into being at a congress in

Copenhagen Copenhagen ( ) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a population of 1.4 million in the Urban area of Copenhagen, urban area. The city is situated on the islands of Zealand and Amager, separated from Malmö, Sweden, by the ...

in 1928.

Platform

The organization advocated a ten-point platform which included: # Economic, political, and sexual equality of men and women #

Secularization In sociology, secularization () is a multilayered concept that generally denotes "a transition from a religious to a more worldly level." There are many types of secularization and most do not lead to atheism or irreligion, nor are they automatica ...

and reform of laws on marriage and divorce #

Birth control Birth control, also known as contraception, anticonception, and fertility control, is the use of methods or devices to prevent pregnancy. Birth control has been used since ancient times, but effective and safe methods of birth control only be ...

to make birth voluntary and responsible # Eugenic birth selection # Protection of unmarried mothers and "

illegitimate children Legitimacy, in traditional Western common law, is the status of a child born to parents who are legally married to each other, and of a child conceived before the parents obtain a legal divorce. Conversely, ''illegitimacy'', also known as ''b ...

" # Rational understanding of

intersex Intersex people are those born with any of several sex characteristics, including chromosome patterns, gonads, or genitals that, according to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, "do not fit typical binar ...

people and homosexuals. # Comprehensive

sex education Sex education, also known as sexual education, sexuality education or sex ed, is the instruction of issues relating to human sexuality, including human sexual anatomy, Human sexual activity, sexual activity, sexual reproduction, safe sex, birth ...

# Reforms to eliminate the dangers of

prostitution Prostitution is a type of sex work that involves engaging in sexual activity in exchange for payment. The definition of "sexual activity" varies, and is often defined as an activity requiring physical contact (e.g., sexual intercourse, no ...

# Treating sexual abnormalities medically, rather than "as crimes, vices or sins" # Legalization of sexual acts between consenting adults, while criminalizing sexual acts without consent, or acts upon minors and the mentally disabled. Distinguishing crime from vice.

History

From September 15 to September 21, 1921, Magnus Hirschfeld organised the First International Congress for Sexual Reform on the Basis of Sexual Science in Berlin, which formed the original groundwork for the League. The World League for Sexual Reform officially came into existence on July 3, 1928, at its congress in

. Representatives came from many countries: England, the United States, Canada, Germany, France, Russia, Austria, Switzerland, Czechoslovakia, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Japan, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Iceland, Lithuania, Egypt, Liberia, Argentina, Chile, the British Indies, and Malaysia. Ralf Dose has written an overview of the League.Ralf Dose, "The World League for Sexual Reform: Some Possible Approaches", ''Journal for the History of Sexuality'' 12:1, pp. 1–15. Congresses were held in Copenhagen (1928),

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

(1929),

Vienna Vienna ( ; ; ) is the capital city, capital, List of largest cities in Austria, most populous city, and one of Federal states of Austria, nine federal states of Austria. It is Austria's primate city, with just over two million inhabitants. ...

(1930), and

Brno Brno ( , ; ) is a Statutory city (Czech Republic), city in the South Moravian Region of the Czech Republic. Located at the confluence of the Svitava (river), Svitava and Svratka (river), Svratka rivers, Brno has about 403,000 inhabitants, making ...

(1932). Congress speakers included: Hirschfeld,

Norman Haire Norman Haire, born Norman Zions (21 January 1892, Sydney – 11 September 1952, London) was an Australian medical practitioner and sexologist. He has been called "the most prominent sexologist in Britain" between the wars. Life When Norman was ...

Vera Brittain Vera Mary Brittain (29 December 1893 – 29 March 1970) was an English Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) nurse, writer, feminist, socialist and pacifist. Her best-selling 1933 memoir '' Testament of Youth'' recounted her experiences during the Fir ...

Dora Russell Dora Winifred Russell, Countess Russell ( Black; 3 April 1894 – 31 May 1986) was a British author, a feminist and socialist campaigner, and the second wife of the philosopher Bertrand Russell. She was a campaigner for contraception and pea ...

,Jonathan Croall, ''Neill of Summerhill: The Permanent Rebel''. Taylor & Francis, 1983 , (p. 173). Charles Vickery Drysdale (from the

Malthusian League The Malthusian League was a British organisation which advocated the practice of contraception and the education of the public about the importance of family planning. It was established in 1877 and was dissolved in 1927. The organisation was secul ...

Stella Browne Stella Browne (9 May 1880 – 8 May 1955) was a Canadian-born British feminist, socialist, sex radical, and birth control campaigner. She was one of the primary women in the fight for women's right to control and make decisions regarding their ...

Ernst Gräfenberg Ernst Gräfenberg (26 September 1881 – 28 October 1957) was a German-born physician and scientist. He developed the intrauterine device (IUD), and studied the role of the woman's urethra in orgasm. The G-spot is named after him. Career Gräfe ...

Marie Stopes Marie Charlotte Carmichael Stopes (15 October 1880 – 2 October 1958) was a British author, palaeobotanist and campaigner for Eugenic feminism, eugenics and women's rights. She made significant contributions to plant palaeontology and co ...

, M. D. Eder (a pioneer psychiatrist),

Laurence Housman Laurence Housman (; 18 July 1865 – 20 February 1959) was an English playwright, writer and illustrator whose career stretched from the 1890s to the 1950s. He studied art in London and worked largely as an illustrator during the first years o ...

, George Ives,

Eden Paul Maurice Eden Paul (27 September 1865, in Sturminster Marshall – 1 December 1944) was a British socialist activist, physician, writer and translator.'Paul, Maurice Eden' in ''Who Was Who'' Early life Paul was the younger son of the publisher ...

Alexandra Kollontai Alexandra Mikhailovna Kollontai (; , ; – 9 March 1952) was a Russian revolutionary, politician, diplomat and Marxist theoretician. Serving as the People's Commissar for Welfare in Vladimir Lenin's government in 1917–1918, she was a highl ...

Max Hodann Max Julius Carl Alexander Hodann (30 August 1894 – 17 December 1946) was a German physician, eugenicist, sex educator and Marxist, "the best-known and most controversial medical sex educationalist in the Weimar Republic". He wrote for a worki ...

, (who with Dr

Ludwig Levy-Lenz Ludwig Levy-Lenz (born 1 December 1892 in Posen (now Poznań), German Reich; died 30 October 1966 in Munich) was a German doctor of medicine and a sexual reformer, known for performing some of the first sex reassignment surgeries for patients of ...

performed the world's first sex-change operation in 1931 at Hirschfeld's ''

Institut für Sexualwissenschaft The (Institute for Sexual Science) was an early private sexology research institute in Germany from 1919 to 1933. The name is variously translated as Institute for Sexual Research, Institute of Sexology, Institute for Sexology, or Institute f ...

'' in Berlin),

Bernard Shaw George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 – 2 November 1950), known at his insistence as Bernard Shaw, was an Irish playwright, critic, polemicist and political activist. His influence on Western theatre, culture and politics extended from the 188 ...

Bertrand Russell Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, and public intellectual. He had influence on mathematics, logic, set theory, and various areas of analytic ...

Ethel Mannin Ethel Edith Mannin (6 October 1900 – 5 December 1984) was a popular British novelist and travel writer, political activist and socialist. She was born in London. Life and career Mannin's father, Robert Mannin (d. 1948) was a member of the S ...

Harry Benjamin Harry Benjamin (January 12, 1885 – August 24, 1986) was a German-American endocrinologist and sexologist, widely known for his clinical work with transgender people. Early life and career Benjamin was born in Berlin, and raised in a German ...

, Peter Schmidt, William J. Robinson (an American contraception crusader) and Jack Flügel, a Freudian psychologist who assisted

and

organize the Congress and also led the Men's Dress Reform Party. Although not a speaker,

Albert Einstein Albert Einstein (14 March 187918 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist who is best known for developing the theory of relativity. Einstein also made important contributions to quantum mechanics. His mass–energy equivalence f ...

was in contact with the Congress. Magnus Hirschfeld, the British physician

Havelock Ellis Henry Havelock Ellis (2 February 1859 – 8 July 1939) was an English physician, eugenicist, writer, Progressivism, progressive intellectual and social reformer who studied human sexuality. He co-wrote the first medical textbook in English on h ...

and Swiss psychiatrist

Auguste Forel Auguste-Henri Forel (; 1 September 1848 – 27 July 1931) was a Swiss myrmecologist, neuroanatomist, psychiatrist and former eugenicist, notable for his investigations into the structure of the human brain and that of ants. He is considered a c ...

were elected the first presidents of the World League. From 1930, Norman Haire and Dane Jonathan Leunbach replaced the elderly and largely inactive Ellis and Forel, but they remained Honorary Presidents. In 1928

Francis Turville-Petre Francis Adrian Joseph Turville-Petre (4 March 1901 – 16 August 1942) was a British archaeologist, famous for the discovery of the ''Homo heidelbergensis'' fossil Galilee Man in 1926, and for his work at Mount Carmel, in what was then the Brit ...

, British archaeologist and friend of

Christopher Isherwood Christopher William Bradshaw Isherwood (26 August 1904 – 4 January 1986) was an Anglo-American novelist, playwright, screenwriter, autobiographer, and diarist. His best-known works include '' Goodbye to Berlin'' (1939), a semi-autobiographical ...

, stayed at Hirschfeld's institute in

Weimar Weimar is a city in the state (Germany), German state of Thuringia, in Central Germany (cultural area), Central Germany between Erfurt to the west and Jena to the east, southwest of Leipzig, north of Nuremberg and west of Dresden. Together w ...

. Whilst based in Berlin, Turville-Petre was an active member of the

Scientific-Humanitarian Committee The Scientific-Humanitarian Committee (, WhK) was founded by Magnus Hirschfeld in Berlin in May 1897, to campaign for social recognition of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, and against their legal persecution. It was the first L ...

, which campaigned for gay legal reform and tolerance, and attended the Second Congress in

in 1928. In 1929 Hirschfeld presided over the third international congress held at

Wigmore Hall The Wigmore Hall is a concert hall at 36 Wigmore Street, in west London. It was designed by Thomas Edward Collcutt and opened in 1901 as the Bechstein Hall; it is considered to have particularly good building acoustics, acoustics. It specialis ...

, London.

The Times ''The Times'' is a British Newspaper#Daily, daily Newspaper#National, national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its modern name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its si ...

, ''League For Sexual Reform International Congress Opened'', 9 September 1929.

Harley Street Harley Street is a street in Marylebone, Central London, named after Edward Harley, 2nd Earl of Oxford and Earl Mortimer.sexologist Sexology is the scientific study of human sexuality, including human sexual interests, behaviors, and functions. The term ''sexology'' does not generally refer to the non-scientific study of sexuality, such as social criticism. Sexologists app ...

as secretary and

as treasurer, jointly organized the event. Hirschfeld's speech praised British scientists as "distinguished pioneers in eugenics". A number of British feminists attended the 1929 conference, including

Naomi Mitchison Naomi Mary Margaret Mitchison, Baroness Mitchison (; 1 November 1897 – 11 January 1999) was a List of Scottish novelists, Scottish novelist and poet. Often called a doyenne of Scottish literature, she wrote more than 90 books of historical an ...

(whose paper was "Some Comment on the Use of Contraceptives by Intelligent Persons"),

("Marriage and Freedom"), Janet Chance, a pioneer of abortion-law reform ("A Marriage Education Centre in London"),

, a writer and pacifist ("The Failure of Monogamy") and

("The Right to Abortion"). By 1930, the League claimed to have 182 individuals as members. It also claimed 190,000 members overall, many of them belonging to affiliated organisations. Groups which constituted portions of its worldwide membership included the German National League for Birth Control and Sexual Hygiene, Scientific-Humanitarian Committee,

British Society for the Study of Sex Psychology The British Society for the Study of Sex Psychology (BSSSP) was founded in 1913, "to advance a particularly radical agenda in the field of sex reform, based on the writings of gurus such as dwardCarpenter and avelockEllis." Magnus Hirschfeld, t ...

, and the League for the Protection of Motherhood and Sex Reform. In 1932, the fourth international conference of the WLSR was organized and hosted by Hugo Iltis in Brno. Plans for a fifth conference in Moscow were scrubbed because of the political stresses caused by the growing power of

Hitler Adolf Hitler (20 April 1889 – 30 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was the dictator of Nazi Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his suicide in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the lea ...

and

Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Dzhugashvili; 5 March 1953) was a Soviet politician and revolutionary who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until Death and state funeral of Joseph Stalin, his death in 1953. He held power as General Secret ...

.Britta McEwen, ''Sexual Knowledge: Feeling, Fact, and Social Reform in Vienna, 1900–1934''. Berghahn Books, 2012, , (pp. 175–177, 193). Many of the WLSR's books and records were destroyed by the Nazis during a raid in Berlin on the institute in May 1933.Alison Blunt and Jane Wills, ''Dissident Geographies: An Introduction to Radical Ideas and Practice''. Pearson Education, 2000 , (pp. 140–141). The League ceased to exist in 1935.

References

{{Authority control Birth control Gender equality LGBTQ rights organizations Sex positivism Magnus Hirschfeld 20th century in LGBTQ history

Platform

History

See also

References