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BHH Seminar Series, "Authenticity and Authentication at U.S. Gender Clinics, 1965-1979" by Dr. Jacob Moses, PhD

This presentation examines the history of gender clinics in the United States. While not all transgender or gender-nonconforming people have historically sought the aid of medical interventions, few who did were able to receive such care at academic health centers in the U.S. until the emergence of gender clinics in the 1960s. In this presentation, I center my analysis on the Gender Identity Clinic at Johns Hopkins University. Drawing on archival research and oral history data, I argue that a moral commitment to authenticity animated the work of the clinic. Surgeons, psychiatrists, and sexologists collaborated in efforts to authenticate patients’ narratives of gender identity and to establish areas of professional expertise. Yet some of the same commitments that brought the Hopkins clinic together also contributed to its decline by the end of the 1970s. I further situate this history in a broader context of transgender health care and current debates about the legacy of gender clinics in both history and memory.

Mar 23, 2023 12:00 PM in Central Time (US and Canada)