Are Gay People Being Turned Transgender? (No)

In 1886, German psychiatrist Richard von Krafft-Ebing wrote one of the first works of what we’d currently call sexology, Psychopathia Sexualis: eine Klinisch-Forensische Studie (or Sexual Psychopathy: A Clinical-Forensic Study). The book is where the terms “sadist” and “masochist” were coined, the term sadist being named after French novelist Marquis de Sade and the term masochist being named after Austrian author Leopold von Sacher-Masoch.

However, what’s most important for this discussion is what the book says about homosexuality. According to Krafft-Ebing, homosexuality is a mental disorder that slowly eats at and fundamentally changes a person. First, the person will be nothing more than your average heterosexual male. Then, they will become attracted to men, but they will still retain an active “male role,” during sex (basically, they’ll be a top). After awhile, they’ll start to desire a passive sexual role (basically, they’ll becoming a bottom). Lastly, when this illness reaches its final stages, they will entertain delusions of having become a woman.

Of course, this is utter nonsense. Even if the psychology of why people are straight, gay, transgender, sexually dominate, and sexually submissive are all not fully understood, we do know all of these are very separate things created by separate circumstances. Krafft-Ebing appears to…