Magnus Hirschfeld himself was, as the historian Susan Stryker argues, ‘a pioneering advocate for transgender people’ who worked with the police to develop certificates that trans people could use to avoid arrest for wearing clothing ‘incorrect’ for their sex. He also hired trans people to work at his Institute for Sexual Science, although often in menial roles.24 But in Hirschfeld’s scientific publications, trans people were spoken for and about: mostly described by cisgender male doctors, evaluated and photographed like scientific specimens. On at least some of the pages of The Third Sex,
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