The Intermediaries Quotes

“Hirschfeld's behavior may have more to do with his foundational belief that science, once presented, would plead its own case. He had always trusted, for better and for worse, that, when faced with scientific evidence, even his enemies would see the error of their ways. It wasn't true then, as it isn't true now. The argument from science works only on those who care to be changed by it.”
― Brandy Schillace, The Intermediaries: A Weimar Story

“He'd first called those in between the third sex, but now he felt that was far too unambitious. In his new formulation, Hirschfeld suggested that there might be, mathematically speaking, 43 million possible combinations!”
― Brandy Schillace, The Intermediaries: A Weimar Story

“In Sappho and Socrates, Hirschfeld had branded homosexual men effeminate. He realized his error, and on the heels of Berlin's Third Sex wrote a pamphlet titled Geschlechtsübergänge (roughly, Sexual Transitions), in which he attempted to make amends. The "absolute man and "absolute woman," he explained, were fantasies, abstractions. All human beings existed on a continuum.”
― Brandy Schillace, The Intermediaries: A Weimar Story