XVI Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association Symposium
17 - 21 August 1999, London

Reflections on "Transsexualism and Sex Reassignment" 1969 -1999

Reed Erickson and the Beginnings of the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association

Devor, Holly, Ph.D. Sociology Department University of Victoria, Canada

I offer an initial exploration of the influence of Reed Erickson on the development of the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association.

Erickson, now deceased, was born as a female in 1917. In the mid-1960’s, under the supervision of Harry Benjamin, Erickson underwent gender and sex reassignments and lived as a man until his death in 1992. Throughout the 1960’s, 1970’s and 1980’s, he earned many millions of dollars as a successful businessman. In the early 1960’s, he formed a non-profit philanthropic foundation. The Erickson Educational Foundation (EEF), with offices in the U.S. in Baton Rouge, El Paso, Los Angeles, New York City, Ojai, and Phoenix; in Mazatlan, Mexico and Panama City, Panama. Erickson used the EEF as a vehicle for wide-ranging philanthropic activities spanning more than two decades.

When Erickson began the EEF, transsexualism was little known to either professionals or the public. The present widespread recognition of transsexualism as a human condition can be partially attributed to the wide-ranging activities of the EEF. Among other important work, the EEF funded the work of Harry Benjamin and the Harry Benjamin Foundation for several years starting in 1964. The EEF also organized and funded the first series of international conferences on gender dysphoria held in London in 1969, in Copenhagen in 1971, in Dubrovnik in 1973, and in Stanford in 1975. The conferences set the groundwork for the formation of the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association in San Diego in 1977.