Pomeroy, 1967
Harry Benjamin Foundation Research Study on Transsexualism within private practice, New York, NY, USA

This publication is important for three reasons: First, it treats the first 25 patients who were studied by the author in the realm of the Harry Benjamin Research Study on Transsexualism. As a long-term collaborator of Kinsey and co-author of the first Kinsey Report, the author could, secondly, make important statements. He was an esteemed expert and consultant for questions of sexuality in the USA and founder and director for many years for the Institute of Advanced Study in Human Sexuality in San Francisco. Finally, the results were rendered to the New York Academy of Science, which gave them additional weight.
The publication is less interesting because of its follow-up study results than for the characterization for the situation of transsexuals before surgery (see below). Some characteristics that negate widely spread catalogues of indicative symptoms of transsexualism, for example, the presumed asexuality of transsexuals and their strict separation from homosexual behavior. This publication was re-published in Money & Green, 1969 (Pomeroy, 1969).

• Sample
• Study Methods
• Evaluation Fields and Criteria
• Results
• Case Studies
• Authors' Conclusion
• Remarks

Study Methods
How far the researcher participated in the treatment and indication for surgery cannot be clearly determined in the publication. It is only mentioned that a limited number of patients were interviewed before and after surgery.

Evaluation Fields and Criteria
The evaluation fields were psychological results and sexual functioning abilities.

Results
The ability to function sexually was exclusively represented under the viewpoint of achieving orgasm. After surgery, five females had regular or irregular orgasms from sex. One female who could not have intercourse because of unsatisfactory surgical results was able to climax by manual and/or oral-genital stimulation. The publication contains no specifics about psychological results.

Case Studies
In note form for each of the eight females, the follow-up study time, functional results and sexual habits are mentioned.

Authors' Conclusion
Because of the large individual differences, the author considers a global rating as difficult. "By and large, they appeared to be rather rigid, moralistic, isolated people with, usually, rather low rates of overt sexual behavior but a very great fantasy life which was compulsive and irreversibly transsexual. They were not fetishistic, as transvestites usually are, but received a great deal of relief when they were able to dress as females and act like females. It was not the female clothing, per se, which gave them this relief, but the adoption of the total female role.
Without an exception those that were operated felt better about themselves both psychologically and sexually. They were less depressed and less anxious. None of them regretted the operation. They seemed to be on the road to making a good sexual adjustment, at least a better one than they were able to make as males, and in this respect, there is every reason to believe that conversion operations were beneficial " (pp. 446-447).

Remarks
Quite remarkable is the scepticism with which the sexologist regards the statements of the females using physiological models: Two of them whose surgeries were three, resp., 11 years earlier reported that their partners did not know anything about their past. With these partners they reported to have orgasms regularly and sometimes even multiple ones. These statements were deemed by the author as hardly believable and descriptions of orgasmic sensations experienced did not convince him otherwise, because he expected that the females -- who still had prostates -- would report about ejaculating.

More than just about the post-surgical situation of the partial sample of operated patients, the publication contains information about the past of the total sample - for example, religious affiliation, social contacts, childhood and sexual behavior: Childish sexual games hardly happened, the frequency of masturbation was low and spontaneous ejaculation did not happen in about one third of the sample. Dream images were concentrated on the imagination of oneself as a female individual and on sexual activity as a female. One-third of the transsexuals had been married, where marriages generally were done to heal the gender identity problems. Only two of the 23 had had no overt homosexual contacts "and for over a half of the subjects, homosexual activity was extensive in adult life" (p. 445). Almost half had exclusively homosexual contacts.