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By Root 1922 0

tremendous difficulty transitioning, says Devor. Though he never underwent genital surgery, Erickson had a mastectomy in Mexico in the early sixties, and had some “touch-up work” on his chest in the United States, as well as a hysterectomy after becoming a patient of Harry Benjamin’s. “There were doctors who would do this if you had the money, and Erickson had the money,” Devor says. “Though it doesn’t seem that Erickson had much trouble himself, I think he was very aware of the troubles that others were having. One of the first projects of the EEF was drawing up a list of helpful and sympathetic doctors and surgeons by city and region. EEF was started in ’64 and this was one of their early projects. It was an ongoing project, and they were always adding new names to the list.”

Erickson enjoyed a warm relationship with Money, whom he was also funding by that time. “They were quite close for a long time, enjoying lots of social interaction,” says Devor. “They shared common interests. It was more than just a business relationship.… John Money was quite open and liberal and certainly not snobbish about socializing with transsexuals,” he says. “I know they were friends, and of course Erickson was putting money into what Money was doing.”

Erickson donated nearly $85,000 to the Johns Hopkins Gender Identity Clinic over ten years, says Devor. “It has become quite clear to me that the money from the EEF was essential to the start-up of the Johns Hopkins clinic. Media reports from the time said that the clinic was entirely funded by the EEF.” The importance of Erickson’s support, and Money’s gratitude toward his benefactor, can perhaps be judged by the fact that Erickson was invited to contribute the preface to Transsexualism and Sex Reassignment, edited by Richard Green and

John Money and published by the Johns Hopkins University Press in 1969. In the preface to that volume, Erickson testifies to the difficulty that transsexual people had in finding physicians who understood their condition and surgeons both competent and willing to carry out the surgery. “Although here and there an occasional doctor or clinic performed sex-change operations—sometimes successfully, sometimes not—it was only after The Johns Hopkins Hospital provided its facilities and publicized its work that sex-conversion operations began to be undertaken openly by hospitals of high reputation.”

By all accounts, the opening of the Gender Identity Clinic at Johns Hopkins Hospital in 1966, and the decision to begin performing sex-reassignment surgery there, was largely brought about by Money, who argued, cajoled, and arm-twisted reluctant colleagues into translating the expertise they had acquired treating intersexual people into treating transsexuals. In the introduction to Transsexualism and Sex Reassignment, Harry Benjamin writes, “Dr. John Money, psychologist at Johns Hopkins, widely-known and respected for his extensive studies on hermaphroditism and related endocrinopathies and sexual disorders, was probably more responsible than any other individual for the decision that such an august institution as The Johns Hopkins Hospital would take up this controversial subject and actually endorse sex-altering surgery in suitable subjects. This decision testifies to the high esteem in which Dr. Money is held by his medical co-workers.”

Even those who do not hold Money in high esteem—quite the opposite—acknowledge his role in bringing SRS to Johns Hopkins. John Colapinto, a journalist whose book As Nature Made Him portrays Money as a diabolical figure, twisted by arrogance and ambition, describes Money’s “campaign to establish Johns Hopkins as the first hospital in America to embrace transexual surgeries” in detail. Colapinto quotes Howard W. Jones, the gynecological surgeon who had developed the surgical techniques used in the neonatal intersex protocol, as saying that “for a number of months, maybe even years, John kept raising the question of whether we shouldn’t get into the transsexual situation.” Colapinto reports that Money brought in Harry Benjamin and some