Magnus Hirschfeld: Panhumanism and the Sexual Cultures of Asia

The German-Jewish physician Magnus Hirschfeld (1868-1935) was the first to outline a non-Eurocentric, anti-colonialist critique of culture from a sexological perspective in his book Weltreise eines Sexualforschers [The world journey of a sex researcher-hereafter Weltreise]. Generally considered one of the grounding texts of sexual ethnology, Weltreise is the report of a trip the sexologist made between 1930 and 1932. Since Hirschfeld began his journey shortly after completing the publication of his five-volume opus magnum, Geschlechtskunde auf Grund dreissigjahriger Forschung und Erfahrung bearbeitet [Sexual science treated on the basis of thirty years of research and experience], the travel report should be read and interpreted bearing in mind the overall design of Hirschfeld's sexology and its ethical and political implications. Inasmuch as Hirschfeld's sexuelle Zwischenstufenlehre (i.e. the doctrine of sexual intermediary stages) constitutes the epistemic foundation of his endeavours, it will play an essential role in the following elaborations on Weltreise. The interpretation of this doctrine as an open-ended scheme of sexual distribution superseding all closed systems of categorial subsumption was propounded for the first time by the present author in his 1998 essay 'Der Tod Adams. Geschichtsphilosophische Thesen zur Sexualemanzipation im Werk Magnus Hirschfelds' ['The death of Adam: Historical-philosophical theses concerning sexual emancipation in the work of Magnus Hirschfeld']. Adapted from the source document.