Richard Green was an American sexologist, psychiatrist, and lawyer. Green is a key historical figure in the oppression of trans and gender diverse people, especially children and adolescents.
Green was a key figure in the anti-trans conversion therapy movement, which Green called “the prevention of transsexualism.” Green lived to see many of his views about transgender and genderqueer people challenged and supplanted by more ethical practices and viewpoints.
Green’s book The “Sissy Boy Syndrome” is often compared to another classic of transphobia, The Man Who Would Be Queen.
Background
Green was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1936. Green earned a bachelor’s degree from Syracuse University in 1957, a medical degree from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 1961, and a law degree from Yale Law School in 1987.
Beginning in the 1960s, Green and John Money collaborated on publications about transsexualism and case management for “sissy” boys. Green was founding editor of Archives of Sexual Behavior in 1971 and founding president of the International Academy of Sex Research in 1973. In 1979 Green was a founding committee member of the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association and served as president from 1997-1999. Green previously directed the human sexuality program at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.
During the American Psychiatric Association’s heated debate in the early 1970s about the declassification of homosexuality as a mental illness, Green argued in favor of the removal. Green argued that the grounds for deciding the issue should be the “historical and cross-cultural groundings in homosexual expression, associated psychiatric features accompanying a homosexual orientation, the emotional consequences to the homosexual of societal condemnation, and behaviors of other species.” Green supported the eventual APA decision while strongly criticizing the fact that the administration put it to a vote, saying that such “a shotgun marriage between science and democracy” was “ludicrous.”
Green was a favored source of anti-trans writer Jane Brody of the New York Times. Bridy’s glowing coverage of Green’s views throughout the 1970s contributed to the 1979 movement to declare trans healthcare “experimental,” which led to clinic closures and ended insurance coverage for many trans Americans.
Green was a Professor of Psychiatry at the University of California, Los Angeles. Green was co-counsel for Elke Sommer in a libel suit against Zsa Zsa Gabor. Green served on the American Psychiatric Association DSM-IV Subcommittee on Gender Identity Disorders. Green turned over the editorship of Archives of Sexual Behavior in 2002 to Kenneth Zucker. In 2006 Green was awarded the Magnus Hirschfeld Medal for Sexual Research.
Green was a research director and consultant psychiatrist at the Gender Identity Clinic at Charing Cross Hospital in London. Green also served as Senior Research Fellow and Member of Darwin College, Cambridge. Green’s life partner Melissa Hines served as a professor of psychology and director of the Behavioural Neuroendocrinology Research Unit at the City University of London.
Green is a frequent defender of J. Michael Bailey, publishing in Bailey’s defense in the journal they control, the Archives of Sexual Behavior. Green’s response to trans community criticism of The Man Who Would Be Queen was typical of 20th century sexologists. When Alice Dreger published a cover-up of Bailey’s misdeeds in the journal Green founded, Green came out of retirement to pen a piece called “Lighten Up, Ladies.”
In 2015, Green’s hand-picked successor Kenneth Zucker had been fired from his job at CAMH and the children’s clinic was closed. Green died in 2019. Benedict Carey wrote the obituary that glossed over Green’s anti-transgender efforts.
Anti-trans activism
Many of Green’s views on gay and lesbian people were ahead of their time. Simultaneously, Green was one of the most staunch and unwavering proponents of curing trans and gender diverse children through conversion therapy, arguing that “it is a helluva lot easier negotiating life as a gay man or lesbian woman than as a transwoman or transman.”
Sociologist Karl Bryant was one of the earliest children forced into “treatment” during Green’s Feminine Boy Project. Bryant’s dissertation was on the politics of “gender identity disorder.” Bryant wrote: “I remember occasionally trying to muster the kinds of masculine behaviors that I knew I was supposed to naturally express. Ultimately I learned to hide as best I could my feminine behaviors and identifications.” Bryant concluded that “the people closest to me, and that I trusted the most, disapproved of me in some profound way […] The study and the therapy that I received made me feel that I was wrong, that something about me at my core was bad, and instilled in me a sense of shame that stayed with me for a long time afterward.”
2003 letter on the term “tomboy”
Trans scientist and activist Lynn Conway noted: “In February 2003, an exceptional Letter to the Editor by Richard Green, M.D., J.D. was published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior. The letter is exceptional because it was the first time 30 years that Dr. Green had written one. It is also exceptional in its timing and its possible encoded message. Here Dr. Green cautions J. M. Bailey on his use of language, using the example of how the label “tomboy” for certain girls once cost him grant money. He suggests that poor use of emotionally-laden terminology might lead to funding losses from “politically correct” funding agencies.”
Green’s letter:
I hope Bailey, Bechtold, and Berenbaum (2002) have greater fortune in conducting a longitudinal study of tomboys than I did (Green, Williams, & Gooman, 1982). After collecting data on 50 tomboys and a demographically matched non-tomboy group 20 years ago, we applied to NIMH (National Institute of Mental Health) for a grant renewal to do follow-ips. At our site visit, we were scolded by a psychiatrist who said that calling a girl a “tomboy” was like calling a Black person a “nigger.” So, there was no systematic follow-up.
I can, however, provide long-term follow-up on two of our former tomboys who contacted me in recent years. One is lesbian and the other evolved through lesbianism to female-to-male transsexualism. Advice to Bailey et al.: Concider a politically correct term to use for your subjects in case you are visited by the same psychiatrist who happened, like you, to be Illinois-based. John Money concocted the title “Incongruous Gender Role: Nongenital Manifestation in Pre-Pubertal Boys” for my first professorial paper (Green & Money, 1960) long before political correctness rendered us all tongue-tied. We could have called them “sissies.”
British trans campaigner Christine Burns wrote: “Richard Green’s advice when considering how to refer to one’s research subjects is to worry about the possible effects upon … your funding. Note … Not the respect for the human beings whose lives are reduced to mere data for the next paper to advance your career. No… The advice is clear. That consideration is not number one. But the bank balance is.”
2003 letter “Lighten up, ladies”
In 2003, anti-trans psychologist J. Michael Bailey published The Man Who Would Be Queen, one of the most transphobic books ever written. The trans community mobilized against the book in what KJ Surkan described as “one of the most organized and unified examples of transgender activism seen to date.” In response, anti-trans historian Alice Dreger published a 2007 attack on trans community leaders in Archives of Sexual Behavior, part of an entire issue of the journal about the book. Green wrote a brief letter to the editor for the issue.
“Dreger’s meticulously detailed and documented essay is on remarkably even terrain, considering the steep slope on which the events are perched. My concern here is not with the strengths or weaknesses of the Blanchard studies or the Bailey book. Rather, it is with the vortex of vitriol, the unrelenting campaign of character assassination. It could have been different.”
References
Jalopy, Roanne K. (December 29, 2020). Transgender Trouble: 40 Years of Gender Essentialism and Gatekeeping. Current Affairs https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/2020/12/transgender-trouble-40-years-of-gender-essentialism-and-gatekeeping
Ashley F (2020). Homophobia, conversion therapy, and care models for trans youth: defending the gender-affirmative approach. Journal of LGBT Youth. 17 (4): 361–383. https://doi.org/10.1080%2F19361653.2019.1665610
Herbert, J. (2019). Richard Green, M.D., J.D. (1936–2019). Archives of Sexual Behavior, 48(5), 1261–1262. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-019-01474-3
Ashley, Florence (May 10, 2019), Richard Green wasn’t an ally to trans communities: a controversial legacy. Medium https://medium.com/@florence.ashley/richard-green-wasnt-an-ally-to-trans-communities-a-controversial-legacy-e6d9a485f66e
Ring, Trudy (April 18, 2019). Psychiatrist Who Argued That Being Gay Is Not a Disorder Dies at 82. The Advocate https://www.advocate.com/news/2019/4/18/psychiatrist-who-argued-being-gay-not-disorder-dies-82
Carey, Benedict (April 17, 2019). Dr. Richard Green, 82, Dies; Dr. Richard Green, 82, Dies; Challenged Psychiatry’s View of Homosexuality. New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/17/obituaries/dr-richard-green-dead.html
Tatchell, Peter (April 15, 2019). Richard Green obituary: American psychiatrist and lawyer who made a great contribution to gay and trans rights. The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/apr/15/richard-green-obituary
Williams, Cristan (January 22, 2017). Disco sexology part 2: The timeline. TransAdvocate https://www.transadvocate.com/part-ii-the-history-the-rise-and-fall-of-discosexology-dr-zucker-camh-conversion-therapy_n_19630.htm
Schwartzapfel, Beth (March 14, 2013). Born This Way? Transgender activists believe that when children insist their birth sex is the wrong sex, their wishes should be honored. Dr. Kenneth Zucker disagrees. The American Prospect https://prospect.org/power/born-way/
Conway, Lynn (June 18, 2008). Dreger’s Defense of J. Michael Bailey: The Peer Commentary Papers Tear It Apart. https://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TS/Dreger/ASB%20paper/PeerCommentaries/Peer_Papers_Critical_of_Dreger.html
Bryant, K. Making gender identity disorder of childhood: Historical lessons for contemporary debates. Sex Res Soc Policy 3, 23–39 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1525/srsp.2006.3.3.23
Pickstone-Taylor SD (2003). Children with gender nonconformity. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 42(3), 266. https://doi.org/10.1097/00004583-200303000-00005
Conway, Lynn (2003). Prominent Gender Researcher Richard Green, M.D., J.D.* cautions J. M. Bailey on his use of language. https://ai.eecs.umich.edu//people/conway/TS/Bailey/Green.html [archive]
Burns, Christine (May 5th 2003). [Comment on Richard Green’s 2003 letter to J. Michael Bailey.]
Fox, Katrina (1997). Vancouver – The Richard Green Interview http://www.rfts.a.se/rich_greene.html [archive]
Pool, Bob (December 9, 1993). $3.3-Million Libel Award in Sommer-Gabor Feud. Los Angeles Times https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1993-12-09-me-50-story.html
Burr, Chandler (March 1993). Homosexuality and Biology. The Atlantic https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1993/03/homosexuality-and-biology/304683/
Peacock S, [Editor] (1997). Contemporary Authors. Vol. 159, p. 157. Gale, ISBN 0787618624
Brody, Jane E. (January 26, 1982). Psychiatrists on homosexuality: Vigorous discord voiced at meeting. New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/1982/01/26/science/psychiatrists-on-homosexuality-vigorous-discord-voiced-at-meeting.html
Selected publications by Green
Green R (2017). To Transition or Not to Transition? That Is the Question. Curr Sex Health Rep 9, 79–83 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11930-017-0106-5
Green R (2008). Lighten Up, Ladies. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 37(3), 451–452. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-008-9323-3
Green R (2003). Letter to the editor: The “T” word. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 32(1), 1–1. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1021876609813
Green R (2002). Is Pedophilia a Mental Disorder? Archives of Sexual Behavior, 31(6), 467–471. https://doi.org/10.1023/a:1020699013309
Green R (2001). A 30 years’ thank you. Archives of Sexual Behavior 30, 633–637 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1011967018255
West DJ, Green R [eds.] (1997). Sociolegal Control of Homosexuality: A Multi-Nation Comparison. Springer, ISBN 0-306-45532-3.
Green R (1992). Sexual Science and the Law. Harvard University Press (November, 1992). ISBN 0-674-80268-3.
Bradley SJ, Blanchard R, Coates SW, Green R, Levine SB, Meyer-Bahlburg HFL, Pauly IB, Zucker KJ (1991). Interim report of the DSM-IV Subcommittee on Gender Identity Disorders. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 20(4), 333–343. https://doi.org/10.1007/bf01542614
Green R (1987). The “Sissy Boy Syndrome” and the Development of Homosexuality. Yale University Press, ISBN 0-300-03696-5
Green R (1985). The International Academy of Sex Research: In the beginning. Archives of Sexual Behavior 14, 293–302 (1985). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01550845
Green R, Williams K, Goodman M. (1982). Ninety-nine “tomboys” and “non-tomboys”: Behavioral contrasts and demographic similarities. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 11(3), 247–266. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01544993
Green R (1979). Human Sexuality: A Health Practitioner’s Text. Williams & Wilkins, ISBN 0-683-03764-1
Green R (1974). Sexual Identity Conflict in Children and Adults. Basic Books, ISBN 0-465-07726-9
Green R (1972). Homosexuality as a mental illness. International Journal of Psychiatry, 10(1), 77–98. PMID: 5082653.
- Hatterer LJ (1972). Homosexuality as a mental illness: A critique. International Journal of Psychiatry, 10(1), 103–104. PMID: 5082638.
- Green R (1972). Homosexuality as a mental illness: Critical evaluation. Author’s reply. International Journal of Psychiatry, 10(1), 126–128. PMID: 5082643.
Green R (1969). Transsexualism and Sex Reassignment. The Johns Hopkins University Press, ISBN 0-8018-1038-8
Green R; Money J (1961). Effeminacy in prepubertal boys; Summary of eleven cases and recommendations for case management. Pediatrics Vol. 27 No. 2 February 1961, pp. 286-291 https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.27.2.286
Green R, Money J (1960). Incongruous gender role: Nongenital manifestations in prepubertal boys. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 131, 160–168. https://doi.org/10.1097/00005053-196008000-00009
Resources
Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org)
Imperial College (imperial.ac.uk)
- Professor Richard Green
- imperial.ac.uk/medicine/people/richard.green [archive]
- open.ac.uk/socialsciences/identities/profiles/r_green.pdf [archive]
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