Richard Green was an American sexologist, psychiatrist, and lawyer. Green was a key figure in the conversion therapy movement, focusing on what he called “the prevention of transsexualism.” He 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. He earned his A.B. from Syracuse University in 1957, his M.D. from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 1961, and his J.D. from Yale Law School in 1987.
Beginning in the 1960s, Green and John Money collaborated on publications about transsexualism and case management for âsissyâ 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. He previously directed the human sexuality program at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.
During the American Psychiatric Associationâs heated debate in the early 1970s about the declassification of homosexuality as a mental illness, Green argued in favor of the removal. He argued that the grounds for deciding the issue should be the âhistorical 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.â Green supported the eventual APA decision while strongly criticizing the fact that the administration put it to a vote, saying that such âa shotgun marriage between science and democracyâ was âludicrous.â
Green was a Professor of Psychiatry at the University of California, Los Angeles. He was co-counsel for Elke Sommer in her libel suit against Zsa Zsa Gabor. He 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 he 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. He also served as Senior Research Fellow and Member of Darwin College, Cambridge. His life partner Melissa Hines served as a professor of psychology and director of the Behavioural Neuroendocrinology Research Unit at the City University of London.
He is a frequent defender of J. Michael Bailey, publishing in Baileyâs 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 her cover-up of Bailey’s misdeeds in the journal he 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 his clinic was closed. Green died in 2019. Benedict Carey wrote the obituary that glossed over Green’s anti-transgender efforts.
Selected publications
Green R (1969). Transsexualism and Sex Reassignment. The Johns Hopkins University Press (November 1, 1969) ISBN 0-8018-1038-8.
Green R (1974). Sexual identity conflict in children and adults. Basic Books (1974). ISBN 0-465-07726-9.
Green R (1979). Human Sexuality: A Health Practitionerâs Text. Williams & Wilkins; 2nd edition (June, 1979) ISBN 0-683-03764-1.
Green R (1987). The âSissy Boy Syndromeâ and the Development of Homosexuality. Yale Univ Pr (February, 1987) ISBN 0-300-03696-5.
West DJ, Green R (eds.) (1997). Sociolegal Control of Homosexuality : A Multi-Nation Comparison. Springer; 1 edition (October 31, 1997) ISBN 0-306-45532-3.
Green R (1992). Sexual Science and the Law. Harvard University Press (November, 1992). ISBN 0-674-80268-3.
Green R (2003). Letter to the Editor: The âTâ Word Archives of Sexual Behavior (see commentary here)
Green R (2008). Lighten Up, Ladies. Archives of Sexual Behavior.
References
Green, R. (2002). Is pedophilia a mental disorder? Archives of Sexual Behavior, Vol. 31, 2002. A copy of the article is available from Questia.
Peacock S, Editor (1997). Contemporary Authors. Vol. 159, p. 157. Gale, ISBN 0787618624
Effeminacy in prepubertal boys; Summary of eleven cases and recommendations for case management. Pediatrics Vol. 27 No. 2 February 1961, pp. 286-291
Green R (1985). The International Academy of Sex Research: In the beginning. Archives of Sexual Behavior 14: 293-302.
Brody, Jane E. (January 26, 1982). Psychiatrists on homosexuality: Vigorous discord voiced at meeting. New York Times
Pool, Bob (December 9, 1993). $3.3-Million Libel Award in Sommer-Gabor Feud. Los Angeles Times
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 Volume 20, Number 4 / August, 1991
Green R (2001). A 30 yearsâ thank you. Archives of Sexual Behavior 30: 633-637.
Homosexuality and Biology. By Chandler Burr. The Atlantic Monthly. June 2007.
Richard Green obituary | World news | The Guardian
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
Carey, Benedict (April 17, 2019). Dr. Richard Green, 82, Dies; Dr. Richard Green, 82, Dies; Challenged Psychiatryâs View of Homosexuality. New York Times.https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/17/obituaries/dr-richard-green-dead.html
External links
Richard Green profile
1997 interview
Richard Green to Bailey on âPolitical Correctnessâ
Editorâs note: Richard Green, M.D., J.D. is research director and consultant psychiatrist at Charing Cross Gender Identity Clinic in London. During the 1960s he worked in the USA with Professor John Money and Harry Benjamin and has been involved in the treatment of transsexuals and research into transsexualism for over 35 years. He is past president of Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association (HBIGDA), and researches medical, social and legal issues surrounding gender dysphoria.
Lynn Conway writes:
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 âtomboyâ for certain girls once cost him grant money. He suggests that poor use of emotionally-laden terminology might lead to funding losses from âpolitically correctâ funding agencies.
If funding agencies were to ask trans women how we felt about Baileyâs terminology, and about his sweeping caricatures of us, they might understand one reason why we are so outraged by Bailey. If only the funding agencies thought of transwomen as human beings, Dr. Green could then directly warn Bailey that his blanket and sweeping use of terms that are highly offensive to trans women might also cost him something.
Is this Letter nothing more than a hint about funding politics, and the use of the word âtomboyâ? Is that motive enough to write the first such Letter in 30 years? Or is it a marker placed into the archives, just as Baileyâs book was about to be published, saying: âI see it coming. I see how Tâs will react to Baileyâs use of language about themâ?
We can only speculate about its meaning here. We hope that it is more than a mere coaching regarding insuring funding by being politially correct, without any regard to the issue of emotional sensitivities of research subjects (much less those of the transgender community at large). Is Green here a keen observer and astute predictor of human social behavior, or is he a merely passing a few hackademic tips along to Bailey? You will have to ask Dr. Green about that.
Letter to the Editor
The âTâ Word
To the Editor
I waited 30 years to write a Letter to the Editor.
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 out site visit, we were scolded by a psychiatrist who said that calling a girl a âtomboyâ was like calling a Black person a ânigger.â 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 âIncongruous Gender Role: Nongenital Manifestation in Pre-Pubertal Boysâ for my first professorial paper (Green & Money, 1960) long before political correctness rendered us all tongue-tied. We could have called them âsissies.â
REFERIENCES
Bailey, J. M., Bechtold, K. T., & Berenbaum, S. A. (2002). Who are tomboys and why should we study them? Archives of Sexual Behavior, 31, 333-341.
Green, R., & Money, J. (1960). Incongruous Gender Role: Nongenital Manifestation in Pre-Pubertal Boys. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 131, 160-168.
Green, R., Williams, K., & Goodman, M. (1982). Ninety-nine âtomboysâ and ânon-tomboysâ: Behavioral contrasts and demorgraphic similarities. Archives of Sexual behavior, 11, 247-266.
Richard Green, M.D., J.D.
Gender Identity Clinic
Department of Psychiatry
Charing Cross Hospital
Fulham Palace Road
London W6 8RF
England
e-mail:Â [email protected]
Christine Burns writes on the topic of Political Correctness .. and what an important figure in British trans peopleâs treatment evidently thinks on the topicâŠ
Iâve never liked the term âPolitical Correctnessâ.
Terms like âwell manneredâ, âpoliteâ, âconsiderateâ have always seemed to me to get far closer to the roots of what such considerations are supposed to be about. To be âpolitically correctâ is to engage the brain before opening the mouth â to consider the meaning of what you are saying in an inclusive and fair society â to differentiate personal subjectivity from professional objectivity. And whatâs wrong with that?
Whoever coined the term originally .. and all those who have since lined up to pour scorn on the idea by scorning the expression itself .. demonstrate to the rest of us that they think there is something inherently wrong about striving to be âcorrectâ when practising politics.
To those people, the discipline of stopping to consider oneâs thoughts and prejudices before uttering them is an annoying encumbrance â a tedious distraction when they ought to be getting on with more important things. Peopleâs feelings and the dismissal of their lives donât matter if they stand in the way of their work.
Such people become angry and defensive when parallels are drawn between their thought processes and those of tyrants and bullies. And what is the difference? Democracy is a sentimental encumbrance to be scorned if you are busily intent on putting your ambitions before others. Democracy is for wimps!
Always bear that in mind. When someone talks contemptuously about âPolitical Correctnessâ they are saying that they have no real time for consideration of the impact of their words and views or interests on others on every plane â presumably because they consider those things to matter less than their own interest. They feel that being hurt by what they do is the victimâs problem, not the agressorâs and that any view opposing that behaviour is evidence that âPolitical Correctness has gone madâ.
Bear those thoughts in mind therefore when reading the published advice from the head of Britainâs largest Gender Identity Clinic to J M Bailey in âThe Archives of Sexual Behaviorâ in February of this year. This is a topic which has clearly aroused the good professor so much that after 30 years he felt moved to write his very first letter to the editor. And almost as though in recognition of the significance of that move, the editor placed his letter at the top of page 1. Richard Greenâs advice when considering how to refer to oneâs 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. For without the funding there would be no Richard Greenâs and no J M Baileyâs financed to make a career out of objectifying others. And that would be such a terrible thing, wouldnât it?
Christine Burns
Trans Rights Campaigner
Manchester, UK
May 5th 2003
Note: In 2025, this site phased out AI illustrations after artist feedback. The previous illustration is here.
