Teacher; Lucy Meadows, otherwise anon;
On having had full gender reassignment;
Caught the attention of Richard Littlejohn,
Who subsequently called for her retirement:
“He isn’t only”, the bigot prattled on,
Arrogantly; with thinly-veiled incitement,
“In the wrong body; he’s in the wrong job”;
And he all but piously urged her to stop,
Quote: “Putting his own selfish needs ahead
Of the well-being of the children he has taught”.
Then came the hate mail, in which far worse was said
To Lucy, evidently, deemed fair sport,
And a short while later, Lucy was found dead;
Poisoned by carbon monoxide; in short;
She’d killed herself, and the coroner’s dim view
Of the tabloids, bears repeating: “SHAME ON YOU!”
Mindful of Lucy Meadows (R.I.P);
Let’s travel back to a long ago date,
In Berlin: May 6th 1933;
When Germany was a Nazi-run state,
And when The Institute for Sexology,
Was looted; and, on being forced to vacate;
Its staff were imprisoned, beaten or killed;
And the vacancies, Nazi officialdom filled.
The Institute for Sexology would
Today be over a century old,
If it hadn’t been looted and closed for good,
And research was allowed to continue, unfold,
Lest any knowledge be misunderstood,
Kept under wraps, or illicitly sold:
Homosexuality, abortion,
Gender, feminism, contraception;
All that, and other like things, were hated
By many; regarded un-German; uncouth;
And let’s face it; it can’t be exaggerated;
The same could be said of most countries, in truth;
Gay people were historically, ill-fated;
And the wrath of radicalised völkisch youth,
Unleashed in Berlin on that fateful day,
Had long before then, been simmering away.
The Institute, founded in 1919,
Was the brainchild of a German physician;
Magnus Hirschfeld, who for many years, had been
An advocate for gender transition,
And rights for the gay and transgender scene;
A brave, undoubtedly hazardous mission;
Though The Weimar Republic government;
Progressive and liberal; gave their consent.
The Institute lays claim to the first ever
Full-gender-reassignment, there performed,
On a woman, who once had tried to sever
Her penis, in awareness of being malformed,
When merely six years of age! And whether
Or not, in retrospect, this drastic form
Of self-harm was due to gender dysphoria,
I can offer no account or Memoria.
Dora Richter; known affectionately
As “Dora”, prior to being employed
At the institute was, respectively;
A baker, an actor and a null-and-void
(i.e. rejected) soldier in the army,
The draft into which she’d failed to avoid.
Finally; she entered the Institute, where
She worked, till the Nazis came visiting there.
(Dora’s reassignment was, ironically,
Performed by Erwin Gohrbandt, who, post- war,
Was accused of war criminality,
Re Nazi experiments , he oversaw,
Concerning “Hyperthermia mortality”;
Tests for which he was never imprisoned for:
And, having mulled over those blemishes;
I mention them here, in parenthesis).
Turning the spotlight back on Magnus Hirschfeld
Reveals a scapegoat for hard-right hatred:
One night, he was nearly fatally quelled,
By a mob, who afterwards left him for dead,
And on hearing he’d survived being felled
The disappointment could even be read
In rags whose censurers had plenty to say
About Magnus Hirschfeld; born-Jewish and gay.
For fourteen years, The Institute continued
Research, during which time it became a kind
Of refuge for those who were mainly viewed
By a public, misguidedly inclined
To label them, filth, unnatural, lewd,
Sick, twisted, perverted, and morally blind;
Whereas, at the Institute, people were free
To live-out their gender and sexuality
In a respectful and safe environment;
Trans employees were each supplied with passes,
(A Weimer Government legal requirement),
Allowing them to move among the masses
In dress unrestrained by birth-sex assignment;
Lecturers held educational classes
Relating to matters otherwise taboo;
There was marriage guidance; sex counselling too;
The Institute championed equality
For women, STD treatment, abortion,
Gender recognition and legality
For homosexuals; a source of revulsion,
Long drawn-on by men in authority,
Though never near the point of exhaustion;
Which begs a question, I’ll venture out loud:
Were gay people more a majority crowd? ?
In 1933, when he came to power;
Adolf Hitler, unleashed a remorseless surge
Of hatred, which Joseph Goebbels; by now,
Reich Minister of Propaganda, would merge
With hypnotic speeches, crowned with a vow
Of terrible revenge on the Jewish scourge,
Coupled with the purging of “Homophile” clubs;
Whose members deserved the severest of drubs.
Less than five months later, The Institute
Was raided by students; Nazis to-a-man;
Given free-rein by the government, to loot
And destroy, like Nazis do, because they can;
And accompanied by a brass-band to boot!
The institute library they overran;
Every book therein deemed fuel for fire,
Hence ceremoniously thrown on the pyre.
Institute employees, were, by the SA,
Manhandled with prejudice in the extreme,
And, in accord with the aforesaid vow, they
(The survivors)would later either team
Up with Nazi scientists, and doctors, by way
Of collaboration, or join the endless stream
Of humanity, flowing beyond prison gates,
To an ocean of expendable inmates.
Dora Richter; it transpired, hadn’t died
But escaped; settling eventually,
In Czechoslovakia, where she applied
(Successfully) for a new identity.
Magnus Hirschfeld, unwittingly deprived
Ill-fate; having long-ago left Germany,
He’d been traveling the world all the while,
(Though he died, two years later, in exile).
As for the Nazis, the war, and all the rest;
What can be said apart from; “It’s history”?
But what of humanity put to the test?
Have the lessons given post-victory,
Been all but forgotten north, south, east, and west
By majorities, favouring bigotry?
Far-right politics, today, seems to be
Rising again, as far as I see:
Populist leaders, of hard right agenda,
Espoused by the likes of The Daily Mail,
Are, seemingly, each a leading contender,
On many a nationalist campaign trail:
Anti-abortion, gay and transgender;
These authoritarians, should they prevail,
(Their vote-base grows daily, evermore vast)
Look set to repeat the mistakes of the pas
Richard Littlejohn, today, is still employed
By the Daily Mail; brain-washing millions,
In spite of Miss Meadows, whose life was destroyed
By the likes of his shallow opinions;
Ignorant and baselessly paranoid
Rhetoric, fit for fascist dominions
Brazenly printed, published and believed
By too many readers, too easily, deceived.
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