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Richard Green
Born	June 6, 1936 Brooklyn, New York, US
Died	April 6, 2019(2019-04-06) (aged 82) United Kingdom
Alma mater	Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine Yale University
Awards	Magnus Hirschfeld Medal for Sexual Research (2006)
Scientific career
Fields	Sexology, psychiatry
Institutions	University of California, Los Angeles; State University of New York at Stony Brook; Imperial College, London

Richard Green (6 June 1936 – 6 April 2019) was an American-British sexologist, psychiatrist, lawyer, and author specializing in homosexuality and transsexualism, specifically gender identity disorder in children. He endorsed conversion therapy aimed at preventing young children becoming gay or transgender adults by stating parents should fully and only encourage gender conformity. Green was the founding editor of the Archives of Sexual Behavior (1971), and served as Editor until 2001. He was also the founding president of the International Academy of Sex Research (1975), which made the Archives its official publication. He served on the American Psychiatric Association DSM-IV Subcommittee on Gender Identity Disorders.

Education and career

Green was born in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, New York. His father was an accountant and his mother a teacher. He earned his BA from Syracuse University in 1957, his MD from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 1961, and his J.D. from Yale Law School in 1987.

During his medical studies at Johns Hopkins, Green met John Money, who was an assistant professor there, and started collaborating with him on research, initially on boys displaying substantial cross-gender behavior. In 1961, they published a paper titled “Effeminacy in Prepubertal Boys,” which looked at eleven youth assigned male at birth who were referred for their “excessive and persistent attempts to dress in the clothes of the opposite gender, constant display of gestures and mannerisms of the opposite sex, preference for play and other activities of the opposite sex, or a stated desire to be a member of the opposite sex.” They recommended that parents "Look for insidious and irrational ways in which parents may be unwittingly encouraging girlishness and penalizing their son for developing boyishly. Both should convey to their son their whole-hearted approval of his present and future masculine behavior and sexuality." The paper conflated gender identity, gender expression and sexual orientation, viewing effeminacy in boys as a problem to be fixed so as not to lead to adult "homosexuality and transvestism."

In Money's obituary, Green acknowledges Money and Robert Stoller, as well as his father, Leo H. Green, for having set the course for his life and career. In the mid-1960s, Money introduced Green to Harry Benjamin, whom Green acknowledges as having "further honed" his career. In 1969 Green and Money co-edited "Transsexualism and Sex Reassignment", published by Johns Hopkins Press.

Green was founding editor of Archives of Sexual Behavior in 1971, serving as Editor for 30 years. In 1974 Green and the board of the new journal established the International Academy of Sex Research, with Green as the founding president; the Archives became the official publication of the Academy. The new organization had a more selective membership than Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality (SSSS), which published the leading US sexology journal of the time, The Journal of Sex Research. The IASR membership has a more medical and biological emphasis, and only accepts applications from published researchers. The IASR also has a more international approach, alternatively meeting in the US and other countries every year. Eventually, the Archives became a premier journal in its field. Green retired as Editor of Archives of Sexual Behavior in 2001 and Editorship was continued by Kenneth Zucker.

In 1979 Green was a founding committee member of the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association and served as president from 1997 to 1999. He previously directed the human sexuality program at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He was at various times Professor of Psychiatry at the University of California, Los Angeles, Professor of Psychiatry at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, and Professor of Psychological Medicine, Imperial College, London. He was on the faculty of Law at UCLA and Cambridge. He was made a Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists in 1994. Green served as President of HBIGDA, now known as World Professional Association for Transgender Health, from 1997 to 1999.

Clinical vignettes from Green's work on gender identity disorder appear in widely used textbooks, such as Kaplan and Sadock's Synopsis of Psychiatry (10th ed.) The term "gender identity disorder" itself introduced in DSM-III was taken from Green's 1974 work. Sexual Identity Conflict in Children and Adults. New York, Basic Books.He served on the American Psychiatric Association DSM-IV Subcommittee on Gender Identity Disorders. In 2006 he was awarded the Magnus Hirschfeld Medal for Sexual Research.

Green was research director and consultant psychiatrist at the Gender Identity Clinic at Charing Cross Hospital in London and Senior Research Fellow, Institute of Criminology, Cambridge and Member of Darwin College, Cambridge. His partner since 1988, Melissa Hines, is a professor of psychology at the Faculty of Politics, Psychology, Sociology and International Studies, University of Cambridge. Green died on 6 April 2019, aged 82.

Law practice

Green was co-counsel for Elke Sommer in her libel suit against Zsa Zsa Gabor. He was co-counsel with the ACLU in a case challenging the Boy Scouts for refusing membership to a young gay man in California—Curran v. Mount Diablo Council of the Boy Scouts of America.

Views and controversies

During the APA's heated debate in the early 1970s about the declassification of homosexuality as a mental illness, Green argued forcefully in favor of declassification. He 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 applauded 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".

In his work, on gender identity in children, Green used common English expressions like "sissy boy" and "tomboy" in the titles of some of his publications. His choice of terminology was criticized as offensive.

In 2002, he initiated a debate in a special issue of the Archives of Sexual Behavior regarding the extent to which pedophilia should be classified as a mental disorder by the American Psychiatric Association, without impinging on the legal and law enforcement aspects. It concluded that sexual arousal to children is subjectively reported "in a substantial minority of "normal" people", and reviewed the level of social acceptance of this historically, but stated that such observations may not entail cultural or legal acceptance today. The paper also raised specific concerns about the DSM-IV definition, some of which were later acknowledged by Ray Blanchard in his literature review for the DSM-5 workgroup, which proposed a more general nomenclature distinction between paraphilias and paraphilic disorders; this proposal is part of the DSM-5 draft. In 2010, however, Green criticized in stronger terms Blanchard's proposal to introduce hebephilia as a mental disorder in the DSM-5 (as a subtype the proposed pedohebophilic disorder). Pointing to the legal age of sexual consent in several countries of Europe, this would declare 19-year-olds engaged sexually with 14-year-olds as having a mental disorder.

In terms of research on biology and sexual orientation, Green was optimistic about progress and told a reporter that "I suspect that at least in your lifetime we will find a gene that contributes substantially to sexual orientation."

He received the 2006 Magnus Hirschfeld Medal.

Selected publications

• Money, John; Green, Richard (February 1961), "Effeminacy in Prepubertal Boys", Pediatrics, 27 (2): 286–291, doi:10.1542/peds.27.2.286
• Green R, Money J (1969). Transsexualism and Sex Reassignment. The Johns Hopkins Press (1 November 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 Practitioner's Text. Williams & Wilkins; 2nd edition (June 1979) ISBN 0-683-03764-1.
• Green R (1987). The "Sissy Boy Syndrome" 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 (31 October 1997) ISBN 0-306-45532-3.
• Green R (1992). Sexual Science and the Law. Harvard University Press (November 1992). ISBN 0-674-80268-3.

References

1. ^ Florence Ashley (24 September 2019). "Homophobia, conversion therapy, and care models for trans youth: defending the gender-affirmative approach". Journal of LGBT Youth.
2. "Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences" (PDF).
3. ^ Ira L. Reiss (2006). An insider's view of sexual science since Kinsey. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 49. ISBN 978-0-7425-4653-0.
4. ^ 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
5. Peacock S, Editor (1997). Contemporary Authors. Vol. 159, p. 157. Gale, ISBN 0-7876-1862-4.
6. ^ Carey, Benedict (17 April 2019). "Dr. Richard Green, 82, Dies; Challenged Psychiatry's View of Homosexuality". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 18 September 2020.
7. ^ Money & Green 1961, p. 286
8. Money & Green 1961, p. 289
9. Green, R. (2006). "John Money, Ph.D. (July 8, 1921 – July 7, 2006): A Personal Obituary". Archives of Sexual Behavior. 35 (6): 629–632. doi:10.1007/s10508-006-9132-5. PMID 17123149. S2CID 44468647.
10. Green R (1985). The International Academy of Sex Research: In the beginning. Archives of Sexual Behavior 14: 293–302.
11. Green R (2001). A 30 years' thank you. Archives of Sexual Behavior 30: 633–637.
12. Brody, Jane E. (26 January 1982). Psychiatrists on homosexuality: Vigorous discord voiced at meeting. New York Times
13. "Faculty of Medicine".
14. Benjamin J. Sadock; Harold I. Kaplan; Virginia A. Sadock (2007). Kaplan & Sadock's synopsis of psychiatry: behavioral sciences/clinical psychiatry. Lippincott Williams & Wilkins. p. 720. ISBN 978-0-7817-7327-0.
15. P"Richard Green obituary". The Guardian. 15 April 2019. Retrieved 1 October 2019.
16. Pool, Bob (9 December 1993). $3.3-Million Libel Award in Sommer-Gabor Feud. Los Angeles Times
17. Donald James West; Richard Green (2002) . Sociolegal control of homosexuality: a multi-nation comparison. Springer. p. 152. ISBN 978-0-306-45532-2.
18. ^ Green, R. (2002). Is pedophilia a mental disorder? Archived 12 October 2010 at the Wayback Machine Archives of Sexual Behavior, 31, 2002.
19. Green, R. (2003). "The "T" Word". Archives of Sexual Behavior. 32 (1): 1. doi:10.1023/A:1021876609813. eISSN 1573-2800. ISSN 0004-0002. PMID 12597265. S2CID 152161247.
20. "DSM-5" (PDF).
21. https://www.dsm5.org/ProposedRevisions/Pages/proposedrevision.aspx?rid=186 (see the 'Rationale' tab)
22. Green, R. (2010). "Sexual preference for 14-year-olds as a mental disorder: you can't be serious!! (letter to the editor)". Archives of Sexual Behavior. 39 (3): 585–586. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.470.143. doi:10.1007/s10508-010-9602-7. PMID 20204488. S2CID 27870308.
23. Chandler Burr Homosexuality and Biology. The Atlantic Monthly. June 2007.

External links

• Richard Green at Imperial College website
• Should Marriage Between Homosexuals Be Permitted? Debate on Same-sex Marriage, The Advocates, 1974.
• list of publications from Springer Science+Business Media

• Use dmy dates from August 2013
• Psychiatry writers on LGBT topics
• 20th-century American Jews
• American sexologists
• American psychiatrists
• 2019 deaths
• 1936 births
• Lawyers from New York City
• Physicians from New York City
• Writers from Brooklyn
• Transgender studies academics
• Fellows of the Royal College of Psychiatrists
• Syracuse University alumni
• Johns Hopkins University alumni
• Yale Law School alumni
• David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA faculty
• Stony Brook University faculty
• Academics of Imperial College London
• People from Crown Heights, Brooklyn
• 20th-century American lawyers
• 21st-century American Jews