1955 Study on Gender and Sexuality "All The Sexes: A Study of Masculinity and Femininity", First Edition

George W. Henry

First Edition

[LGBTQ][Transgender][Science, Medicine] Henry, George W., M.D. All the Sexes: A Study of Masculinity and Femininity. New York: Rinehart & Company, Inc., 1955. First edition. Octavo. Original black cloth boards in original printed dust jacket. A landmark work of midcentury American sexology, All the Sexes extends the clinical project of George W. Henry’s earlier publication Sex Variants (1941), moving beyond case study and pathology to offer a broader psychosocial theory of gender and sexuality. Henry, then Associate Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at Cornell Medical College, presents this volume as the culmination of more than thirty years of psychiatric research, drawing on interviews with over 8,000 men and 1,000 women. Framed as a moral and psychological inquiry into “sexual maladjustments,” the book reflects the constraints and the contradictions of pre-Stonewall sexual science, as Henry attempts to humanize queer people while pathologizing their identities through normative frameworks of adjustment and deviance.

In Henry's summary of his studies on homosexuality, he writes: “The psychosexual histories in the heterosexual and homosexual groups were conspicuously different. All patients in the heterosexual group were married and had from one to seven children. None of them had been unfaithful since marriage.” Such comparisons mark the book’s internal contradictions, purporting scientific objectivity while repeatedly invoking moralistic assumptions about heterosexual domestic life as a baseline for mental health. Despite these limitations, All the Sexes is historically significant for its expansive taxonomy of “sexual variants,” including detailed analyses of gender nonconformity, cross-dressing, transvestism, and “the female impersonator.” Despite outdated language and theories of sexuality, the book represents an early institutional effort to document, classify, and interpret LGBTQ identities. Jacket lightly worn, with moderate edgewear and shallow chipping at crown and foot of spine panel. Binding sound and pages clean, with no internal markings. An essential, if deeply conflicted, midcentury contribution to the psychiatric literature on homosexuality and gender variance. Though shaped by the biases of its era, All the Sexes offers indispensable documentation of early clinical attempts to make sense of sexual diversity.

Item #22993

Price: $285.00