Racism and the making of gay rights : a sexologist, his student, and the empire of queer love / Laurie Marhoefer.

"A love story packed with gay history, this dual biography of a sexologist and his student sheds light on the early gay rights movement and the racist and imperial concepts that are embedded in queer politics."-- Provided by publisher.

"In 1931, a sexologist arrived in colonial Shanghai to give a public lecture about homosexuality. In the audience was a medical student. The sexologist, Magnus Hirschfeld, fell in love with the medical student, Li Shiu Tong. Li became Hirschfeld's assistant on a lecture tour around the world. Racism and the Making of Gay Rights shows how Hirschfeld laid the groundwork for modern gay rights, and how he did so by borrowing from a disturbing set of racist, imperial, and eugenic ideas. Following Hirschfeld and Li in their travels through the American, Dutch, and British empires, from Manila to Tel Aviv to having tea with Langston Hughes in New York City, and then into exile in Hitler's Europe, Laurie Marhoefer provides a vivid portrait of queer lives in the 1930s and of the turbulent, often-forgotten first chapter of gay rights." -- Provided by the Publisher.

Toronto ; Buffalo ; London : University of Toronto Press, [2022]

viii, 315 pages : illustrations (black and white), maps (black and white) ; 24 cm

Includes bibliographical references (pages 267-301) and index.

"Einstein of Sex": Magnus Hirschfeld at the End of the First Century of Gay Rights -- The Empire of Queer Love -- Hirschfeld and Li Shiu Tong Meet: Feminism and Queer Attraction at the China United Apartments -- The Fight against Sexual Oppression Is a Fight against Empire -- Was the Homosexual White? Analogy and the Making of the Sexual Minority -- Magnus Hirschfeld's Theory of the Races -- Tea with Langston Hughes: Hirschfeld's Anti-Blackness and Queer Black New York -- Making Jews White -- Magnus Hirschfeld's Queer Eugenics -- "And What about Women?" -- The Exile -- Li Shiu Tong's Queer Masculinities -- Li Shiu Tong's Defiant Sexology -- Conclusion: Li Shiu Tong's Berlin and Magnus Hirschfeld's America.