Summary

In Chapter II, “The Variants,” the narrator asked Juan to tell him one thing he had learned from the two Sex Variants volumes (75). Juan spoke to the subjects’ experiences of the study, which were documented in the texts. Although they agreed to be studied, they were labeled “Narcissistic, Homosexual, Hoodlum—determined and erased” (77).

The lead researcher behind the Sex Variants books was Dr. George W. Henry (79). However, the study “began with Jan Gay” years before Henry’s involvement (79). The research started in 1935 and the study was originally published in 1941. Over the years, the study “rippled out into ever-widening circles of queer sociability” (79). People began dragging acquaintances into the study, eager to have them diagnosed.

Juan knew Jan and “her then-wife, Zhenya” when he was a child (80). Born in 1902, Jan studied “with the famed sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld” (82). She and Zhenya later founded a nudist...