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Ninety years after Hirschfeld’s death in May of 1935, our political and cultural conjuncture—one which makes the limits of gay and trans liberalism terrifyingly clear—asks us to imagine Hirschfeld differently, to think more critically about how diagnostic categories became identity formations and shaped rights claims. Those categories were never innocent of the broader forces of class, race, and empire, and they fail us in important ways. Alas, two new popular books on Hirschfeld—Brandy Schillace’s The Intermediaries and Daniel Brook’s biography The Einstein of Sex—misread the moment and in some cases the historical record, and remain stuck in easier, more comforting and less useful narratives.