Historians are bringing fresh attention to Li Shiu Tong, a Chinese Canadian sexologist whose 1930s research offered a striking view of sexuality and gender. Long overshadowed by his better-known partner, Magnus Hirschfeld, Li’s surviving work raises important questions about who gets remembered, whose data gets trusted and how many people have felt safe enough to name themselves.

Essential Takeaways

  • A pioneering researcher: Li Shiu Tong worked alongside Magnus Hirschfeld and continued studying sexuality independently.
  • Bold conclusions: His surviving manuscript proposed far higher levels of bisexuality and homosexuality than many earlier theories suggested.
  • A fragile archive: Notes and personal papers were nearly lost before researchers traced them through an unlikely chain of discovery.
  • Racism shaped his legacy: Historians say Li’s Asian identity contributed to his work being dismissed or overlooked.
  • Still relevant today: His observations echo modern debates about under-reporting, social pressure and LGBTQ+ visibility.

The forgotten figure beside Magnus Hirschfeld

Li Shiu Tong first met Magnus Hirschfeld during the sexologist’s lecture tour in China in 1931. Li was already deeply interested in medical theories about homosexuality, and the encounter soon became both a professional partnership and a romantic relationship, according to LGBTQ Nation and historical biographies of Li.

Hirschfeld was already a major figure in queer history. He founded Berlin’s Institute for Sexual Science and helped promote the idea that same-sex desire and gender diversity were natural parts of human life, rather than moral failings or illnesses. Li, meanwhile, was often treated as a supporting character in a story that should have included him much more prominently.

Their relationship unfolded at a dangerous moment. Openly gay life was heavily restricted, and the rise of Nazism made Hirschfeld’s return to Germany impossible. The institute was later attacked and its library destroyed, leaving researchers with a painfully incomplete record of early sexology.

Li’s research offered a startlingly different picture

Hirschfeld believed homosexuality was natural but relatively uncommon. Li’s later observations pointed towards a far broader spectrum of sexuality, based on years of travel and contact with queer communities, according to accounts from the Magnus Hirschfeld Society and historians cited by LGBTQ Nation.

In his surviving manuscript, Li suggested that 40 per cent of people were bisexual, 20 per cent homosexual, 30 per cent heterosexual and 10 per cent fell into another category. He also described trans identities as an important and positive part of human experience. Those figures can't be treated like a modern population survey, but they were remarkably expansive for the period.

The contrast with today's headline statistics is revealing. Recent US estimates place the LGBTQ+ population at roughly 12 per cent, although results vary depending on wording, age, privacy and whether surveys ask about identity, attraction or behaviour. Li’s work reminds us that a number can reflect the conditions under which people answer as much as the people themselves.

Why his evidence remains difficult to verify

Li’s findings came from observational research rather than a standardised national survey. The communities he encountered may have been more likely to include people who were open about their sexuality, so his sample could have been unusually visible and socially connected. That limitation matters, but it doesn't make the work worthless.

The bigger problem is that much of Li’s supporting material has disappeared. Researchers have a draft manuscript, yet many original notes and details apparently did not survive, according to reporting by LGBTQ Nation, the History News Network and biographical archives. In historical research, that missing paper trail can turn a bold conclusion into an argument rather than a settled measurement.

Still, his central insight feels unexpectedly modern. When people fear rejection, legal consequences or violence, they may conceal an identity from others and sometimes from themselves. Falling identification rates among young people during periods of political backlash therefore don't necessarily mean fewer people are queer; they may also reflect a colder climate for honesty.

A remarkable archive almost ended up in a bin

Li became one of Hirschfeld’s heirs after the sexologist died in 1935, alongside Karl Giese. Yet for decades, his own contribution attracted little attention. Historical records suggest that even people aware of his connection to Hirschfeld knew little about what Li had done afterwards.

The breakthrough came through Ralf Dose of the Magnus Hirschfeld Society, who spent years tracking down Hirschfeld’s heirs. A neighbour of Li’s had reportedly rescued Hirschfeld-related material, including a death mask, notes and Li’s manuscript, from rubbish. The objects then remained in a basement for years before Dose located them.

It's a wonderfully strange twist in the story, but also a sobering one. Archives don't preserve themselves, and the survival of queer history has often depended on neighbours, activists and patient researchers noticing the value of material that institutions ignored.

Recognition is finally catching up

Li’s disappearance from popular accounts wasn't simply an accident of time. Historian Laurie Marhoefer has argued that racism played a role, with some contemporaries and later scholars failing to take him seriously because he was Asian. That prejudice narrowed the historical record and helped keep a major queer thinker in the background.

His story also complicates the familiar hero narrative around Hirschfeld. Hirschfeld deserves recognition, but so does the younger researcher who travelled with him, inherited his papers and developed ideas that challenged his assumptions. Li wasn't merely a partner or assistant; he was an intellectual in his own right.

Today, his surviving work sits between evidence and provocation. It may never provide a definitive count of LGBTQ+ people in the 1930s, but it does offer something just as valuable: a reminder that queer lives have always been more varied, widespread and difficult to measure than official records suggest.

Li Shiu Tong's legacy is finally moving out of the footnotes.

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