Karl Bryant had no idea he was the main character in someone else’s book. He discovered his biography in the late 1980s while poking around a San Francisco bookstore.

Jarringly, the tome was titled, “The ‘Sissy Boy Syndrome’ and the Development of Homosexuality.” But it was the author’s name that caught Bryant’s attention: Richard Green, a psychiatrist who evaluated him for 15 years at UCLA’s Gender Identity Research Clinic.

“Sure enough, there I was,” Bryant said.

A UC Irvine seminar held Nov. 12 brought together Bryant and another subject of the clinic’s three-decade study. Sé Shay Sullivan and Bryant knew about each other but had never met in person.

A 68-page transcript of the oral interrogation of Dr. Sé Sullivan as an eight-year-old being seen at UCLA’s Gender Identity Research Clinic in the early 60’s hangs on a line as part of an art installation by Sé Sullivan at UCI in Irvine on Tuesday, November 12, 2019, titled, ”The Making and Unmaking of Gender Identity in Childhood.” (Photo by Leonard Ortiz, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Brittnay Proctor-Habil, a visiting assistant professor in Gender and Sexuality Studies reads a 68-page transcript on display at UCI in Irvine on Tuesday, November 12, 2019. The transcripts were part of an art installation by Sé Sullivan titled, “The Making and Unmaking of Gender Identity in Childhood” which included photos of Sé in a running slide show and the transcripts of the oral interrogation of Dr. Sé Sullivan as an eight-year-old being seen at UCLA’s Gender Identity Research Clinic in the early 60’s. (Photo by Leonard Ortiz, Orange County Register/SCNG)

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Dr. Sé Sullivan, left, listens as professor Karl Bryant, right, speaks during a Q&A session at UCI during a two-part program that began with an art installation by Sé Sullivan titled, “The Making and Unmaking of Gender Identity in Childhood” in Irvine on Tuesday, November 12, 2019. (Photo by Leonard Ortiz, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Jeanne Scheper, UCI associate professor of Gender and Sexuality Studies moderated the question and answer session with Dr. Sé Sullivan and professor Karl Bryant following the presentation titled, “The Making and Unmaking of Gender Identity in Childhood” in Irvine on Tuesday, November 12, 2019. (Photo by Leonard Ortiz, Orange County Register/SCNG)

UCI students read through a 68-page transcript of of Dr. Sé Sullivan’s oral interrogation as an eight-year-old being seen at UCLA’s Gender Identity Research Clinic in the early 60’s at at UCI in Irvine on Tuesday, November 12, 2019. The presentation, titled “The Making and Unmaking of Gender Identity in Childhood” included a running slide show of photos of Dr. Sé Sullivan over the years. (Photo by Leonard Ortiz, Orange County Register/SCNG)



A 68-page transcript of the oral interrogation of Dr. Sé Sullivan as an eight-year-old being seen at UCLA’s Gender Identity Research Clinic in the early 60’s hangs on a line as photos of Dr. Sé Sullivan over the years are displayed on a slide show as part of an art installation by Sé Sullivan at UCI in Irvine on Tuesday, November 12, 2019, titled, ”The Making and Unmaking of Gender Identity in Childhood.” (Photo by Leonard Ortiz, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Jeanne Scheper, UCI associate professor of Gender and Sexuality Studies, left, is joined by Dr. Sé Sullivan, center, and professor Karl Bryant, right, for a question and answer session at UCI in Irvine on Tuesday, November 12, 2019. The first part of the presentation was an art installation by Sé Sullivan titled, “The Making and Unmaking of Gender Identity in Childhood.” (Photo by Leonard Ortiz, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Professor Karl Bryant speaks during a Q&A session UCI during a two-part program that began with an art installation by Sé Sullivan titled, “The Making and Unmaking of Gender Identity in Childhood” in Irvine on Tuesday, November 12, 2019. (Photo by Leonard Ortiz, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Dr. Sé Sullivan, left, speaks to students during a Q&A session at UCI, in Irvine on Tuesday, November 12, 2019 in a two part part program that began with an art installation by Sé Sullivan titled, “The Making and Unmaking of Gender Identity in Childhood.” (Photo by Leonard Ortiz, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Dr. Sé Sullivan listens to students questions during a Q&A session at UCI, in Irvine on Tuesday, November 12, 2019, as part of a program which included a art installation by Sé Sullivan titled, “The Making and Unmaking of Gender Identity in Childhood.” (Photo by Leonard Ortiz, Orange County Register/SCNG)



Professor Karl Bryant, right, speaks during a Q&A session after the viewing of an art installation by Sé Sullivan at UCI titled, “The Making and Unmaking of Gender Identity in Childhood” in Irvine on Tuesday, November 12, 2019. Dr. Sé Sullivan, left, listens in. (Photo by Leonard Ortiz, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Both call themselves “survivors” of what they consider harmful research that left them feeling shame and humiliation with each session.

Bryant, a professor of sociology and women’s studies at SUNY New Paltz University in New York, identifies as gay. Sullivan, a carpenter who teaches in the sociology department at Gavilan College in Gilroy, identifies as gender fluid. Both are now 57.

Eight years ago, Sullivan, who uses gender-neutral pronouns, requested files on their case from UCLA. Sullivan received a 68-page transcript of doctor-patient interviews that now seem misguided and insensitive.

Sullivan created a multimedia art exhibit of their time under a microscope, and this year began taking the show on the road – so far, to half a dozen colleges around California.

UCI students filed through a room to view the transcript, each page clipped to a long clothesline. “Dr. N” stands for Larry Newman, a psychiatrist who trained at UCLA from 1964 to 1969.

In the background, a slideshow flipped through photos of Sullivan as a child. An audio reading of the transcript, recorded by Sullivan and two friends, runs throughout.

Sullivan comes across as defiant, precocious, bored, defensive and, at times, resigned and conciliatory.

“How does it get decided who’s going to be a boy and who’s going to be a girl?” Newman asks.

“Well, we just want to be what we want to be,” the child responds.

But in other instances, Sullivan assures him that despite longing to be a boy, “When I grow up, I’ll change my mind.”

After the presentation, Bryant and Sullivan took questions from an audience of more than 100 in a standing-room-only lecture hall. Jeanne Scheper, associate professor of gender and sexuality studies, monitored the Q&A.

The symposium would give the guest speakers an opportunity to “turn the lens of critical analysis on the doctors who studied them, labeled their gender as pathology, and subjected them to forms of what we would now call reparative therapy,” Scheper said in her introduction.

Bryant said that as a boy he “exhibited behavior my parents were concerned about.”

“Somehow, they got hooked up with a young psychiatrist named Dr. Green,” he said. “I was about five. All I knew was that I started going to UCLA every other week.”

A group of psychiatrists, psychologists and doctoral students would congregate at UCLA on weekends to meet with patients. Bryant and Sullivan saw a variety of therapists over the years there.

Green emphasized to Bryant the advantages of being a boy, and told his parents to promote masculine conduct at home.

Sullivan began going to the clinic at age 8. Among other things seen by adults as “red flags,” the child preferred pants to dresses and trucks to dolls.

An argument could be made that the clinic was well-meaning and that those in charge were attempting to treat children who otherwise would go through life facing prejudice and bullying.

In 1972, Green, Newman and cohort Robert Stoller published a paper stating, “While privately, one might prefer to modify society’s attitudes towards cross-gender behavior, in the consultation room with an unhappy youngster, one feels far more optimistic about modifying the behavior of that one child than the entire of society.”

The American Psychiatric Association in 1973 issued a resolution saying that homosexuality is not a mental illness. However, other institutions, including the United States military, did not instantly buy into that message.

For UCLA, the clinic was an anomaly. The university offered progressive gender study programs and LGBT support even as the clinic was in operation.

“UCLA today is at the leading edge of health care for lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans-gender and gender-diverse individuals,” said Dr. Mark S. Litwin, Chief of UCLA Urology and Co-Director of the UCLA Gender Health Program. “We have created the most comprehensive program in the west to address the various health care needs of members of the trans community.”

Whatever the clinic’s intent, Bryant and Sullivan said, the interrogations made them feel like damaged goods. Insult to injury, they now know they were used as guinea pigs in an experiment on innocent children.

“Nobody asked my consent,” Bryant said, describing the sessions as “insidiously benevolent.”

A California law enacted in 2012 prohibits mental health providers from engaging in sexual orientation change therapy with minors.

Neither Bryant nor Sullivan has yet to confront their parents over why they took their children to the clinic.

Sullivan, however, offered speculation:

“For my family, I think it was: ‘We’re white, we’re middle-class and we have all our ducks in a row. We can fix this one thing.’”