Benedict Friedlaender (8 July 1866 – 21 June 1908; first name occasionally spelled Benedikt) was a German Jewish sexologist, sociologist, economist, volcanologist, and physicist.

The WhK assisted defendants in criminal trials, conducted public lectures, and gathered signatures on a petition for the repeal of the law.

The word Eigenen can mean both "peculiar, distinctive, odd" (as in Oddfellows) and "owned, possessed", and the GdE's name was inspired in part by Max Stirner's libertarian philosophy of "self-ownership" or autonomy.

The GdE repudiated Hirschfeld's understanding of homosexuality in a transgender spectrum and instead emphasized the masculinity of male-male sexuality, as did André Gide in 1924 in his Corydon.

The GdE also spurned Hirschfeld's efforts at law reform and coalition-building with the Social Democrats and the feminist movement, adopting instead a diffusely anarchist outlook inspired by Stirner's individualism and the sweeping cultural criticism of Friedrich Nietzsche.