Christine Jorgensen

Entertainer, 1927-1989

by David Rosen

In 1952, George Jorgensen, a 26 year- in Denmark, he sought out medical old former private in the U.S. Army, assistance from Dr. Harry Benjamin traveled to Denmark to undergo a and, over a three-year period, gender reassignment procedure, what received hormone therapy as part of was then known as a sex change the gender reassignment procedure.** operation. Returning to New York as Jorgensen began living as a woman Christine Jorgensen, her daring gained following her second surgery.2 a famous Daily News headline: “Ex-GI Returning to the Big Apple Becomes Beauty.”* following the completion of the procedure, Jorgensen In popular “before” initially lived with her parents and “after” period and received considerable photos of Jorgensen, it media attention – not all of it appears that a man favorable. The media was was not merely divided over the efficacy of transformed into a sex reassignment. A handful woman, but a butterfly of publications accepted was liberated from its Jorgensen’s new femininity, caterpillar self. A including Pose, People Today reportedly meek, and American Weekly (which retiring guy left New York and a paid her $20,000 for an exclusive glamorous, sexy gal returned. The new profile); they often focusing on her Jorgensen appears with high relations with the men she was dating. cheekbones, long eyelashes, full, However, most publications, especially painted lips, stylish hat and often the popular tabloid magazines like wrapped in a full-length fur coat.1 Uncensored, Whisper and Confidential, were contemptuous of her sex change, Jorgensen was born on May 30, 1926, drawing pitiful attention to the and – along with his sister, Dorothy -- apparent differences between her grew up in the Bronx, children of “feminine” legs and arms from her working-class parents. Like many supposed “masculine” ankles and transsexuals, he was not a hands. Quick, a ‘50s pinup magazine, homosexual, but long felt he was a insisted she was not a “real woman” female living in a male’s body. He but a “mentally ill transvestite.” But researched scientific literature about no publication was more critical then people suffering similar conditions, Time, which, in its April 20, 1953 including Paul De Kruf’s study, The issue, called her an “altered male” and Male Hormone (1945). Jorgensen a “male castrate,” claiming she was wanted to be a documentary exploiting her transition to make filmmaker and went to Europe to ostensibly make a vacation film. While ** Benjamin is the author of the influential study, The Transsexual Phenomenon * Photo: Transgender Library (1966). Sex Matters Jorgensen money. Nevertheless, Jorgensen took research organization specializing in full advantage of her newfound sexual orientation and gender identity celebrity, becoming a popular issues, estimated that there were nightclub performer, entertaining her 700,000 transgender people in the audiences with dancing, humorous U.S.6 Transsexual people continue to commentary and chanteuse, singing “I experience discrimination and social Enjoy Being a Girl.”3 stigma with regard to employment, housing, health care, the juridical In 1959, Jorgensen again got front- system (especially in prison) and page headlines when the city refused simply using a public restroom. But to issue her a marriage license. She the world has changed. was engaged to Howard Knox, a Washington, DC, typist who was the In 1973, the American Psychiatric only man she apparently had sex with. Association (APA) removed However, he lost his job when the homosexuality from its classification as engagement to Jorgensen became a mental disorder in 1973; four known. The city blocked the marriage decades later, the APA’s latest on the bases that Knox could not Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of prove he was legally divorced and Mental Disorders (DSM-5) reclassified Jorgensen’s birth certificate listed her “gender identity disorder” into “gender as a male; a New York court refused to dysphoria,” emphasizing a person’s reassign her birth certificate identity. distress instead of disorder with regard Jorgensen never married.4 to one’s gender identity. Perhaps more significant, changes in federal Jorgensen relocated to southern policy formally changed the status of California in the early-60s and “trans” people. In July 2014, continued as an entertainer. She President Obama issued an executive released her autobiography in 1967, a order adding "gender identity" gossipy tale focusing on her show-biz protections to federal contracting career, name-dropping every chance guidelines, covering some 200,000 she gets. The memoir led to a movie federal contractors. Medicare now deal and The Christine Jorgensen Story covers sex-reassignment surgery and was released in 1970 to poor insurance companies are covering reception. She was diagnosed with transition procedures as medically cancer in the late-‘80s and died in necessary rather than merely a April 1989. cosmetic option. Chelsea Manning and Caitlyn Jenner In 2012, 60 years after Jorgensen are just two of a growing number of returned to New York, Donald Trump, Americans (including children) who owns the Miss Universe and Miss undergoing gender reassignment. USA pageants, changed the organizations’ official rules so that a Gender reassignment is but one of a 23 year-old contestant, Jenna series of significant technological Talackova, could compete in the Miss breakthroughs that, over the last half- Universe Canada contest. Talackova, century, revolutionized human who’d lived as a female since the age sexuality and social relations, of 4 years and had undergone sex contributing to remaking of the moral reassignment 4 years earlier, was order. The work of Gregory Pincus initially disqualified from the contest and John Rock, initiated in 1954, because she was born a male. And she culminated in the FDA’s May 1960 competed.5 approval of “the pill,” an oral contraceptive that repressed ovulation In 2011, the Williams Institute, a in women, thus giving women greater

© David Rosen, 2016 page 2 Sex Matters Jorgensen control over their reproductive options. Technology revolutionizes personal Others advances in birth control life, eroticizes the flesh and changes involved artificial insemination (e.g., in what is understood as normal -- and vitro fertilization for “test tube the forbidden. Jorgensen’s sex change babies”) and the “morning after” pill procedure was one of 20th-century (e.g., levonorgestrel, Plan B, and medical technology’s greatest ulipristal, Ella). Drugs ostensibly achievements: the transformation of a designed to address male “erectile male into a female. It was a truly dysfunction” (ED) -- like Viagra and forbidden accomplishment, an act that Levitra -- have become multi-billion- reconfigured the most basic of human dollar commercial successes. But no conditions, gender identity. And if aspect of technology’s impact on nature was not fixed, immutable, what sexuality is more significant than that else about sexuality – and modern life associated with the war on terrorism, in general -- was open to change? fought by the U.S. military in Afghanistan and Iraq. Sexual For more information: prosthetics, particularly genital reconstruction for war-damaged male Christine Jorgensen: A Personal soldiers, represents one of the marvels Autobiography (New York: Bantam Books, of the U.S.’s 21st century military- 1976). industrial-medical complex.7 Richard F. Docter, Becoming a Woman: A

Biography of Christine Jorgenson (New York: Haworth Press, 2008).

1 http://www.christinejorgensen.org/ 2 http://kristinamayhem.blogspot.com/p/christine-jorgensen.html 3 http://www.christinejorgensen.org/MainPages/Publications/html.; Time/April 20, 1953 4 “Bars Marriage Permit: Clerk Rejects Proof of Sex from Christine Jorgensen," The New York Times, April 4, 1959 5 http://www.christinejorgensen.org/MainPages/Home.html; http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2124818/Jenna-Talackova-Donald-Trump- spars-transgender-Beauty-Queen.html#ixzz3EuqjkMTU 6 http://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/research/census-lgbt-demographics- studies/how-many-people-are-lesbian-gay-bisexual-and-transgender/ 7 David Rosen, “Genital Casualties: Military Failure & the Crisis in Masculinity,” CounterPunch, April 12-14, 2013. http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/04/12/military-failure-the-crisis-in-masculinity/