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| Christine Jorgensen: Do You Remember? |
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| Living - Society | |||
| TS-Si News Service | |||
| Monday, 25 August 2008 16:30 | |||
 Dana Point, CA, USA. Christine Jorgensen (30 May 1926 - 3 May 1989) was one of the first people widely known to the public for undergoing a surgical procedure that would become widely known as Sex Reassignment Surgery (SRS). It had been done since 1930, but with public exposure, she became a spokewoman for people born transsexual.The New York Daily News created a media sensation on December 1, 1952, when it ran a front page story that Jorgensen became the recipient of the first successful SRS following an operation in Denmark. (Ex-GI Becomes Blond Beauty).
Jorgensen graduated from Christopher Columbus High School in Bronx, New York in May 1945. Perceived as a man by the U. S. Army, she was drafted and served honorably for two years.
After discharge, she returned to New York and researched the available information on what she understood as a discordance between her mind and body. Jorgensen self-prescribed the female hormone ethinyl estradiol for feminization and found help from Dr. Joseph Angelo, the husband of one of Jorgensen's classmates at the Manhattan Medical and Dental Assistant School.
Surgical Correction
Jorgensen had originally intended a trip to Sweden, the location of the only doctors in the world performing this type of surgery. However, on a visit with relatives in Copenhagen, Denmark she met Dr. Christian Hamburger, a Danish surgeon who had begun a specialization in sex reassignment surgery.
The editors invite readers to share their memories and appreciations of Christine Jorgensen in our comment area below.Under Dr. Hamburger's direction, she began hormone therapy, culminating in a series of surgeries consistent with the techniques available at that time. She was 26 tears old. Jorgensen chose Christine as her first name to honor Dr. Hamburger (Christine is the feminine version of Christian).
The American ambassador arranged for a change of her passport idenitification to "female" and Christine began a new life. Two years later, she broke the news to her parents, writing that "Nature made a mistake, which I have corrected, and I am now your daughter."
Throughout this time, Ms. Jorgensen appeared not to know that Hamburger and his colleagues, Georg Stürup and Dahl-Iversen, would later claim that the procedures were a humanitarian measure designed to help "a man who suffered from his homosexual impulses". The surgical team had become anxious about what they perceived as homosexuality, viewing Jorgensen from a eugenic point of view. They figured "it would do no harm if a number of sexually abnormal men were castrated and thus deprived of their sexual libido". [C1]
Hamburger and colleagues argued against the creation of a vagina in a post-operative transsexual. The scholar Christine Crowle sees this as evidence of reassignment surgeries designed to "produce a gender performance not a sexual performance". [C2] Several years later Jorgensen obtained a vaginoplasty under the direction of Dr. Angelo and a medical advisor Dr. Harry Benjamin.
Public Life Conventional employment was out of reach for Jorgensen, due to her celebrity. In 1967, Jorgensen published her autobiography, Christine Jorgensen: A Personal Autobiography. During the 1970s and 1980s, she toured university campuses and other venues to speak about her experiences. She was known for being direct and wielding a polished wit.
Jorgensen is the subject of a 1970s film, The Christine Jorgensen Story. She is referred to in the 1994 movie Ed Wood as the film-maker works on Glen or Glenda.
She had a particularly friendly interview with Tom Snyder [Sidebar], but some other interviews did not go as well.
 Jorgensen once appeared on The Dick Cavett Show. She walked off the show when Cavett insulted her by asking about the status of romantic life with her "wife". She was the only scheduled guest on that day, so Cavett spent the rest of the show in an extended monologue, talking about how he had not meant to offend her.On the other hand, New York radio host Barry Gray asked if 1950s jokes such as "Christine Jorgensen went abroad, and came back a broad" bothered her. She laughed and said they did not at all.
Looking back From The Later Years
Although never married, Jorgensen was twice engaged. She once said in an interview: "I have been engaged twice and I've been deeply in love twice. I was never engaged to the men I was in love with, and I was never in love with the men I was engaged to."
 In her later years, Jorgensen worked as an actress and nightclub entertainer. In summer stock, she played Madame Rosepettle in the play Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mama's Locked You in the Closet and I'm Feeling So Sad. In her nightclub act, she sang "I Enjoy Being a Girl" while dressed as comic-book heroine Wonder Woman. She closed the act when faced with legal action by the publishers who owned the copyright on the Wonder Woman character.
In her retirement, Jorgenson had been quoted many times as saying that she'd given the sexual revolution "a good swift kick in the pants."
Christine Jorgenson died of bladder and lung cancer on May 3, 1989 at age 62. She was remembered by friends as a warm and loving person. Most of the interviewees or people who had worked with her, regarded Jorgenson as fine woman and a "lady".
Following a private ceremony and cremation, Christine Jorgenson's ashes were scattered off Dana Point, California on June 9, 1989 by her two nieces and two of her closest friends.
Untold numbers of people have found inspiration in her life. Around the world, many still mourn her loss, and weep.
Notes[N1] This article is an update of a work that first appeared here at TS-Si.org on May 3, 2006. The editors invite readers to share their memories and appreciations of Christine Jorgensen in our comment area, located at the end of this article.
[N2] Portions of this article have been adapted with permission from Wikipedia sources and private correspondence. Citations[C1] Transvestism: hormonal, psychiatric and surgical treatment. Hamburger, C, Stürup, GK, Dahl-Iversen, E. JAMA 1953 152: 391–396. [C2] Deviant Desire: Gender Politics and the Cultural Metamorphosis of George/Christine Jorgensen. Christine Crowle. Australian Humanities Review. Currently available online.                       Add this page to your favorite social bookmarking websites. To create link towards this article on your website, copy and paste the text below in your page. Preview :
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