User:Cccc2026/Christine Jorgensen

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Early life:

After her service as a military clerical worker Christine pursued a photography career. (Boomer)

Gender transition:

Her parents were both from The Netherlands so her trip for reassignment surgery was easy to disguise as a trip to visit family. She did not tell anyone her plan for procedures on the trip, because she was called crazy and hadn't been supported in America. (Hadjimatheou)

Doctor Hamburger explained the gender hormone procedure, "The first sign was an increase in size of the mammary glands and then hair began to grow where the patient had a bald patch on the temple. Finally the whole body changed from a male to a female shape. '' More than a year after beginning hormone therapy Christine was finally able to get her first surgery.  (BBC)

She never publicly explained her new anatomy or the result of the surgery but she did say "Everyone is both sexes in varying degrees. I am more of a woman than a man… Of course I can never have children but this does not mean that I cannot have natural sexual intercourse - I am very much in the position right now of a woman who has a hysterectomy," in 1958. (BBC)

Publicity:

Chrisine was publicly outed when her letter to her parents in New York leaked to the press. Her letter stated "Nature made a mistake which I have had corrected, and now I am your daughter." (BBC)

She was embraced as a spectacle by society, even being crowned Woman of the Year by the Scandinavian Society in New York.(BBC)

Now she is regarded as a trans pioneer She was inducted into Chicago's Legacy Walk celebrating LGBT history in 2012, honored in San Francisco's Rainbow Walk in 2014, and included in the National LGBTQ Wall of Honor at Stonewall National Monument in New York City in 2019.(IMDb) Jorgensen and her doctors were very impactful in the sexual revolution. She said they “didn’t start the Sexual Revolution but gave it a swift kick in the pants” (Legacy)

Later life:

In her autobiography Jorgenson revealed her struggles with depression. She explained how her mental health deteriorated and she contemplated suicide but she did not do it because she was able to live as her true self. She wrote “The answer to the problem must not lie in sleeping pills and suicides that look like accidents, or in jail sentences, but rather in life and the freedom to live it.” (Boomer)