Christine Jorgensen was an American actress, singer, trans rights advocate, and the first widely-known transgender person in the United States. At a time when the term "transgender" had not yet been coined and the LGBT+ community had few rights, Jorgensen's life served as an inspiring example of living authentically in the face of great adversity.
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Jorgensen was born on May 30, 1926, in the Belmont neighborhood of the Bronx, New York City, and was named George at birth. In her book Christine Jorgensen: A Personal Autobiography, she reflects on how she felt different from other boys growing up and that this dissonance only increased as she got older. Jorgensen briefly held a clerical role in the U.S. Army and had dreams of a career in Hollywood. However, by 1948, she was struggling greatly with her gender presentation and began seeing a psychiatrist who sought to “cure” her of what was considered an affliction of feminine tendencies
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Later that year, however, Jorgensen came across Paul de Kruif’s The Male Hormone, which opened her eyes to the possibility of medical transition. Jorgensen subsequently enrolled in medical technician classes, which gave her access to the female hormone estradiol, and began administering it to herself. With no physicians performing gender-affirming procedures (previously known as sex reassignment surgery) in the U.S. at the time, Jorgensen learned about the groundbreaking work being done in Europe. For example, the German physician and sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld had investigated a diverse range of sexualities in the 1920s and 1930s and campaigned for homosexual and transgender rights.
In the spring of 1950, Jorgensen left the U.S. for Denmark, where she met endocrinologist Christian Hamburger and began hormone replacement therapy. In the early 1950s, Jorgensen underwent a series of gender-affirming surgical operations and received a new passport with the name Christine Jorgensen, choosing "Christine" to honor Christian Hamburger.
Jorgensen returned to New York in 1953 to a media frenzy. Her story of medical transition was splashed across newspaper headlines, and all aspects of her appearance, including how she walked, dressed, and spoke, were heavily scrutinized. Leveraging this attention, Jorgensen embarked on a successful career as a cabaret performer, touring throughout the 1950s and 1960s.
Being a trans woman in the public eye was not easy; as one of America’s first transgender public figures, she was often treated as a curiosity and hounded by the press. In 1959, Jorgensen was engaged to typist Howard J. Knox but was unable to obtain a marriage license due to her birth certificate categorizing her as male. Despite facing discrimination and adversity, Jorgensen remained an outspoken advocate for transgender people and received thousands of fan letters from members of the public who appreciated her work and unapologetic existence as an openly transgender woman.
Paving the way:
- *Christine Jorgensen died in 1989 at age 62, but her enduring legacy has paved the way for future generations of transgender individuals. Her story brought attention to their existence and struggles while challenging societal norms and medical practices of the time.
- *In 1953, Jorgensen was named “Woman of the Year” by the Scandinavian Societies of New York.
- *While Jorgensen is often incorrectly referred to as the first recipient of gender-confirmation surgery, similar procedures had been performed in the 1920s and 1930s on individuals like Dorchen Richter and Danish artist Lili Elbe, who is portrayed in the film The Danish Girl.
