May 30, 1926 - Christine Jorgensen - a podcast by Stephen Hammond

Transsexual American celebrity is born. George William Jorgensen was born to Danish American parents on May 30, 1926, in the Bronx, New York. After graduating from Christopher Columbus High School in 1945, he was drafted into the Army, where he served for two years. According to Jorgensen, he always felt like someone born in the wrong body. In 1950, at the age of 49, he addressed this by flying to Copenhagen, Denmark to undergo surgery that castrated him and removed his penis. (He did not, however, have a vagina constructed.) The series of medical procedures – not available in the U.S. at the time – transformed him from a man into a woman. Two years later, the newly renamed Christine Jorgenson wrote her parents, “Nature made a mistake, which I have corrected, and I am now your daughter.” She was an attractive woman, and returned to New York to great media attention, helping change the country’s view of transsexuals. Jorgensen was the most written about person in the U.S. in 1953; even she was surprised by the attention. From her profession as a photographer, she pursued new roles as an entertainer and singer. She also traveled extensively, becoming highly popular on the public-speaking circuit for her lectures on transsexuality and gender dysphoria. Her book, Christine Jorgensen: A Personal Autobiography, became the 1970 movie, The Christine Jorgensen Movie. Jorgensen retired to southern California and died in 1988 at the age of 62 of bladder cancer.

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