Christine Jorgensen was a trailblazer for transgender people in the US. In 1952, she became one of the first people to undergo sex reassignment surgery, becoming an instant celebrity in America upon her return to the country. She opened the doors for a new conversation about gender identity to emerge, and Jorgensen considered herself as helping to kickstart the ‘sexual revolution’ – a movement which occurred in both the US and the wider world from the 1960s to the 1980s. She was a cornerstone of the LGBT movement, and still remains an important figure in trans history.

Jorgensen was born male on 30th May, 1926, in the Bronx, New York. She said that she grew up in a close, happy family, but that she felt from an early age that she was trapped in the wrong body. She hated her boys’ clothes, wondering why they weren’t like her elder sister’s, and she was envious of rather than interested in other girls. 

She found a distraction from her internal struggle in photography, which she enjoyed alongside her father, an amateur photographer himself. However, Jorgensen had to put her interest to one side when she was 19 in 1945, having been drafted into the US Army.

Her stint in the army was short-lived; she was quite small and slight, so she ended up working as a clerk at Fort Dix, New Jersey before being discharged in 1946. During her time there, Jorgensen heard about a Danish doctor, Christian Hamburger, who was experimenting with gender therapy. In the hopes that he could help her, Jorgensen set off for Denmark, not telling anyone her true intentions.

Under Hamburger, Jorgensen underwent hormone replacement therapy and in 1951, obtained special permission from the Danish Minister of Justice to have a series of operations. After her first surgery, she wrote to friends: 

‘As you can see by the enclosed photos, taken just before the operation, I have changed a great deal. But it is the other changes that are so much more important. Remember the shy, miserable person who left America? Well, that person is no more and, as you can see, I’m in marvelous spirits.’

She would have a second operation while still in Copenhagen; while recovering in hospital, her story went public in the US. Headlines such as ‘Bronx ‘Boy’ Is Now A Girl’ started to run, marking the start of arduous press coverage which lasted for many years.

She returned to the US in 1953, immediately met by a sea of reporters. Despite the Danish royal family being on the same flight, they were largely ignored in favour of Jorgensen. She was subject to very little hostility, and her family were supportive of Jorgensen’s decision to transition. Her career also bloomed, contracts from Hollywood rolling in, and she was named Woman of the Year by the Scandinavian Society in New York. She made a comfortable living through her nightclub circuit, and she also worked as a lecturer, talking about her experiences as a transgender woman. Jorgensen became well known for her wit and charm, and was also strikingly direct in her speech, which no doubt contributed to her success.

“Nature made a mistake which I have had corrected, and now I am your daughter.”

Christine Jorgensen, in a letter to her parents following her transition

However, things weren’t all positive for her. In particular, the government weren’t willing to fully acknowledge her as female. In 1959, she became engaged to Howard J. Knox, a typist, but they were denied a marriage license as Jorgensen’s birth certificate listed her as male. Knox allegedly lost his job when their engagement became known.

Further, as interest began to wear off, certain press circuits began to scrutinise her more closely, and she was made into a subject of ridicule. Jorgensen was not unaware of her precarious position; talking to the Washington Post in 1970, she said: “Unlike other women I had to become super-female. I couldn’t have a single masculine trait.” 

This question of femininity is one that often crops up in discussions around Christine Jorgensen. Several other women transitioned around the same time she did, but none of them ever achieved the same levels of acceptance as fame as her. In particular, Delisa Newton, a Black transwoman who transitioned in the 1960s, received very little attention in mainstream press, and only then in tabloids. There is a clear race element to this distinction, made more obvious by the media’s characterisation of Laverne Peterson, an Asian American transwoman who was portrayed as a ‘sexual enigma’, rather than the ‘natural woman’ Jorgensen had been described as.

However, even other white transwomen didn’t reach Jorgensen’s stardom. A possible answer as to why reveals itself in the ways she performed femininity. From the off, Jorgensen depicted herself as the ideal of 1950s womanhood – blonde, slender, and white, she was definitively a woman. She tied herself closely to middle-class respectability, and made clear her negative views towards homosexuality, citing an incident from her youth when she felt revulsion when a man propositioned her while she was still living as a man. She was also often photographed performing domestic duties, reaffirming heteronormative gender roles.

In order to be taken seriously, Jorgensen had to participate in the subjugation of others who didn’t fit the norm. She helped to create the notion of ‘the good transsexual’ – though it must be said that this isn’t wholly Jorgensen’s fault, and should not be used to discredit her. 

Christine Jorgensen died of cancer on May 3rd 1989 at the age of 62, just a month short of her 63rd birthday. Her story remains, and rightly so, an inspiration for trans people over the world.

Sources:

• Christine Jorgensen | Biography & Facts | Britannica
• Christine Jorgensen: 60 years of sex change ops – BBC News
• Christine Jorgensen – Quotes, Autobiography & Life – Biography
• Skidmore, Emily, ‘Constructing the “Good Transsexual”: Christine Jorgensen, Whiteness, and Heteronormativity in the Mid-Twentieth-Century Press’, Feminist Studies, 37.2 (2011), 270-300