Christine Jorgensen

Writer

• Born: May 30, 1926
• Birthplace: Bronx, New York
• Died: May 3, 1989
• Place of death: San Clemente, California

American social reformer

Jorgensen, born with male genitalia, achieved fame in 1952 after frenzied media attention focused on her gender reassignment. The media, and Jorgensen, promoted her public identity as the charismatic spokeswoman for those who were transgender or transsexual.

Area of achievement Social reform

Early Life

Christine Jorgensen (JOR-gehn-sihn) began life as George William Jorgensen, Jr., the second son of Danish Americans George and Florence Jorgensen. As a child and young adult, and up to the time of her gender reassignment in 1952, she suffered from gender dysphoria, a powerful feeling that she had been born into a wrongly sexed and gendered body. In appearance, Christine (George) was a frail boy but inside longed to be a girl and to wear dresses like her sister, Dolly, who was three years older than her.

Jorgensen’s desire to be a girl was thwarted at home and also at Public School 71 in New York City, which she began attending in 1931. Jorgensen was isolated and lonely, acutely aware of her gender nonconformity. In later years, she remembered having had just two close male friends as a child and young adult. Perhaps reflecting her lack of peer companionship, young Jorgensen would immerse herself in the Jorgensen family pastimes of photography and reading. Her enjoyment of literature eventually led to a position at the New York Public Library, where she first encountered books about sexual deviation. These materials sparked her curiosity about her own gender identity, but limited by the publications available in the library, she did not achieve any true understanding of herself.

In addition to her library work, Jorgensen also completed an evening program at the New York Institute of Photography in her final year of high school. Upon graduation, in 1945, still without any insight into her gender identity, she began work at RKO-Pathé News, a Manhattan business.

Life’s Work

After a short-lived career in Manhattan, Jorgensen joined the U.S. Army (as a man) in the fall of 1945. Within a few months of enlistment, she encountered one of her high school friends and realized that her interest in this man was sexual, which horrified her. She immediately cut off the relationship, then received a transfer to Camp Polk, Louisiana. After several months of enduring the heat of the South, Jorgensen was transferred back to New Jersey, serving there until discharged on December 5, 1946.

Jobs were limited in the northeastern part of the country, so Jorgensen, with her interests in photography and film, tried to find work in Hollywood, California. For several months in late 1947, she struggled there, returning to New York and enrolling at Mohawk College in Utica. After a semester, she switched to the Progressive School of Photography in New Haven, Connecticut, and graduated in January, 1949.

In addition to career uncertainty, Jorgensen still faced uncertainty about her gender identity. Psychiatric consultations proved unhelpful, but personal forays into the medical literature offered more success, and she began to learn about human sex hormones. This interest fueled yet another career interest. She enrolled at the Manhattan Medical and Dental Assistant’s School, where she began to put some of her medical learning into practice, on herself. She managed to obtain a bottle of estradiol pills from a pharmacist who did not request a prescription, and she began self-treatment. Estradiol is the major estrogen in the human body. Called the “female” hormone, it is also found at lower levels in men. Fortuitously, Jorgensen also contacted a helpful medical doctor who presented her with treatment options, and she spoke with him about gender reassignment surgery.

In 1950, Jorgensen traveled to Denmark for the surgery. Within a few months she began treatment under the supervision of Christian Hamburger, a medical doctor who worked at the Statens Serum Institut in Copenhagen. Jorgensen’s first of three genital surgeries did not occur until September 24, 1951, following many months of tests, hormonal treatments, and additional consultations. After her initial surgery, she continued to live in Copenhagen, developing an increasingly feminine appearance and living as a woman. She did so initially without notifying her family about her new life. In June, 1952, she wrote to family members, telling them about her new identity, signing her letter as Chris. Surprisingly, her parents were supportive.

Once her family knew about her plans for surgery, Jorgensen underwent a penectomy, furthering her physical transition into a woman. While she recovered from the November, 1952, operation, she was notified that the New York Daily News had published an article about her, which appeared on December 1. Someone had leaked her story to the press, and the article had been picked up by major newspapers, sparking a media frenzy. From this time onward, Jorgensen’s life was in the public eye, a change that initially came as a shock to her, but ultimately she turned the media attention to her advantage. She began working in the entertainment industry.

After her return to the United States, Jorgensen perfected a nightclub act. She obtained good reviews and was noted for her stage presence. She also achieved some notoriety when she was banned from certain venues, although this may have led, ultimately, to better publicity and attendance at her performances. Media attention also focused on her final genital reconstruction in 1954. After this surgery, called a vaginoplasty, Jorgensen felt more fully a woman, and her appearance was maintained by ongoing hormone treatments.

Photographs show that Jorgensen was an attractive woman. She had plans in the spring of 1959 to marry Howard J. Knox, a long-term friend and apparently also a romantic interest. However, the two prospective partners were denied a marriage permit. After this setback, which received much press attention and resulted in Knox losing his job, the two decided not to marry. Jorgensen continued with her entertainment career.

Significance

The 1960’s saw the development of a more liberal United States, and it saw much social activism. The 1969 Stonewall Rebellion in New York City helped to ignite a new movement for gay and lesbian rights. Feminists and civil rights advocates as well applied their activist skills to a changing social world and fought for acceptance of all kinds of difference, including gender difference. With increasingly open outlooks on sex, gender, and sexual orientation, and with ongoing medical developments in genital reconstruction, more Americans underwent gender reassignment. With that increase came the start of a decrease in social stigma for transsexuals, the transgendered, and the gender variant.

As the social acceptance of gender reassignment increased, Jorgensen received less and less burdensome media attention, which was a relief to her. In 1989, at age sixty-two, she died in relative obscurity in San Clemente, California, after a struggle with cancer.

Jorgensen remains an important figure in the history of gender studies and media studies, not so much because of her gender reassignment through surgery (which others had experienced earlier) and her life changes (also demonstrated by others at earlier dates) but because of the publicity that came with the changes. She became an icon of sorts and is remembered as a pioneer in the transgender/transsexual movement.

Bibliography

Boylan, Jennifer Finney. She’s Not There: A Life in Two Genders. New York: Broadway Books, 2003. An insightful autobiographical account of Boylan’s change from male to female, including the responses of her students and academic colleagues.

Califia, Patrick. Sex Changes: Transgender Politics. San Francisco, Calif.: Cleis Press, 1997. A consideration of transgender politics, especially in the United States.

Currah, Paisley, Richard M. Juang, and Shannon Price Minter, eds. Transgender Rights. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006. Legal, political, and social history of the transgendered community around the world. Useful references.

Jorgensen, Christine. Christine Jorgensen: A Personal Autobiography. San Francisco, Calif.: Cleis Press, 2000. Written in a pedantic fashion, with a concentration on mundane daily events, Jorgensen’s autobiography is nonetheless indispensable not only for her life story but also reasons for surgery. Includes photographs.

McCloskey, Deirdre N. Crossing: A Memoir. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999. An account from a transgender academic who changed her gender expression from man to woman at the age of fifty-two. Includes photographs.

Morris, Jan. Conundrum. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1974. Morris’s account of her gender reassignment, living formerly as James Morris, a renowned travel writer.

Stryker, Susan, and Stephen Whittle, eds. The Transgender Studies Reader. New York: Routledge, 2006. A comprehensive selection of writings on transgender issues, including helpful references.