Denmark 1952, Christine Jorgensen Changes from Male to Female, Died at 62
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| “At first I was very self-conscious and very awkward,” Christine Jorgensen said of her gender transition. “But once the notoriety hit, it did not take me long to adjust.”Library of Congress/Corbis/VCG, via Getty Images |
This obituary was originally published on May 4, 1989. It is being republished for a package for Women’s History Month.
Christine Jorgensen, a former Army private from the Bronx who underwent surgery and hormone treatments in Denmark in 1952 to change from a male to a female, died of cancer yesterday in San Clemente, Calif. She was 62 years old.
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The San Clemente General Hospital issued a statement saying Miss Jorgensen’s death followed a long bout with bladder and lung cancer.
Miss Jorgensen was born in the Westchester section of the Bronx on May 20, 1926, and was named George Jorgensen Jr. In her book, “Christine Jorgensen: A Personal Biography,” published in 1967, Miss Jorgensen said she had a normal, happy childhood but on growing up became frustrated by feelings that she was a woman trapped in a man’s body.
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A Sensation in Tabloids
As George Jorgensen, she served as a clerk in the Army. After being honorably discharged, she decided to seek a sex change operation.
Her sexual conversion began with hormone injections in 1950, when she was 24 years old. It was completed in 1952 with surgery at the Danish State Hospital in Copenhagen under the care of Dr. Christian Hamburger, a Danish hormone expert whose first name she took to form her own.
On her return to the United States in 1955, her transsexualism was sensationalized in the daily tabloids, some of which she gave exclusive interviews.
One tabloid headline read, “Bronx GI Becomes a Woman!” and went on, “Dear Mum and Dad, Son Wrote, I Have Now Become Your Daughter.”
The New York Times carried a five-paragraph Associated Press story headlined, “Bronx ‘Boy’ Is Now A Girl.”
“At first I was very self-conscious and very awkward,” Miss Jorgensen said in an interview in 1970. “But once the notoriety hit, it did not take me long to adjust.”
Chose Not to Marry
Miss Jorgensen was the first transsexual in the United States to publicly announce her change of sexual identity. Rather than withdraw from public attention, she turned the notoriety to her advantage with a series of lucrative tours on the lecture and nightclub circuit. Her nightclub act featured the theme song, “I Enjoy Being a Girl.”
“I decided if they wanted to see me, they would have to pay for it,” she said.
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| Miss Jorgensen in 1953. She did a series of lucrative tours on the lecture and nightclub circuit. “I decided if they wanted to see me, they would have to pay for it,” she said.Credit...Associated Press |
A black and white photo of Miss Jorgensen onstage wearing a dress.
Miss Jorgensen in 1953. She did a series of lucrative tours on the lecture and nightclub circuit. “I decided if they wanted to see me, they would have to pay for it,” she said.Credit...Associated Press
She made headlines again in 1959 when she sought, but was denied, a license to marry because her birth certificate said she was a male. She later chose not to marry. She could not have had children.
In an interview last year, she said she never regretted her decision to change sexes. She linked the public reaction to her decision, in part, to the awakening that led to the sexual revolution of the 1950’s and 1960’s.
But as a person who had experienced both sides of the issue, she said in an interview in 1972 that she did not understand the women’s liberation movement.
Discussing the subject with a group of students at the University of Minnesota at Duluth, Miss Jorgensen said: “I don’t know very many women who aren’t liberated. Men need liberation too.”
For the last 20 years, she lived in California, the last two in San Clemente.
She is survived by a sister, Dorothy, and two nieces.
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