Christine Jorgensen

Christine Jorgensen ( May 30, 1926 in New York City - May 3, 1989 in San Clemente , California ) was an American who became the first transgender person to receive a lot of media attention in the United States after her gender reassignment surgery in 1952 . She used this to raise awareness on transgender issues and for a career in the entertainment industry.

Life

She was born George William Jorgensen Jr. in 1926 in the Bronx , New York City. Her parents were Danish immigrants to the USA , her father was a carpenter. Already in her childhood she felt uncomfortable in her gender role as a boy; she wanted to wear her sister's clothes rather than her own clothes. In her youth she became interested in photography. Together with her father, who was an amateur photographer, she set up a darkroom in their parents' house. She took courses at the New York Institute of Photography .

In 1945 she was drafted into the military after graduating from school and was stationed as an employee at the Fort Dix military base in New Jersey until 1946 . During this time she discovered an article about the Danish doctor Christian Hamburger, who performed hormone therapy .

In 1950 she traveled to Denmark for the first time to begin a gender reassignment operation , which, according to a psychological certificate from Georg Sturup, initially included hormone therapy lasting more than a year and then six surgical interventions. Sex reassignment surgery was not possible in the United States at the time. Jorgensen adopted the feminine variant of the first name of her doctor Christian Hamburger for her feminine identity. During a hospital stay after her second operation in Copenhagen in 1952, Jorgensen's career came into the US media and was widely received there.

She returned to the United States on February 12, 1953. She was greeted by admirers, onlookers and journalists at New York Airport . There were headlines like “ GI from the Bronx GI becomes a woman! "With the subheading" Dear mom and dad, your son writes here, I will now be your daughter. "Or the New York Times published a short report in the Associated Press entitled" Boy from the Bronx is now a girl. “
“ At first I was very inhibited and very clumsy, ”said Jorgensen in a 1970 interview,“ but once the notoriety was there, it didn't take me long to adjust. “Instead of withdrawing from the media presence, she used her unwanted celebrity to her advantage. She justified this by saying that if you wanted to see her, you had to pay for it and gave her first interview to the American Weekly for a fee . Because of her notoriety, she received roles in several theater productions and numerous interviews on television. She toured with her own show which included singing and performances. The main song of their show was titled I Enjoy Being a Girl .

She made headlines again in 1959 when she applied for a marriage license. However, this was refused because her birth certificate only identified her with the male gender. She later decided not to get married. She couldn't have had children either.

In 1967 she published her autobiography Christine Jorgensen: A Personal Biography , which was also made into a film in 1970 as The Christine Jorgensen Story .

In a 1972 interview, she said she no understanding of the women's movement ( women's liberation movement had). In a later discussion with students at the University of Minnesota Duluth , she stated that there was hardly any woman she knew who was not exempt and that men also needed an exemption.

In the early 1970s, she moved to South Carolina for retirement . In 1987, her cancer diagnosed. She died of the effects of this disease in 1989 in San Clemente , where she had spent the last two years of her life.

Popular culture

Jorgensen's case sparked an intense debate about gender identity in the American media in the 1950s. In particular, the front page of the New York newspaper Daily News and its headline "Ex-GI becomes blonde beauty" on December 1, 1952 attracted a lot of attention.

The leader of the Nation of Islam group Louis Farrakhan , who previously appeared as a calypso singer under the name "The Charmer", dedicated a somewhat charming song to Jorgensen called Is She Is Or Is She Ain't , a remake of the song Is You Is or Is You Ain't My Baby by Louis Jordan from 1940.

Movie posters for the Ed Wood film Glen or Glenda , which was shown in some cinemas under the alternative name I Changed My Sex and I Led Two Lives , claim that the film is based on the life story of Jorgensen. In reality, however, Jorgensen was only asked a few times by producer George Weiss to appear in the film, which she declined.

In the play "Christine Jorgensen Reveals", a stage performance at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2005, Jorgensen was portrayed by the American actor Bradford Louryk . Louryk dressed as Jorgensen and appeared in this role in a television interview recorded with Jorgensen in the 1950s, which took place on a black and white television set on the stage. The show won awards at the 2006 Dublin Gay Theater Festival and ran at New York's New World Stages in January 2006 . The piece was also released on a music CD.

The American social scientist, filmmaker and transgender activist Susan Stryker 2012 produced a half-hour cinematic collage entitled "Christine in the Cutting Room" (Christine in the editing room ). Two years earlier, she also gave a reading about it at Yale University entitled "Christine in the Cutting Room: Christine Jorgensen's Transsexual Celebrity and Cinematic Embodiment".

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} John T. McQuiston: Christine Jorgensen, 62, Is Dead; What First to Have a Sex Change. In: The New York Times. May 4, 1989. Retrieved September 26, 2016 . 
2. ↑ ^{a b c d} Chloe Hadjimatheou: Christine Jorgensen: 60 years of sex change ops. In: BBC. November 30, 2012, accessed September 26, 2016 . 
3. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Christine Jorgensen. (No longer available online.) In: bio. Archived from the original on May 10, 2012 ; Retrieved September 26, 2016 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
4. ↑ ^{a b c d} The first transgender celebrity in America and her remarkable life. In: Mashable. April 27, 2015, accessed September 26, 2016 . 
5. ↑ Lyrics "She Is, Or Is She Ain't"
6. ↑ Film poster for Glen or Glenda (under its alternative distribution title)
7. ↑ Reading at Yale University (LGBTQ) ( memento from July 20, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ) from November 12, 2010