Georges Burou

Georges Burou (* 1910 in Algeria ; † 1987; sometimes incorrectly spelled Georges Bourou ) was a gynecologist practicing in Morocco . He has profoundly influenced male-to-woman vaginoplasty.

Live and act

Georges Burou was born in Algeria as the son of a French teacher. There he studied medicine and was head of a gynecological clinic until the outbreak of World War II in 1939. In 1940 he moved to Casablanca in Morocco . During the war he served as a doctor in the French 4th French-Moroccan Mountain Division and took part in the liberation of Alsace in 1944. In Casablanca he ran his Clinique du Parc at 13 Rue La Pebie.

He said he was given sex reassignment surgery by a desperate technician at a nightclub in Casablanca. He felt like a woman and was ashamed of his male sexual organs . For years he asked one gynecologist after another to help him, but no one could or would. He begged Burou to help him, otherwise he would commit suicide. Burou performed its first operation in 1956. Independently of other doctors in this field ( Ludwig Levy-Lenz in Berlin in the 1930s; Lennox Broster in London in the 1930s and 1940s; Harold Gillies in England in the 1940s and 1950s; Elmer Belt in Los Angeles in the 1950s) he developed the “penis inversion "(" Anteriorly pedicled penile skin flap inversion vaginoplasty ") for the construction of a neovagina . The sensitive skin of the male genitals is used to create the female genitals. Until then, pieces of skin were removed from other places, which also resulted in scars in these areas. This changed approach also significantly increased the ability to have sexual arousal and orgasm. This is possible by carefully dissecting and placing the corpus cavernosum penis and maintaining and relocating some sensitive nerves and part of the erectile tissue. If done well, the postoperative patient may experience strong feelings of sexual arousal (erection of the remaining bulb-penis remnants) and orgasm easily (bulbourethral gland, prostate , and corporal nerve tissue remain intact). This technique became the " gold standard " for vaginoplasty in trans women and variants of its technique are used to this day.

From 1958 to 1960 several "female actors" from the Paris Club Le Carrousel had the last operation performed on Burou, including Jacqueline-Charlotte Dufresnoy alias Coccinelle , Marie-Pier Ysser alias Bambi and April Ashley . Many actresses have already received female hormones as a side benefit of their work in the club. Some of the girls returned to the club after their surgery and their successful surgery became widely known. Some became coveted lovers of prominent, wealthy gentlemen. Some wealthy gentlemen (including Aristotle Onassis ) paid for the operations of a girl from Le Carrousel and these became their lovers for a time. The other patients came from all over the world, especially from Germany, Italy and many from the USA . After Christine Jorgensen's sensational return from Europe in 1952 after an operation, most US clinics, under pressure from religious groups, had enacted regulations expressly forbidding such operations. Harsh criticism based on religious arguments has repeatedly attempted to suppress support for hormonal or surgical treatments. On the other hand, everything from psychotherapy to aversion therapies was tried to “heal” the “patient”. As the practice of Harry Benjamin began to grow, a pioneer in the study of transsexuality who, unlike his colleagues, described the true gender identity and the different physical gender, he also referred many people to Burou. Around the mid-1960s, other top surgeons began to emulate Burou's technique, and from 1966 Johns Hopkins Hospital began performing a limited number of operations in an experimental program as Benjamin recommended. They too used a variant of Burou's method.

Burou avoided the public in order to be able to go about his work in Morocco, which was illegal there. At the second major interdisciplinary conference on transsexuality at Stanford University Medical School in 1973, he formally presented his novel technique for the first time. At this point in time, many surgeons around the world had already derived and adapted his technique. He himself charged around $ 3,000 to $ 4,000 for an operation . A German had to transfer 10,000 marks in advance in 1969. When she arrived 10 days later, she was informed that if there were fatal complications, she would be sunk in the sea and the pass would be burned. By 1973 he had performed over 600 such operations. In 1974 over 700 patients had taken this final, irreversible step. His youngest patient was 17, the oldest 70 years old. “I don't turn men into women. I transform male genitals into genitals that have a feminine aspect. All the rest is in the patient's head. "

A seventeen-minute black-and-white film shot in 1973 or 1974, which was shown at the Berlinale in 1975 and at the Documenta in 1977, shows Harry Günther's transformation into “Susi” in five scenes, not as a peculiar phenomenon but as a personal reality. It bears the title: "I don't want to go to Casablanca". The Dutch documentary "I Am a Woman Now" (premiere 2011) by Michiel van Erp deals with five trans women between the ages of 70 and 80 who visited the Burous clinic in Casablanca.

literature

• J. Joris Hage, Refaat B. Karim, Donald R. Laub: On the origin of pedicled skin inversion vaginoplasty. Life and work of Dr Georges Burou of Casablanca , In: Annals of plastic surgery , Vol. 59 (2007), No. 6 (December), pp. 723-729, ISSN  0148-7043 .

Web links

• Georges Burou, MD - Innovator and pioneer in the application of modern male-to-female sex reassignment surgery

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} J. Joris Hage, Refaat B. Karim, Donald R. Laub: On the origin of pedicled skin inversion vaginoplasty: life and work of Dr Georges Burou of Casablanca , in: Annals of plastic surgery, ISSN  0148-7043 , December 2007, Vol. 59, No. 6, pp. 723-729 PMID 18046160
2. ↑ ^{a b c d} Dr. Burou - de man eight "operatie in Casablanca", europeants.org, What the Papers Say, 1973. ( Memento of July 25, 2009 in the Internet Archive ).
3. ↑ Georges Burou ( 1917-1987 ) - pioneer surgeon , zagria.blogspot.com, January 15, 2008
4. ↑ ^{a b c} Lynn Conway: Vaginoplasty: Male to Female Sex Reassignment Surgery , Version: October 14, 2005
5. ↑ ^{a b} Alexander Bruch: Brückenschlag (4/4) - Everything stays the same in the heart , Television / Bayerischer Rundfunk, 2014; Broadcasts: Bayerischer Rundfunk, November 20, 2014 at 5 p.m.; Einsfestival, April 22, 2015 at 16:50 ( in the Einsfestival media library ), stories at 12:28 and 15:50.
6. ^ Prisoners of Sex , Time Magazine, Jan. 21, 1974, HTML-S. 2
7. ↑ Documenta GmbH (ed.): Documenta 6 , Volume 2, P. Diederich, 1977, p. 341