iamdealwithit: dreamsofamadman:somethingaboutdelia: cryingalonewithfrankenstein:This photo always
iamdealwithit: dreamsofamadman:somethingaboutdelia: cryingalonewithfrankenstein: This photo always cheers me up a bit. It’s a front-page article from 1955 about Christine Jorgensen, one of the first women to have sex-reassignment surgery. Since the text is a bit small and I couldn’t find a larger copy, here’s what the small blurb says: A World of a Difference George W. Jorgensen, Jr., son of a Bronx carpenter, served in the Army for two years and was given honorable discharge in 1946. Now George is no more. After six operations, Jorgensen’s sex has been changed and today she is a striking woman, working as a photographer in Denmark. Parents were informed of the big change in a letter Christine (that’s her new name) sent to them recently. This article is 58 years old, and it’s more respectful of Christine’s pronoun choices and name than some publications are today. It makes me happy to see a newspaper be respectful of a trans person’s choice of name and pronouns like that :3 Say it again for the haters in the back who want to keep pretending that trans people, or even treating trans people with respect is even remotely anything new. It’s worth mentioning, that this was kinda celebrated as a wonder of the atomic age at the time. “Look at the power of our scientists! Look at what we can do!”You know, back when America was trying to be the leader in scientific advancement. oh and she was huge in the spotlight at the time there was a huge boom in transgender visibility at the time just shortly before ww2 like what happened with caitlyn jenner jorgenson was also a nightclub entertainer and theres like one surviving obscure film she was in filmed in the philipines called kaming mga talyadai want to get my hands on it SO badone of her doctors was a man named magnus hirscherfeld he did the first ever sex reassignment surgery on both a transwoman and a transman literally coined the term transsexual was a well known writer and director of several queer centered films had a huge estate where he let his fellow queer patients stay and live was a gay man endocrinologist and surgeon and a HUGE advocate for sex workers and also a massive communistlike it was a booming queer paradise in germany right before ww2 and then the nazis burned down his entire institute and home along with all the books and movies he had kept abt queer peopleand then due to jorgenson in america there was a gender boom as well for a short time until there were more heavily regulated laws in place about who can get srs the doctor who actually performed jorgensons srs was harry benjamin another german born endocrinologist who moved to america to help people here and the government put a slow cap on that in part because of the red scare actually and then ww2 mcarthyism and changing views on gender bc of nazi germany and that killed the gender boomive done a lot of my own research on all of this because it fascinates me a lot and its so cool hearing about trans people in history but one source id def site for some of what i know and a great read is from the self proclaimed queer archivist and absolute trans lesbian icon leslie feinbergs book transgender warriors and you can read it online here -- source link