Portrait

Christine Jorgensen

Born: 30 May 1926New York City, USA
Died: 3 May 1989San Clemente, California, USA · aged 62

Entertainer and trans pioneerUnited States100th birthday

Christine Jorgensen

Front-page coverage of her transition in 1952 made her a public figure who used celebrity to discuss trans lives.

Christine Jorgensen was born in New York City in 1926. Raised in the Bronx, she served in the US Army near the end of the Second World War. In 1950 she travelled to Denmark, where Christian Hamburger and other doctors provided hormone treatment and surgery.

On 1 December 1952 the New York Daily News placed her story on its front page. The sudden attention made her one of the most widely recognised trans women of the period. It also subjected her body and personal history to intrusive public questioning.

Jorgensen developed a career as an entertainer, appearing in nightclubs and on stage, and gave lectures about her experiences. Her humour and composure helped her answer an audience whose curiosity could be both sympathetic and hostile. An autobiography published in 1967 allowed her to tell the story at greater length.

Fame did not bring full legal recognition. In 1959 she was refused a marriage licence because her birth certificate recorded her as male. She continued speaking publicly about gender and lived long enough to see wider discussion of trans rights. Jorgensen died of cancer in 1989.

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