Christine Jorgensen

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Born in the Bronx, New York, on May 30, 1926, Christine Jorgensen was raised as George William Jorgensen, Jr. From an early age, she identified as a woman trapped inside a man's body.

World War II started while Jorgensen was still in high school, but they were initially rejected after trying to enlist in the the Army due to small stature. Nevertheless, Jorgensen was drafted shortly thereafter and stationed at Fort Dix, New Jersey. While serving in the Army as a clerical worker, Jorgensen concealed her attraction to men so as to avoid being outed as a homosexual and dishonorably discharged. She received an honorable discharge in December 1946.

After the war, Jorgensen devoted more time to exploring her identity. She learned about surgeons in Europe who had performed sex reassignment surgery, and in 1950, she traveled to Denmark to meet with endocrinologist Dr. Christian Hamburger who agreed to perform the surgery free of charge. 

Back in the United States two years later, she officially changed her name to Christine to honor Dr. Hamburger's work, and the press picked up her story. She received favorable coverage at first with headlines like this one from the New York Daily News: "Ex-GI Becomes Blonde Beauty: Operations Transform Bronx Youth." However, when reporters discovered that Jorgensen's surgeries had not yet included the addition of female genitalia, they changed their positive characterization of her as a "woman who had also been a man in the Army" to a "transvestite" or a "queer" who no longer embodied either positive male or positive female stereotypes.

In 1954, Jorgensen completed her surgeries and then went on to work as an entertainer, hoping for a Hollywood career. She struggled romantically due to laws that made it difficult for her and her male fiancees to be given marriage licenses, but she continued to offer her life story as a role model for others, publishing an autobiography in 1968 and becoming the subject of a film called "The Christine Jorgensen Story" in 1970. 

Jorgensen died of cancer in 1989, but her story has continued to inspire others, especially transgender veterans. At the conclusion of her autobiography, she said, "The answer to the problem must not lie in sleeping pills and suicides that look like accidents, or in jail sentences, but rather in life and freedom to live it."