One girl was called Jane Marie
Another little girl was called Felicity
Another little girl was Sally Joy
The other was me, and I'm a boy
– the Who
Everything was fine until George Jorgensen Jr. came along.
In 1951, surgeons in Copenhagen turned the Bronx-born George into Christine, and a nation scratched its head.
"Ex-GI Becomes Blonde Bombshell," the New York Daily News trumpeted. Jorgensen made a successful career in show business, but she also tried to familiarize the public with new nomenclature. She wasn't gay. She wasn't a transvestite. She was a transsexual. She made right what nature could not.
How ridiculous was that? How could nature be "wrong"? It's really quite simple: You've got a penis, or a vagina and breasts, and those tell you all you need to know. The clothes you wear, the person you fall in love with, the job you take.
And if you want to get technical, whip out the microscope and check the genes. XY gives you the testes that make you a man, and XX gives you the ovaries that make you a woman.
As far as anyone knew, Jorgensen was born with the right ingredients: XY, testes, penis. Sex is straightforward, and if you can't see that, you're out to lunch. This "transsexual" business must be a psychiatric disorder.
It's simple. You can't be an XY and be a woman. Right?
