The Tranny Godmother

Posted By Jim Goad On In North American New Right | Comments Disabled
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Christine Jorgensen

2,265 words

Amid all the censorious, aneurysm-inducing twaddle about “transphobia” and the nauseating, bootlicking treatment of the gender-dysphoric as cultural gods these days, a thought recently bubbled up that had been embedded deep inside my noggin for decades:

Why does no one hear about Christine Jorgensen anymore?

I asked a handful of friends if they could place the name, and none of them could.

For those unaware, Christine Jorgensen [2] was America’s Superstar Transsexual Darling from the early 1950s until at least the early 1970s, when he (sorry, I’m going to use proper biological pronouns throughout this piece) faded mostly into obscurity as a whole new breed of drag queens and post-op loons started hogging the spotlight.

Born in the Bronx in 1926 as George William Jorgensen and designated as a male because back then people knew the difference between males and females, Jorgensen was a shy, fey, extremely gay-looking [3] boy. At some point later in life after his sex change, he described his former self as a “frail, blond, introverted little boy who ran from fistfights and rough-and-tumble games.” But George Jorgensen’s plumbing was apparently normal enough that he served a stint in the US Army in the 1940s while being stationed at Fort Dix, New Jersey. That’s right: DIX. You can’t make this shit up.

Young George Jorgensen said he felt like a girl, played with girls’ toys, and wanted to wear girls’ clothes. He said that he developed crushes on boys and felt envious of girls. At some point in the late 1940s or early ‘50s, Jorgensen began taking estrogen supplements [4]. He started researching sexual-reassignment surgery [5], which had existed in one form or another since the 1920s and 1930s, and made up his mind to go to Sweden, which at the time hosted the world’s only doctors who performed such procedures. While in Copenhagen to visit relatives, Jorgensen made the acquaintance of an endocrinologist named Christian Hamburger [6] and decided to name his new “female” self “Christine” in homage to Hamburger. Due to his family ties in Denmark, and aided by the special pleading of a local surgeon, Jorgensen received special permission from the Danish government to embark on a series of surgical procedures that included testicular removal in 1951 and a right bloody good penis-lopping in 1952. Returning to the United States in late 1952, Jorgensen reportedly intended to keep his sex change a secret, but rumor has it that a cousin sold the story to the press for $300 (about $3,500 today) — and a star was born.

“EX-GI BECOMES BLONDE BEAUTY [7],” roared the New York Daily News headline from December 1, 1952. What astonished me about the subsequent story is that it didn’t treat Jorgensen like a freak. In fact, it actually used feminine pronouns:

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.

A striking woman. Wow, I expected something far more . . . you know . . . transphobic.

Jorgensen quickly became a cultural phenomenon. The 1953 film Glen or Glenda [8], which often registers near the top of “Worst Movies of All Time” lists, features a small segment about a transsexual that it claimed was based on Jorgensen’s story, although most of the film dealt with director Ed Wood, Jr’s. real-life predilection for stockings, high heels, and angora sweaters.

In 1954, a calypso singer known as “The Charmer” — who later rebranded as Nation of Islam top banana Louis Farrakhan — recorded a song called “Is She Is or Is She Ain’t [9]” based on Jorgensen’s story. And even though this was Farrakhan, the lyrics [10] merely reflect honest confusion about the whole saga rather than anything resembling condemnation or, Allah forbid, “hate”:

I wonder what gave him the idea and the spark
To leave the country bound for Denmark
He tried to live the life of a man
But that was not in accord with nature’s plan
So he underwent this operation
And came back home to shock the nation
But behind that lipstick, rouge and paint
I got to know, is she is, or is she ain’t?

When I skimmed over newspaper archives about Jorgensen from 1952 to the early 1960s, I was amazed to find the same approach as the initial Daily News article that rocked the world: They used “proper” pronouns, were highly respectful of Jorgensen and his weird journey, and they were sometimes surprisingly flattering. To be fair, my sample size and the time I could afford to spend on research were both limited. I’m sure that someone, somewhere was aghast at the entire spectacle. But here’s what I found:

Ft. Worth Star-Telegram [11], December 12, 1952:
“She turned up in true femme fatale outfit: tailored black suit, black stockings, black gloves, black hat and black veil. . . . She smiled charmingly for 20 minutes for dozens of pictures. . . . Each time a newspaperman would pop a question on her private life, she gracefully would ignore him with: ‘Now let’s get back to my film.’”

Valley Morning Star [12] (Harlingen, Texas), June 26, 1953:
Headline: “Christine Jorgensen Tells All to Dr. Kinsey”
Main story was about Jorgensen’s meeting with the famed sex researcher, with a side story about how when Jorgensen told a hotel clerk he needed a hotel room, the clerk dutifully made one available for him the moment a cancellation came through.

Chicago Tribune [13], July 4, 1956:
Subhead: “Ex-Soldier Discusses Night Club Role”
“Christine Jorgensen smiled. It was a pleasant smile. And, her white teeth contrasted admirably with her ‘Bachelor’s Carnation’ lipstick.”

Arizona Daily Star [14], June 15, 1958:
Headline: “Christine Jorgensen To Make Tucson Debut”
“Christine Jorgensen, literally one of the most discussed figures in the entertainment world in recent years, opens a 10-day engagement Friday at the Tucson Inn’s Bagdad Room.”

The Daily Item [15] (Sunbury, Pennsylvania), September 23, 1958:
“Christine Jorgensen, who was brought up a male and had her sex established as a female six years ago in an operation in Europe, addressed 65 persons at the opening meeting of the Westchester Chapter Muscular Dystrophy Assn. . . .”

El Paso Herald-Post [16], March 31, 1959:
Headline: “Christine Jorgensen Wants to Get Married”
“The fiance [sic] of Christine Jorgensen hustles off to Chicago today in search of the divorce papers he must submit before he can marry the man-turned-woman.”

Casper (WY) Star Tribune [17], July 18, 1960:
“6 BIG NIGHTS. . . . See the appearance of this great personality before Hollywood makes a movie of ‘The Life Story of Christine Jorgensen.’”

Fort Lauderdale News [18], March 10, 1961:
“Whatever transformations medical science performed upon Christine . . . there appears to be little question that the Bronx songstress is today a well adjusted [sic] woman.”

The Daily Herald [19] (Sydney, Australia), July 23, 1961:
Headline: “Christine Jorgensen Looking for a Husband”
“The slim, trim blond, wearing a $6,000 mink coat, flew in from Honolulu for a four weeks’ night club engagement at $1,500 a week.”

Maybe I expected positive press for Jorgensen in New York and Los Angeles back then, but Texas and Wyoming? The only murmurs of “transphobia” that I found involved a 1952 incident where comedian Henny Youngman cracked jokes about Jorgensen that I was sadly unable to find. In response to Youngman’s ribbing, the Minneapolis Star Tribune [20] ran a series of letters to the editor complaining that the fiddle-toting Jewish funnyman had been tasteless and disrespectful. One woman wrote, “I think a person who has the courage to transfer himself, such as she, has a perfect right to be treated as a woman, the same as any other.”

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You can buy Jim Goad’s ANSWER Me! here [22].

The only two instances I could find of people trying to “cancel” Jorgensen involved a 1953 incident in Germany [23] and a 1955 shutdown in Venezuela [24]. In America Jorgensen ran into a few legal speedbumps, such as the time in 1959 that he was prevented from getting married to a man named Howard J. Knox, because even though Jorgensen’s driver’s license listed him as a female, his birth certificate called him a male, and at least back then, you couldn’t retroactively change your birth certificate nor the “deadname” it listed. But here in the hate-filled USA, Jorgensen was mostly allowed to let his freak flag freely fly.

Except for the occasional joke told at his expense, Jorgensen spent the rest of his life as a generally respected nightclub entertainer and widely feted cultural oddity. He was able to make a living as an entertainer. As the 1960s wore on, with all of the resultant transitioning between new definitions of what constituted a “cultural icon” and what was cast into the dustbin of history for being “racist,” “sexist,” and all of the other moronic bugaboos, Jorgensen was mostly treated as a hero and a pioneer until he died of bladder and lung cancer in 1989.

Although I don’t remember the term “drag” ever being used in my youth, it was universally considered a laughing matter — not cruel and mocking laughter, but just generally hilarious — to see men dressed up as women.

At summer camp when I was a Boy Scout and couldn’t have been older than 12, there was a competition where all the different troops served up contestants who walked down a cement poolside runway dressed like girls in bikinis with wigs and lipstick. I remember most of the Scouts thinking that “Luscious Lola” was particularly fetching. And we all recoiled at the idea of homosexuals back then, but guys dressing up as women was universally seen as hilarious.

If people back in America’s supposed Dark Ages thought transvestites were appalling rather than funny, 1959’s Some Like it Hot [25] — where Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis dress in drag to evade Mafiosi — wouldn’t have been a hit comedy.

If America was the steaming cesspit of transphobia that the modern high priestesses of wokeness allege it was, ABC never would have greenlit the 1980-82 sitcom Bosom Buddies [26], where Tom Hanks and Peter Scolari star as struggling actors who dress in drag so they can live in a dirt-cheap New York City apartment building that’s open only to women.

Compare what was said about Jorgensen in the mainstream American press back when it was allegedly seething with hatred to the truly dehumanizing and often murderous language you hear from the government, the educational-industrial complex, and the media about “transphobes” these days. On second thought, it’s unfair of me to ask you to compare. There’s no comparison. The anti-“transphobe” rhetoric is galactically more hateful than anything that was said about trannies back then.

Perplexed, befuddled, and clearly out of my pay grade and element in my attempts to figure out what changed over the years and how things got so poisonous regarding the whole Trans Delusion, I contacted a long-time reader of mine. Although we’ve always been congenial and friendly, I’m not sure he qualifies as a “friend” yet, because we never met and I don’t even know what he looks like. Such is the state of parasocial online “relationships” these days. He was the one who tipped me off for last week’s feature [27] about the female-to-male Nashville mass shooter and how the primary fiduciary change over the years, which no one ever seems to spotlight, is that “transitioning” has become a $200-billion industry.

Although he made a living for a long time as a drag performer, this gent is a biological male and identifies as one. He never took hormone therapy and never had sexual-reassignment surgery. In fact, he’s cynical about the whole process of gender self-identification:

I’m a man. No “identifying” about it. A rather loud, emotional, silly, bombastic man, but a man nonetheless.

He laments that an outsider culture in which he once found solace has metastasized into what he calls a mainstream “cult.” He also makes a stark distinction between old-school “trannies” and modern “troons”:

There is a MASSIVE difference between trannies, who called themselves and each other trannies — and “troons,” which are the genderspecial hateblobs being manufactured on campus. It was a mashup of trans and goon. Trannies were ALWAYS showgirls and/or streetwalkers. Eventually settling down (if they survived) with a nice husband in the suburbs. Troons are turds in a corporate toilet. . . . Troons are the Pronoun Cult. Backed by the entire government/medical/corporate establishment. Politicized gendermush. Trannies as I knew them still do exist, but many if not most have been sucked up into the cult. Trannies have a more realistic view of themselves. They know they are men, biologically. They are largely apolitical or would be if they were allowed to be by the cult. I’ve seen some using #TransWomenAreTransWomen on social media. But most would rather just live their lives and meet a nice husband. Trannies pass. Troons don’t. Fuck the Pronoun. Earn an Adjective.

He tells me that most of the trannies he knew were never fond of Christine Jorgensen:

She was instant establishment, and a bit of a “brick” as we used to say. Probably due to some jealousy, maybe. Decades before any of this shit became so hyper-politicized, there was way more gatekeeping amongst the trannies. And the term “crossdresser” was often used to keep it.

This confirms something I’ve thought about for years: I found fags and crossdressers to be much more likable back when they were cultural outsiders. I once joked that I thought that the thrill of being gay involved the possibility of being gay-bashed. But once they started up with all the shrill politicking about gay marriage, disrespectful demands for respect, and viciously sadistic calls for the ritual unpersoning and perpetual ostracism of anyone who dares criticize them, they started reminding me more of gay-bashers.

Same goes for the trannies. It was the fact that they became the establishment — and a far more tyrannically cruel and genuinely hateful establishment than the one they replaced — that made me hate them.

Jim Goad [28]

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