Some of the women highlighted include Sonita Alizadeh (1996--), a rapper from Afghanistan; Wu Zetian (624 A.D.--705 A.D.), an empress from China who ended corruption in China; Temple Grandin, (1947--), an animal whisperer who has autism; and
Christine Jorgensen (1926--1989), the first transgender person to become widely known for having sex reassignment surgery in the 1950s.
Du BoisAE The Souls of Black Folk, and James Weldon JohnsonAEs Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man; and the negation of blackness, with discussion of trans embodiment in the postwar period through the media narratives of
Christine Jorgensen, Lucy Hicks Anderson, Georgia Black, Carlett Brown, James McHarris/Annie Lee Grant, and Ava Betty Brown in the black press, as well as the murders of Lisa Lambert, Brandon Teena, and Phillip DeVine, focusing on DeVineAEs life and death.
It's been around at least since the 1950s when one of the world's first celebrities to gain international fame was a trans woman named
Christine Jorgensen.
Television's fascination with the 'transgender' identity trend began many years ago with the
Christine Jorgensen phenomenon-a former GI who changed gender from male to female, and became a pioneering celebrity in her own right.
1952
Christine Jorgensen receives a sex change in Europe, then returns to U.S.
An old gag in the 60's was that the US Postmaster General sued the surgeon of
Christine Jorgensen for tampering with US male.
Christine Jorgensen was the first person to undergo what in 1953?
Following Noble's review essay is Emily Skidmore's prize-winning article, "Constructing the 'Good Transsexual':
Christine Jorgensen, Whiteness, and Heteronormativity in the Mid-Twentieth-Century Press." In this article, selected as the 2008 Feminist Studies awardee for the best article by a graduate student, Skidmore deconstructs the whiteness of familiar transgender icons through her reassessment of the twentieth-century's most famous U.S.
Becoming a woman; a biography of
Christine Jorgensen.
BECOMING A WOMAN: A BIOGRAPHY OF
CHRISTINE JORGENSEN offers a more studied examination of the state of transsexuality than most biographies offer, focusing on the sociology and science issues as much as the biographical factors involved.
The result is a new biography, Becoming a Woman: A Biography of
Christine Jorgensen, which is all about the world's first celebrity transsexual.
In chapters on the mid-twentieth century, the famous
Christine Jorgensen occupies the limelight, a status that she cultivated in her lifetime.