Add to favorites Examiner Bio

Gender dysphoria: from Christine Jorgensen to Chaz Bono

 

In 1995, Chastity Bono let the world know that she was a lesbian, a woman who is sexually attracted to other women. Recently, the news reported that the former Chastity Bono, who will now go by Chaz Bono in his new male persona, is taking steps toward physically transitioning from being female to becoming male. If done completely, female to male (FTM) transitioning consists of Sexual Reassignment Surgery (SRS), wherein surgical procedures divest one of all female physical components: a complete hysterectomy to remove the female reproductive system (ovaries, fallopian tubes, uterus, and vagina) and use of tissues to create the genitalia of a male, and a bilateral mastectomy to remove breast tissue and mammary glands. These procedures are usually accompanied by the taking of male hormones – testosterone – to induce masculine traits such as the growth of facial hair and heavier body hair, deepening the voice, and increasing muscle mass.

 

Chaz Bono is not alone, nor is his situation “new.” It doesn’t help that Chaz grew up in the glare of Hollywood’s harsh spotlight where everyone knows everyone else’s secrets and no one can live their lives in privacy. There are many individuals who live more private lives who have taken these same steps and there are also men who have chosen to become women (MTF) as best as modern medicine will allow, first through orchiectomy and penectomy, but saving some tissue to allow for the formation of female body structures. Additional elective cosmetic surgery usually includes breast enhancements, tracheal shaves, and facial sculpting. Prescriptions of female hormones – estrogen and progesterone – may complete the illusion by softening the skin and redistributing body fat over time.

 

Such would have been part of the treatment that the former American GI, George Jorgensen, would have undergone in the early 1950s to become Christine Jorgensen in Denmark, one of the few countries whose physicians performed such surgeries at that time. Long before such surgery is ever considered, an individual is usually diagnosed with gender dysphoria, a condition or mental realization of “being” a member of the opposite sex than that of the body into which he or she was born. SRS is one solution for those who cannot bear to live their lives identifying with the gender of their bodies. Many transgendered individuals never reach this stage, however, having resorted to suicide to end a lifelong inner struggle within a society which polarizes humanity into two separate and distinct genders. 

 

In the past few years, I have known and met a number of individuals who have “found” themselves, after many years of pondering their souls and their psyches, as to why they felt and behaved the way the did, many enduring a life long yearning to be a member of the opposite sex than that into which they were born. Dr. Harry Benjamin pioneered the research and pondered the issues of gender dysphoria, although unable to pin down a cause – if any – which covers the range of behaviors from occasional cross dressing or transvestitism to the extreme of SRS and the legal documentation that stems from changing one’s name to match the new gender in which they intend to live. Many states are enacting laws to protect transsexuals in the workplace and elsewhere just as minorities, for example, have also achieved protection under the law.