Benjamin died in August 1986, at the age of 101. His friend Christine Jorgensen, for whom he felt immense respect and gratitude, outlived him by only three years, dying of bladder cancer at the age of sixty-two. In the introduction to The Transsexual Phenomenon, Benjamin pays tribute to Jorgensen in words that echo the praise of his own friends and colleagues at his memorial service.Without her courage and determination, undoubtedly springing from a force deep inside her, transsexualism might still be largely unknown—certainly unknown by this term—and might still be considered to be something barely on the fringe of medical science. To the detriment if not to the desperation of the respective patients, the medical profession would most likely still be ignorant of the subject and still be ignoring its manifestations. Even at present, any attempts to treat these patients with some permissiveness in the direction of their wishes—that is to say, “change of sex”—is often met with raised medical eyebrows, and sometimes even with arrogant rejection and/or condemnation. And so, without Christine Jorgensen and the unsought publicity of her “conversion,” this book could hardly have been conceived.
In a 1953 letter to Benjamin, written soon after they met, Jorgensen explained why she had overcome her initial resistance and was beginning to speak to the media and accept offers to perform in nightclubs— in other words, to embrace her notoriety, rather than running from it. “As you know, I’ve been avoiding publicity, but this seems the wrong approach. Now I shall seek it so that ‘Christine’ will become such an average thing in the public mind that when the next ‘Christine’ comes along the sensationalism will be decreased. You know what I’m trying to do is not as great as the big medical discoverers in the past, but it will be a contribution. With God’s help and those who believe as you do, I know this will be a step into the future understanding of the human race. I wonder where there are more who join us in this struggle.”
CONVERSATION WITH ALESHIA BREVARD
Aleshia Brevard is an actress and writer. A graceful woman in her sixties, in 2001, Brevard published a memoir, The Woman I Was Not Born to Be, in which she describes her childhood in Tennessee, her pre-transition years in San Francisco, performing as Lee Shaw at the famous drag club Finocchio’s, and her post-transition life and career as an actress and a Playboy bunny in Hollywood. Brevard, who transitioned in 1962, is a member of the first generation of Americans who underwent sex-reassignment surgery, a group whose belief that one’s identity as a transsexual is left behind in the surgical suite has been increasingly challenged by a later generation.
Q: Do you have any childhood memories of the big media splash surrounding Christine Jorgensen’s return to the United States after her surgery in Denmark? Was she an inspiration to you? Did you ever meet her?
I never met Ms. Jorgensen, nor can I even say that she was a true inspiration for me when contemplating my own surgery. The media frenzy that accompanied Christine’s arrival at New York International Airport [sic], February 13, 1953, actually had a decidedly negative effect on me as a high school freshman. The hoopla surrounding the Jorgensen gender transformation focused an unflattering spotlight on me as an overly feminine teenager. “Buddy must have caught what Christine has,” was my classmates’ taunting chant for several weeks at Trousdale County High. I wasn’t thrilled to have my carefully constructed male cover blown by Christine Jorgensen’s high-powered publicity splash. I felt exposed. I felt very threatened. I was not yet aware that I was Christine’s transgendered sister. I’d always believed I was meant to be a girl, but the jokes, horror, and general commotion that surrounded Christine Jorgensen’s transition kept me from believing I might be a girl like America’s first transsexual.
Q: One of the things I found so refreshing about your memoir was your honesty. Some of the earlier transsexual memoirists like Jor gens en were so circumspect, because of the times the authors were writing in. They really couldn’t discuss their sex lives, for example. But you really don’t pull any punches. You put it all out there.
I’ve heard that. And I’m flattered. That’s what I wanted more than anything. If I’m taking this step, and coming forward at long last, I must be honest, and I can’t sugarcoat anything.
Q: One of the things I’ve found interesting as I’ve been conducting my research is the conflicted relationship between homosexuality and transsexu-ality. Christine Jorgensen and many other early transsexuals were adamant about insisting that they were not homosexuals. One of the things I found unique about your book is that you admitted that you were a gay man …
Perceived to be a gay man. But I didn’t think that was the case. Before I met Dr. Benjamin, well… You wear the badges that are available at the fair and that’s what was available. I was not popular in the gay bars, and the men who were attracted to me were attracted because of the image I projected onstage. I was just too ultra for the gay community. If an interested potential partner thought that you believed it (that you were female), that’s the difference. If it were bigger than life, drag, a parody of femininity, that’s camp. Then, that was okay.
Q: Did you feel comfortable in the gay community before your transition?’
No. I did not feel comfortable in the community. I do more so now, actually. Adore it, really. Because I’ve become an icon. I went to a book reading in San Francisco, and there was a very interesting young man who came by and said, “This book is so important to me because the movement in the gay community is now to exclude those of us who want to cherish our femininity.” And I thought, yes … Because here he was in a lumber shirt and the whole thing. I view that as almost criminal. We just must learn to let people be as they are. The whole impersonation thing also [drag queens] … The community has turned on those representatives of the Stonewall era. They are ashamed of them now.
Q: You were a patient of Dr. Harry Benjamin. You met Dr. Benjamin when you were working at Finocchio’s?
Yes. Started hormones, did all that. And of course with his rules and regulations, generally you have to dress in the clothing [of your preferred gender] for a time, but I didn’t because I was working at Finocchio’s.
Q: And he referred you to your surgeon, Dr. Elmer Belt?
Yes.
Q: Can you tell me a little about Dr. Benjamin, as you knew him?
He was doing extremely well in the early sixties. He had offices in Paris, New York, and San Francisco. As much as he did for me, and as much as I appreciate what he did for me … well, we were referred to as “his girls” and then there were RGs, “real girls.” And it has only recently struck me that if we had our druthers, and in a perfect world, that distinction would not be there. And I question his putting it there. I was wondering what he really was thinking. He was very kind, very gentle, very embracing, but I’m not sure that he really got it, as I perceived it. But I don’t think that we could have expected any more at the time.
Q: At the time you transitioned, there was no real “transgender community. “ You pretty much transitioned in isolation, didn’t you?
Well, I did have friends. [Laughs]
Q: But you had no sense of being part of a movement?