WONDROUS TRANSFORMATIONS
A Maverick Physician, the Science of
Hormones, and the Birth of the Transgender Revolution
by Alison Li
University of North Carolina Press
258 pages, $30.
“TO DEAR HARRY, Such a grand time we had in San Francisco. Fondly, Chris.” Christine Jorgensen’s autographed glossy photograph reveals her enduring friendship with Dr. Harry Benjamin. Jorgensen, of course, was the Danish-American former GI who had sought medical treatment in Denmark to achieve hormonal “sex transformation” treatment. After her widely covered return to the U.S. in 1953, she sought out Benjamin for continued medical care in New York. Thanks to the global publicity Jorgensen drew to transsexualism and her association with Benjamin, they fostered the humane medical care of transgender people.
The research foundation that Benjamin founded in 1964 sponsored international symposia on “gender dysphoria.” In 1979 the group was named in his honor as the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association. In 2007 it was renamed the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (to reduce the association with mental illness). However, this development in his career was just the coda to a long and fascinating life (he lived to age 101!). Earlier, he had promoted various experimental, miraculous, and possibly quack treatments for everything from tuberculosis to aging. His involvement with transgender care has been documented within the history of endocrinology or transgender studies by scholars such as Joanne Meyerowitz, Chandak Sengoopta, and Nelly Oudshoorn. However, historians of many disciplines have been eagerly awaiting a more complete biography of this pioneering physician. Allison Li has finally produced this volume.
Vernon Rosario is a historian of medicine and a UCLA child psychiatrist practicing in the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health.
