These diverse people live their lives now with fewer problems than they might have had fifty years ago. Science and medicine have advanced to the point where people can correct what they consider a flaw in their physical bodies. Whether they know it or not, they have one person to thank for all of this. Her name was Christine Jorgenson.

Although she was not the first person to have had gender-reassignment surgery, she was the first to receive world-wide attention for it. For eighteen months starting in December 1952, Christine was one of the most discussed people in the world. Over a half million words were written about her during those eighteen months. Those are enough words to fill about fifteen full-length novels.

Gender-reassignment surgery had actually been going on for about twenty years prior, mainly in Europe, but like many transgendered persons today, those early pioneers preferred to live quiet lives. They had no desire to have people know that they used to be a different sex. On reading Christine's own autobiography, we learn that she had no desire to seek the public spotlight either.

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