Cait the Encourageable on Nostr: https://youtube.com/watch?v=8FYZ6m06bDU This is a video from British Pathé films, ...
https://youtube.com/watch?v=8FYZ6m06bDU
This is a video from British Pathé films, about Christine Jorgensen.
When I was 13, in the grips of dysphoria so bad I was crying myself to sleep most nights, I went to the Toronto Reference Library, one of my comfort hangouts, to wander the stacks and read stuff. I ran into a librarian I knew there, an older gay man, who I'd spoken to a few times.
This time I decided to come clean with him. I told him what I'd been feeling, what I'd known since I was 4, that I was a girl.
He looked at me, and said he thought he knew a book that might help. The book he brought me was a biography of Christine Jorgensen, a minor actor in the 1950s in New York who is the first American known to have had bottom surgery. She transitioned publicly in that era, and went on to have a few film roles as herself.
It was this that introduced me for the first time to the word "transsexual" (which was the word at the time; transgender came later). It gave me a label for what was going on with me, and it gave me hope. Transition existed! It could be done!
I was so excited I virtually hovered above my seat on the subway home. I wasn't some complete freak who was unlike anyone else. There was a word for me. That implied there were other people like me.
And there was a treatment. Something could be done.
It was one of the most hopeful days of my life.
Until I got home, anyway. My mother was there. I was excited, I raced in, and told her, "I have a word, I know what's going on with me, I'm transsexual!"
And she FLIPPED. "Don't ever say that word again! Don't let (her husband) hear you say it. You know what he's like."
Within six months, I was in conversion therapy.
But this book, this day...remain locked in my memory from that singular day. And this video, this old filmreel, is about her. My inspiration.
This is a video from British Pathé films, about Christine Jorgensen.
When I was 13, in the grips of dysphoria so bad I was crying myself to sleep most nights, I went to the Toronto Reference Library, one of my comfort hangouts, to wander the stacks and read stuff. I ran into a librarian I knew there, an older gay man, who I'd spoken to a few times.
This time I decided to come clean with him. I told him what I'd been feeling, what I'd known since I was 4, that I was a girl.
He looked at me, and said he thought he knew a book that might help. The book he brought me was a biography of Christine Jorgensen, a minor actor in the 1950s in New York who is the first American known to have had bottom surgery. She transitioned publicly in that era, and went on to have a few film roles as herself.
It was this that introduced me for the first time to the word "transsexual" (which was the word at the time; transgender came later). It gave me a label for what was going on with me, and it gave me hope. Transition existed! It could be done!
I was so excited I virtually hovered above my seat on the subway home. I wasn't some complete freak who was unlike anyone else. There was a word for me. That implied there were other people like me.
And there was a treatment. Something could be done.
It was one of the most hopeful days of my life.
Until I got home, anyway. My mother was there. I was excited, I raced in, and told her, "I have a word, I know what's going on with me, I'm transsexual!"
And she FLIPPED. "Don't ever say that word again! Don't let (her husband) hear you say it. You know what he's like."
Within six months, I was in conversion therapy.
But this book, this day...remain locked in my memory from that singular day. And this video, this old filmreel, is about her. My inspiration.