Gender Identity Disorders: Gender Dysphoria In America

Gender dysphoria (GD), also known as gender identity disorder (GID), formal diagnosis given by mental health professionals to people who experience distress because of a significant incongruence between the gender with which they personally identify and the gender with which they were born. While the causes of GD is unknown, the process of a fetus becoming male or female and abnormalities, the celebrities that experienced GD, and the final step of treatment sex reassignment surgery are all factors to Gender Dysphoria that will be discussed

Gender is the number one influence when it comes to Gender Dysphoria. Researchers believe that gender dysphoria may have biological causes associated with the development of gender identity at birth. The

Christine Jorgenson previously known as George Jorgenson, was the first person to become widely known in the United States for having a sex reassignment surgery. As a teen Jorgenson knew he wasn’t homosexual, but felt as if he was a woman who happened to be in a man’s body. In an autobiography Jorgenson said that while being George, despite being attracted to men she felt physically sick when a man would proposition her. In 1950 she head to Copenhagen, Denmark to see Dr. Christian Hamburger, a Danish doctor who was experimenting with gender therapy. During this visit Dr. Hamburger diagnosed Jorgenson as transsexual. The first step of becoming the women she is now was a long course of female hormones. Along with taking the hormones she was encourage by Dr. Hamburger to take on a female identity and begin dressing as a woman in public. The first sign that the hormones were working was an increase in the size of the mammary gland and then hair began to grow where the “George” had a bald patch on the temple. After her body changed from a male to a female Jorgenson had to be assessed by a psychologist. Dr. Georg Sturup accepted that Jorgenson was committed and truly wanted to be a female so he successfully petitioned the Danish government to change the law to allow castration for the purposes of the

Both males and females can have this surgery done. Females usually have the removal of breast, uterus, ovaries, and fallopian tubes. The males’ surgeries may include breast implants, facial feminization surgery, and voice surgery. Only few choose this route, because they really cannot feel comfortable with the genitals of the sex they were born with. The knowledge of sex hormones and plastic surgery grew rapidly after World War II. It was finally possible to change the form and genitals of a person to the desired sex. In the 1950’s male to female transsexuals began to develop breast, soften skin, and over time develop a women’s shape, because of the new female sex hormones available. Also during this time, surgeons began constructing the vagina out of skin grafts from the thighs and buttocks. This is the same method used to construct the vagina in intersex girls. Christine was the first of small group of transsexuals to have the sex reassignment surgery in 1952. Dr. Harry Benjamin, M.D, was a physician and endocrinologist who worked in New York and California. He prescribed estrogen to chosen patients in response to how badly they wanted to physically look like a woman. After conducting his own research on transsexual surgeries he began to refer his most devoted patients to those surgeons with the best results. In the late 50’s, a French plastic surgeon named Georges Burou, M.D, invented the