Not Cut Out for the Army.

In 1952 Americans were shocked by the news that George Jorgensen, a twentysix- year-old private in the U.S. Army Service Command at Fort Dix, New Jersey, had an operation to change his sex. Jorgensen was unhappy as a man and wanted to change his body to that of a woman. He went to Denmark for the surgery to make the transformation.

A Quiet History.

Jorgensen's was not the first sexchange operation. In a highly publicized case, a woman in Great Britain was converted to a man by similar means in order to be able to inherit a title and land available only to a man. In fact, Jorgensen might not have been even the first American to have undergone a sex-change procedure. His notoriety was based on the fact that his case was publicized.

The Transformation.

At the...