With the rapid advances in knowledge of sex hormones and plastic surgery following World War II, it finally became possible to contemplate complete medical and surgical solutions for transsexualism. During the 1950's, transsexual women began to benefit enormously from the newly available female sex hormones, which enable the development of breast, soften the skin and over time produce female body contours. Also during the 1950's, a few surgeons began exploratory surgeries to construct vaginas in MtF transsexuals by using skin grafts taken from the thighs or buttocks, drawing upon then recently developed techniques for constructing vaginas in intersexed girls.
Christine Jorgensen, a U.S. citizen, was among the first small group of transsexuals to undergo such a surgical "change of sex". She was "outed" in 1952 by U.S. print media shortly after her initial surgery, and her story became a national sensation. Through her story, many transsexuals for the first time learned of the existance of the new hormonal and surgical treatments. However, access to this new, experimental surgery was limited to a tiny handful of patients in Europe.
At the time of Christine's surgery in the '50's, doctors first removed the transsexual's male organs in one or more surgeries. The patient then waited through an extended period for healing. Then, in a surgery similar to those done to create vaginas for intersexed patients, surgeons constructed the patient's vagina by using skin grafts taken from her thighs or buttocks (Christine's vaginoplasty surgery was in 1954).
Although patients were extremely pleased with the results (especially when compared to their previous situations), there were major problems with this early method. The skin grafts were unreliable, and sometimes partially failed to "take". The use of extensive grafts also left large disfiguring scars at the donor sites. In addition, a lot of sensitive genital tissue was forever lost in the first step, affecting patients' feelings of sexual arousal and capacity for orgasm.
During the late 50's and into the 60's, several hundred transsexuals in the United States came under the care of Harry Benjamin, M.D, a compassionate physician and endocrinologist who had offices in New York, N.Y. and San Francisco, CA. Dr. Benjamin was the first physician/researcher to sort out the distinction between cross-gender identity and homosexuality. Instead of viewing transsexuals as mentally ill deviants as did most psychiatrists of the day, he began to visualize transsexuals as truly suffering from a genuine mis-gendering condition of unknown origins. In efforts to ease their suffering, he began prescribing estrogen to selected patients in response their profound pleas for medical feminization. He also maintained close watch on the results of transsexual surgeries being performed, and began to refer his most intensely transsexual patients to those surgeons who were obtaining the best results.
Then, in the late 50's, a french plastic surgeon named Georges Burou, M.D. invented the modern form of penile inversion MtF sex reassignment surgery for MtF transsexuals. Variations of Dr. Burou's technique have been used ever since. Dr. Burou's classic innovation was to use the male genitalia as source of skin and sensitive erotic tissue to create the new female genitalia, including the vagina.
Dr. Burou performed these surgeries in his clinic in Casablanca, Morocco. In 1958-60, several famous and very beautiful young "female impersonators" from the club Le Carrousel in Paris, France, including Coccinelle (more info), Bambi and April Ashley, were successfully transformed into women by Dr. Burou. Many of the young Le Carrousel girls had received female hormones as a side-benefit of working at the club, and as a result had become incredibly beautiful, feminine and sexy. Several returned to perform at the club after their genital surgery. Their successful "sex changes" became widely known about, and they became sought after as love objects by many prominent, wealthy men. Some very wealthy men (including Aristotle Onassis) would occasionally "sponsor" the sex change surgery of a Le Carrousel girl, who would then became their mistress for a while.
Dr. Burou became both famous and notorious as news spread of his work. His "Clinique du Parc" at 13 Rue La Pebie in Casablanca, Morocco eventually became besieged by transssexual patients from all over the world. Dr. Burou began performing many hundreds of these operations every year. In 1973, Dr. Burou gave his first formal public presentation on his innovative surgical technique at a major interdiciplinary conference on transsexualism held at the Stanford University Medical School. By the time of that 1973 conference, he had performed over 3000 MtF surgical sex reassignments. By that time many other surgeons around the world had inferred and adapted Dr. Burou's technique, and were applying it in similar SRS surgeries.
Among the keys to the success of these surgeries were (i) the use of the skin of the penis and scrotum to form the new labia and a sexually functional vagina (thus avoiding the source area disfigurement caused in earlier operations by the use of large, deep skin grafts), and (ii) the careful dissection and placement of the terminated corpora cavernosa and the saving and relocation of some of the sensitive nerves and a small amount of erectile tissue. If done properly, the post-operative patient can have powerful feelings of sexual arousal (erection of the corpora stumps remaining inside her body) and can easily be orgasmic (the prostate is left intact, and can spasm during orgasm just as before SRS - while the nerve tissues throughout the corpora, the clitoris and the vulva spasm, throb and release at the same time, just as in any other woman).
Dr. Benjamin's practice grew rapidly as more and more transsexuals learned that they could obtain compassionate treatment from him. He began referring ever larger numbers of patients to surgeons, especially to Dr. Burou in Casablanca. By the mid 60's, several other top surgeons abroad began performing SRS surgeries on transsexuals using Dr. Burou's techniques, and Dr. Benjamin referred patients to these surgeons too. The most notable of these was Jose Jesus Barbosa, M.D., a prominent plastic surgeon in Mexico (Dr. Barbosa was Lynn's SRS surgeon, and had performed over 300 SRS's by 1973).
However, such surgeries were still virtually unheard in the U.S. even in the mid-to-late 60's. Under intense pressure from religious groups following the publicity of the Jorgensen case in 1952, most U. S. hospitals installed policies that explicitly forbade such operations, and religious strictures were frequently drawn upon to support the witholding of any hormonal or surgical treatments of transsexuals. Then too, the U.S. medical community in the 60's thought of transsexuals as "severely psychotic" rather than biologically mis-gendered. Instead of receiving help for gender-transition from medical professionals, many transsexuals were forced into mental institutions, where psychiatrists tried to "cure them of their mental illness" by electroshock therapy and aversion therapy.
During the late 50's and into the early 60's, a number of intensely transsexual girls in the U.S. resorted to castrating themselves in order to become more feminine and to bypass hospital restrictions on removal of testicles from "intact males" during SRS. Once no longer intact, the girl might hope to obtain complete SRS in some hospitals here - if she had the money to pay for it. See for example, the story of transsexual pioneer Aleshia Brevard. At a young age and feminized on estrogen, Aleshia became a star performer at Finocchio's, the world famous "female impersonator" nightclub in San Francisco. After a self-castration to further feminize herself, Aleshia was able to undergo SRS in the U.S. in 1962 with the help of Dr. Benjamin. As did so many postop transsexual women in the 1960's (including Lynn) Aleshia left her past life behind and entered stealth mode. She went on to become a showgirl, a "Playboy Bunny" (a hostess at one of the famous "Playboy" clubs), a widely recognized movie, stage and TV actress, and got married three times! Aleshia only recently came out to tell her story in a wonderful book about her amazing life.
Christine Jorgensen, a U.S. citizen, was among the first small group of transsexuals to undergo such a surgical "change of sex". She was "outed" in 1952 by U.S. print media shortly after her initial surgery, and her story became a national sensation. Through her story, many transsexuals for the first time learned of the existance of the new hormonal and surgical treatments. However, access to this new, experimental surgery was limited to a tiny handful of patients in Europe.
At the time of Christine's surgery in the '50's, doctors first removed the transsexual's male organs in one or more surgeries. The patient then waited through an extended period for healing. Then, in a surgery similar to those done to create vaginas for intersexed patients, surgeons constructed the patient's vagina by using skin grafts taken from her thighs or buttocks (Christine's vaginoplasty surgery was in 1954).
Although patients were extremely pleased with the results (especially when compared to their previous situations), there were major problems with this early method. The skin grafts were unreliable, and sometimes partially failed to "take". The use of extensive grafts also left large disfiguring scars at the donor sites. In addition, a lot of sensitive genital tissue was forever lost in the first step, affecting patients' feelings of sexual arousal and capacity for orgasm.
During the late 50's and into the 60's, several hundred transsexuals in the United States came under the care of Harry Benjamin, M.D, a compassionate physician and endocrinologist who had offices in New York, N.Y. and San Francisco, CA. Dr. Benjamin was the first physician/researcher to sort out the distinction between cross-gender identity and homosexuality. Instead of viewing transsexuals as mentally ill deviants as did most psychiatrists of the day, he began to visualize transsexuals as truly suffering from a genuine mis-gendering condition of unknown origins. In efforts to ease their suffering, he began prescribing estrogen to selected patients in response their profound pleas for medical feminization. He also maintained close watch on the results of transsexual surgeries being performed, and began to refer his most intensely transsexual patients to those surgeons who were obtaining the best results.
Then, in the late 50's, a french plastic surgeon named Georges Burou, M.D. invented the modern form of penile inversion MtF sex reassignment surgery for MtF transsexuals. Variations of Dr. Burou's technique have been used ever since. Dr. Burou's classic innovation was to use the male genitalia as source of skin and sensitive erotic tissue to create the new female genitalia, including the vagina.
Dr. Burou performed these surgeries in his clinic in Casablanca, Morocco. In 1958-60, several famous and very beautiful young "female impersonators" from the club Le Carrousel in Paris, France, including Coccinelle (more info), Bambi and April Ashley, were successfully transformed into women by Dr. Burou. Many of the young Le Carrousel girls had received female hormones as a side-benefit of working at the club, and as a result had become incredibly beautiful, feminine and sexy. Several returned to perform at the club after their genital surgery. Their successful "sex changes" became widely known about, and they became sought after as love objects by many prominent, wealthy men. Some very wealthy men (including Aristotle Onassis) would occasionally "sponsor" the sex change surgery of a Le Carrousel girl, who would then became their mistress for a while.
Dr. Burou became both famous and notorious as news spread of his work. His "Clinique du Parc" at 13 Rue La Pebie in Casablanca, Morocco eventually became besieged by transssexual patients from all over the world. Dr. Burou began performing many hundreds of these operations every year. In 1973, Dr. Burou gave his first formal public presentation on his innovative surgical technique at a major interdiciplinary conference on transsexualism held at the Stanford University Medical School. By the time of that 1973 conference, he had performed over 3000 MtF surgical sex reassignments. By that time many other surgeons around the world had inferred and adapted Dr. Burou's technique, and were applying it in similar SRS surgeries.
Among the keys to the success of these surgeries were (i) the use of the skin of the penis and scrotum to form the new labia and a sexually functional vagina (thus avoiding the source area disfigurement caused in earlier operations by the use of large, deep skin grafts), and (ii) the careful dissection and placement of the terminated corpora cavernosa and the saving and relocation of some of the sensitive nerves and a small amount of erectile tissue. If done properly, the post-operative patient can have powerful feelings of sexual arousal (erection of the corpora stumps remaining inside her body) and can easily be orgasmic (the prostate is left intact, and can spasm during orgasm just as before SRS - while the nerve tissues throughout the corpora, the clitoris and the vulva spasm, throb and release at the same time, just as in any other woman).
Dr. Benjamin's practice grew rapidly as more and more transsexuals learned that they could obtain compassionate treatment from him. He began referring ever larger numbers of patients to surgeons, especially to Dr. Burou in Casablanca. By the mid 60's, several other top surgeons abroad began performing SRS surgeries on transsexuals using Dr. Burou's techniques, and Dr. Benjamin referred patients to these surgeons too. The most notable of these was Jose Jesus Barbosa, M.D., a prominent plastic surgeon in Mexico (Dr. Barbosa was Lynn's SRS surgeon, and had performed over 300 SRS's by 1973).
However, such surgeries were still virtually unheard in the U.S. even in the mid-to-late 60's. Under intense pressure from religious groups following the publicity of the Jorgensen case in 1952, most U. S. hospitals installed policies that explicitly forbade such operations, and religious strictures were frequently drawn upon to support the witholding of any hormonal or surgical treatments of transsexuals. Then too, the U.S. medical community in the 60's thought of transsexuals as "severely psychotic" rather than biologically mis-gendered. Instead of receiving help for gender-transition from medical professionals, many transsexuals were forced into mental institutions, where psychiatrists tried to "cure them of their mental illness" by electroshock therapy and aversion therapy.
During the late 50's and into the early 60's, a number of intensely transsexual girls in the U.S. resorted to castrating themselves in order to become more feminine and to bypass hospital restrictions on removal of testicles from "intact males" during SRS. Once no longer intact, the girl might hope to obtain complete SRS in some hospitals here - if she had the money to pay for it. See for example, the story of transsexual pioneer Aleshia Brevard. At a young age and feminized on estrogen, Aleshia became a star performer at Finocchio's, the world famous "female impersonator" nightclub in San Francisco. After a self-castration to further feminize herself, Aleshia was able to undergo SRS in the U.S. in 1962 with the help of Dr. Benjamin. As did so many postop transsexual women in the 1960's (including Lynn) Aleshia left her past life behind and entered stealth mode. She went on to become a showgirl, a "Playboy Bunny" (a hostess at one of the famous "Playboy" clubs), a widely recognized movie, stage and TV actress, and got married three times! Aleshia only recently came out to tell her story in a wonderful book about her amazing life.
