Finally, in 1966, surgeons at the John Hopkins Medical Center began performing a limited number of MtF SRS operations in effort to help some intensely transsexual patients under care of Hopkins' new gender identity clinic. The Hopkin's staff believed that transsexuals were mentally ill, but they also believed that there was no psychological method for reversing the "incorrectly formed gender identity". In an experimental program they began to explore the possibility of helping patients via surgery, as was being recommended by Dr. Benjamin. The Hopkins' Surgeons used a variant of Dr. Burou's method.
In the fall of 1966, newspapers around the country propagated the following item from a column in the New York Daily News: "Making the rounds of Manhattan clubs these nights is a stunning girl who admits she was a male less than one year ago and that she underwent a sex change operation at, of all places, Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. Surprisingly, the hospital confirms the case, saying surgery followed psychotherapy. Such operations, although rare in this country, are neither illegal nor unethical, according to a Johns Hopkins spokesman. Officials at a number of major hospitals here agreed with Johns Hopkins on the legality and ethics of the operations but none could recall such an operation ever having been performed in New York." Then, on November 21, 1966, the New York Times published an extensive front-page article on transsexualism. The Times article provided extensive information on the surgical and hormonal treatments then being done abroad, and on the new program at John's Hopkins University Medical Center, where several surgeries had recently been done. The article also identified Dr. Benjamin as being the world's leading authority on transsexualism, and as author of a new textbook on the subject entitled The Transsexual Phenomenon (see this link for an online version of the original text).
In the fall of 1966, newspapers around the country propagated the following item from a column in the New York Daily News: "Making the rounds of Manhattan clubs these nights is a stunning girl who admits she was a male less than one year ago and that she underwent a sex change operation at, of all places, Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. Surprisingly, the hospital confirms the case, saying surgery followed psychotherapy. Such operations, although rare in this country, are neither illegal nor unethical, according to a Johns Hopkins spokesman. Officials at a number of major hospitals here agreed with Johns Hopkins on the legality and ethics of the operations but none could recall such an operation ever having been performed in New York." Then, on November 21, 1966, the New York Times published an extensive front-page article on transsexualism. The Times article provided extensive information on the surgical and hormonal treatments then being done abroad, and on the new program at John's Hopkins University Medical Center, where several surgeries had recently been done. The article also identified Dr. Benjamin as being the world's leading authority on transsexualism, and as author of a new textbook on the subject entitled The Transsexual Phenomenon (see this link for an online version of the original text).
Dr. Benjamin was the pioneer of the whole new area of medical knowledge of transsexualism. His paradigm-shifting medical text described his experiences with many patients over several decades. He was the first researcher to recognize how gender identity and sexual orientation are two independent dimensions of each person's human nature. Dr. Benjamin recommend how "intense transsexuals" could and really should be treated, in order to enable them to live in the gender they sought. His book documented the results of the new, innovative surgical and hormonal treatments and put those treatments into a rational context as therapy for transsexualism. This book gave fresh hope to many transsexuals, and opened the door for the modern medical approaches that we now take for granted. At the same time, the fact that Johns Hopkins was actually doing transsexual surgeries greatly enhanced the visibility of Dr. Benjamin's theories and the attention that his research results received by the medical community.
