[6] During this time, she learned about sex reassignment surgery and traveled to Europe, where in Copenhagen, Denmark, she obtained special permission to undergo a series of operations beginning in 1952.

Returning to New York after military service, and increasingly concerned over, as one obituary later called it, a "lack of male physical development",[16] Jorgensen heard about sex reassignment surgery.

She started researching the surgery with the help of Joseph Angelo, the husband of a classmate at the Manhattan Medical and Dental Assistant School.

During a stopover in Copenhagen to visit relatives, she met Christian Hamburger, a Danish endocrinologist and specialist in rehabilitative hormonal therapy associated with the Serum Institute.

Doctor Hamburger explained the gender hormone procedure, "The first sign was an increase in size of the mammary glands and then hair began to grow where the patient had a bald patch on the temple.

Professor E. Dahl-Iverson of the Danish State Hospital was named as one of her surgeons, performing "one minor and 4 major operations on her successfully.

[17] She obtained special permission from the Danish Minister of Justice Helga Pedersen to receive funding to undergo a series of operations in Denmark.

[18] In a letter to friends on October 8, 1951, she referred to how the surgery affected her: As you can see by the enclosed photos, taken just before the operation, I have changed a great deal.

"[17] The New York Daily News ran a front-page story on December 1, 1952, under the headline "Ex-GI Becomes Blonde Beauty", announcing (incorrectly) that Jorgensen had become the recipient of the first "sex change.

"[21] In reality, German doctors had performed this type of surgery in the late 1920s and early 1930s; Dorchen Richter and Danish artist Lili Elbe, both patients of Magnus Hirschfeld at the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft in Berlin, were known recipients of such operations, however Elbe died after developing sepsis due to complications from an attempted uterus transplant.

[8] In the wake of her transition, part of the media coverage debated her original gender identity, many claiming that she was never fully male, but rather intersex.

This theory was also used to downplay the importance of Jorgensen's transition, with doctors claiming that her surgeries were "far from a medical rarity... [with] similar cases in hospitals all over the U.S.".

"[9] After her vaginoplasty, Jorgensen planned to marry labor union statistician John Traub, but the engagement was called off.

In 1959 she announced her engagement to typist Howard J. Knox in Massapequa Park, New York, where her father built her a house after reassignment surgery.

She wrote, "The answer to the problem must not lie in sleeping pills and suicides that look like accidents, or in jail sentences, but rather in life and the freedom to live it.

She once demanded an apology from Vice President Spiro T. Agnew when he called Charles Goodell "the Christine Jorgensen of the Republican Party."

In 1984, Jorgensen returned to Copenhagen to perform her show and was featured in Teit Ritzau's Danish transgender documentary film Paradiset er ikke til salg (Paradise Is Not for Sale).

[35] Jorgensen's highly publicized transition helped bring to light gender identity and shaped a new culture of more inclusive ideas about the subject.

"[8] In a 1988 Los Angeles Times interview, Jorgensen stated, "I am very proud now, looking back, that I was on that street corner 36 years ago when a movement started.

"[36] In 2012, Jorgensen was inducted into Chicago's Legacy Walk, an outdoor public display celebrating LGBTQ history and people.

[41][42] The SNM is the first U.S. national monument dedicated to LGBTQ rights and history,[43] and the wall's unveiling was timed to take place during the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots.

[49] Posters for the Ed Wood film Glen or Glenda (1953), also known as I Changed My Sex and I Led Two Lives, publicize the movie as being based on Jorgensen's life.

In 1954, during his earlier career as a calypso singer under the name The Charmer, Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan recorded a song about Jorgensen, "Is She Is or Is She Ain't.

At the same time, a video of Rob Grace as comically inept interviewer Nipsey Russell played on a nearby black-and-white television set.

The show went on to win Best Aspect of Production at the 2006 Dublin Gay Theatre Festival, and it ran Off-Broadway at New World Stages in January 2006.

Transgender historian and critical theorist Susan Stryker directed and produced an experimental documentary about Jorgensen, titled Christine in the Cutting Room.