Christine Jorgensen, the American who went to Sweden as a man and returned to America as a woman announced her sex change operation in 1953. Robert was only 5 years old at the time.
Few people had even heard the word transsexual. The only explanation Chritine could give American journalists was to say she had been "... a woman in a man's body."
Yet even this simple idea was difficult for most Americans to understand. "Boys have a penis, and girls have a vagina. It's as simple as that, " most argued. Others argued that any man willing to have his penis cut off was queer, gar, a faggot, the derogatory term used for a homosexual male which was popular at the time.
Fortunately, Christine Jorgensen was still a news item 5 years later, when Robert reached age ten. Only then, after watching her during a television interview, did hd have a name for himself: he was a transsexual. But what did this strange word mean?