Christine Jorgensen Reveals:
The story of America's first transsexual
3 August 2005

So what was the last election in the USA fought on? A trebled defecit? The inextricable quagmire of a pointless war conducted for the sake of some greedy multinationals? Nope, according to the pollsters, most Americans who voted for George Dubya were mainly worried that there might be a lesbian living next door. How on earth did they get an empire?

It might well put us in mind of the fact that there's still a lot of anxiety out there about questions of gender and sexuality. Timely then, that noted New York lipsynch artist Bradford Louryk should be taking on the subject of the eponymous transsexual, America's first, and a cause celebre of the 1950s, now forgotten. His piece is a 52 minute synch of the only surviving recording of this woman in 1958, mimed against a `50s suited interviewer appearing on a black and white TV screen.

'She forced a nation to confront issues of identity, gender and sexuality that they'd never had to confront before,' says Louryk. But is it still a relevant piece? Louryk maintains it is. 'Many of the questions might be chilling to us now. Things like "How do you feel about the problem of homosexuality?" But some of it is increasingly significant. I remember thinking if Bush is re-elected this will be irrelevant, but... We tend to think that the 1950s seems a long way away. But actually the world of anti-communist purges and the purges of homosexuals in Washington is not as much the dim distant past as we think. It's really frightening how little we've grown.'

- Steve Cramer