Phoebe Smith - From Sharecropper's Son to Who's Who

2014, English, Phoebe Smith,

Full title: "From Sharecropper's Son to Who's Who in American Women"

"Transsexual Pioneer At two o'clock in the morning of January 31, 1969, I walked across the Mexican border alone into Tijuana. My purpose sex-change surgery. This book is an account of the events of my life leading up to that trip and afterwards.

Before I became aware of Christine Jorgensen, I didn't know there was another person in the world like me. I was in my mid-teens when I first heard of sex-change surgery. I spent years searching for information and a doctor who could and would perform the operation.

I was 29 years old when I had the surgery. With no ID, birth certificate or record of any kind to document my existence, I faced many obstacles in my new life. I worked for the State of Georgia thirty years, retiring in 2000."

According to Everybodywiki: "Smith had feminine interests and was called sissy by classmates in the lower grades and queer by her fellow high school students. In 1954 a neighbor gave her a magazine that included an article about what was then called sex change surgery. Determined to have the operation, Smith quit school in the 11th grade. Unable to find professional help, she worked a succession of jobs and wrote hundreds of letters to local, state, and national officials, pleading for help and getting none. Several of the professionals she consulted were sexually inappropriate with her; Joanne Meyerowitz describes this in her book How Sex Changed.

In early 1969 Smith's parents sent her a cashier's check which provided her with the funds to have sex reassignment surgery in Tijuana, Mexico. Her surgeon was Jesus Barbosa.[10][11] After consultations with gynecologist Leo Wollman and endocrinologist Harry Benjamin, she returned to Tijuana in January, 1970 for a second operation. She was then employed by the State of Georgia and worked in various capacities until she reached retirement age. She published her autobiography in 1979 and launched The Transsexual Voice in 1981."

Available via Amazon

and everybodywiki.com