Christine Jorgensen was used to unwelcome attention, but this was a new level of outrage. After undergoing hormone therapy and surgeries in Copenhagen, the 27-year-old Danish-American had returned to the United States in early 1953 to an onslaught of relentless publicity. While she was not the first person to receive the combination of treatments that the media glossed as a “sex change,” after the New York Daily News’ infamous December 1952 cover featuring her picture beneath the headline “Ex-GI Becomes Blonde Beauty,” she had surged into international celebrity as the first American whose medical transition was widely discussed in the press.
Journalists, agents, publicists, aspiring fellow transsexuals, and many others bombarded her with questions and requests—but she had never been in trouble with the law. Yet shortly after arriving in Washington, DC for a nightclub engagement at the Casino Royale in September 1953, she found herself accosted by “a heavy, cigar-chewing character who introduced himself as an inspector of the police Morals Squad in Washington,” in an encounter that both affronted and amused her. As she later recounted in her autobiography:
“Jorgensen,” he said, “I’m a police official in this city and I want to prevent any unpleasant incidents before they happen. Consequently, I’m asking you not to use the women’s public toilets while you’re in Washington!”
Dumbfounded by that statement, I just stood there gaping at him.
“And if you dare to use a public restroom,” he continued, “I’ll have you picked up and examined by a board of doctors.”
For a moment, I thought I’d been confronted by a madman and my first reaction was blind rage. It was difficult for me to see the relationship between public morals and public toilets, as to me those facilities had been more a matter of convenience than of sex. But his personal experience was no doubt greater than mine in those areas, and therefore he must have had some reason for his violently protective attitude.
With whatever calmness was left to me, I assured him that I’d try very hard to contain myself while I was in Washington. I know that if the incident hadn’t been such a shock and taken me so off guard, I’d have been reduced to helpless laughter then and there. As it was, I excused myself as quickly as possible, and left the hygienic inspector to brood on the gravity of segregating the toilets by gender in our nation’s capital.