University of Minnesota Gender Clinic

The University of Minnesota Hospital, Minneapolis, MN

From "Maquerade" by the St. Petersburg Times, 1970. Image availible online through the Google News Archive

A January 5, 1967 Issue of Jet Magazine carried a short article in its “Medicine” column: “Minn. U. Hospitals to Change Men to Women.” The short news item relayed the specifics of sex reassignment surgery: “The amputation of the genitals, the construction of a vagina, and a life-long intake of estrogen, a female sex hormone to enlarge the breasts and widen the hips will turn the trans-sexuals into women for all purposes but child bearing, according to Dr. Donald W. Hastings, chief of psychiatry and neurology at the university medical school. The trans-sexual is not a homosexual but a woman’s in man’s body, said Dr. Hastings.”(1) In part, the history of transgender people in America is a history of struggle against the ironclad yet arbitrary definitions of biological sex and ideological gender—the medical community is an arbiter of sex and gender, therefore it has long been the foe of the “trans” community. In 1966, Johns-Hopkins University famously announced plans to begin a gender reassignment clinic(2)—the University of Minnesota followed suit in December of the same year.(3) In 1970, a medical team at the “U of M” successfully performed surgery on a pair of brothers who both wanted to be women, and the successful surgery garnered substantial newspaper attention in places as far from Minnesota as St. Petersburg, Florida. This information trickled through the media, and even wound up in (misinformed) advice column of Ann Landers.(4) The columnist warned readers of the St. Petersburg Times that University “authorities were not enthusiastic about the results” eight days before the sisters proudly sat for a photo with the same publication.(5) Success stories continue to emerge from the University’s clinic 44 years after the institution decided to perform the surgery. The medical establishment has slowly changed its understanding of transgender people since that time, yet much work remains to be done in this regard.

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(1)“Minn. U. Hospitals to Change Men to Women.” Jet Magazine, 1/5/1967. Page 48.

(2)Loory, Stuart H. "Medicine; Surgery to Change Gender The 'Transsexual' A Case Study" The New York Times, 11/27/1966. Page E7.

(3)Associated Press, "Operations to Change Sex Planned in Minneapolis." The New York Times, 12/18/1966.

(4)Landers, Anne. "Sex Change Papers Shocked Her." The St. Petersburg Times, 7/20/1970. Page 3-D.

(5)Times Wire Service, " 'Masquerade' " The St. Petersburg Times, 7/28/1970. Page 7-A.

Part of Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN: 100 Queer Places in Minnesota History, (1860-1969), (1969-2010)