Ways of Being

 to Western culture, though some South Asian cultures, the Maori of New Zealand, and some Native American tribes have long and offering patients hormone therapy and/or sex change operations. The 2015 film fictionalized one of Hirschfeld’s cases. As a result of his mid-century studies, American biologist Alfred Kinsey imagined gender as a continuum, coining the term . Many Americans learned about sex reassignment when the story of Christine Jorgensen, reassigned from male to female, appeared in New York City newspapers in December 1952. New York endocrinologist and Hirschfeld student Henry Benjamin’s 1966 book became a milestone in health care, laying out treatment options and rejecting the notion that patients like Pauli Murray needed a cure. Use of the current designation preceded Benjamin’s, appearing in the 1965 textbook , by John F. Olivan. These days or is a category encompassing a range of identities including transsexuals and cross-dressers.