Q 01/05

To which city did Christine Jorgensen travel for her gender-affirming surgery in the early 1950s?

A) Copenhagen

B) Stockholm

C) Zurich

D) Amsterdam

Answer · why

A) Copenhagen

She had been drafted into the US Army in 1944, which is why the newspapers made so much of the 'ex-GI' angle when she came home in 1953.

Q 02/05

What word fills the blank in the 1953 Daily News headline announcing Christine Jorgensen, "Ex-GI Becomes ___ Beauty"?

A) Bronx

B) Brooklyn

C) Broadway

D) Blonde

Answer · why

D) Blonde

The full headline continued: 'Bronx Youth Is a Happy Woman After Medication, 6 Operations'. It made her an instant celebrity.

Q 03/05

Lili Elbe, one of the earliest recipients of gender-affirming surgery, was a painter from which country?

A) Netherlands

B) Denmark

C) Germany

D) Sweden

Answer · why

B) Denmark

She was married to fellow painter Gerda Wegener from 1904 until the marriage was annulled in 1930; her surgeries took place in Germany, where she died...

Q 04/05

Which German physician founded the Institute for Sexual Science in 1919?

A) Sigmund Freud

B) Richard von Krafft-Ebing

C) Magnus Hirschfeld

D) Alfred Kinsey

Answer · why

C) Magnus Hirschfeld

His institute offered some of the world's first gender-affirming medical care, including surgery, at a time when nowhere else would.

Q 05/05

In which city's Opernplatz did Nazi students burn the Institute for Sexual Science's library in May 1933?

A) Berlin

B) Hamburg

C) Vienna

D) Munich

Answer · why

A) Berlin

The photographs of that bonfire are among the most reproduced images of Nazi book burning; much of what was lost was decades of research on gender and...