He and the GIA are now largely forgotten, and in most books on trans history he gets at most one line: for example Joanne Meyerwitz, How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States, 2002 (p151); Betty Steiner. Gender Dysphoria: Development, Research, Management, 1985 (p331).
A full story does not seem to be available.
In 1972, the members of the Gender Identity Association presented a program about their work at the monthly meeting of the staff physicians of the Methodist Hospital in Jacksonville. Dr. Ira Dushoff was a featured speaker at meetings of the Northeast Florida Association of Operation Room Nurses. He also presented a paper, “The Organization and Experience of a Private Gender Team,” at the Southeastern Society of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgeons Meeting in Williamsburg, Virginia in June.
At the Second International Conference on Gender Identity in 1973, Dushoff explained that the GIA had been contacted by large numbers of “female transsexuals”. He attributed this to the fact that he and his colleagues had made it clear that they recognized the wide variety of trans persons, and did not require that candidates for surgery parrot the standard “book story” in order to be approved for surgery. At he GIA, “rather than being in the untenable position of rejecting anyone, the entire process allows the patients to sieve themselves”.
At the Fourth International Conference on Gender Identity in March 1975, hosted by the Stanford GIC, Dushoff presented a 30-minute videotape, Transsexualism – Out of the Darkness”, made by a Jacksonville television station which included a discussion with Dushoff and his associate Judy Jennings, an interview with a pre-operative patient, and Dushoff performing surgery on the same patient.
Also in 1975, a 15-year-old trans boy in Tennessee wrote to Charles
Ihlenfeld, then with Harry Benjamin's practice in New York.“I don’t know what to do next. I need to make my life as normal as possible . . . sometimes I get so depressed I just don’t get whether I live or not but I’m still hanging on coz I’m gonna get help.”While the general practice in Benjamin’s office had been to dismiss pleas from children, Ihlenfeld wrote back and suggested contacting Dr Dushoff, although with the caveat:
“Of course, no ethical physician will treat you without the consent and cooperation of your parents”.Gill-Petersen notes that the GIA operated without the constraints of university clinics:
“It is possible that Ihlenfeld felt that the trans boy who had written him would have better luck accessing hormones or surgery options at a clinic formed in many ways with that privatized goal in mind, especially if parental support was insecure”.Ira Dushoff continued working as a plastic surgeon. He published a few papers on various types of surgery but, apart from the 1973 conference paper, nothing on transsexual surgery.
He died age 82.
- “In Jacksonville”. Erickson Educational Foundation Newsletter, Fall 1972: 4. Online.
- Ira M. Dushoff, “Economic, Psychologic and Social Rehabilitation of Male and Female Transsexuals Prior to Surgery,” Proceedings of the Second Interdisciplinary Symposium on Gender Dysphoria Syndrome, ed. Donald R. Laub and Patrick Gandy (Stanford: Division of Reconstructive and Rehabilitation Surgery, 1973), 197-204.
- Fourth International Conference on Gender Identity in March 1975, hosted by the Stanford GIC. Online.
- Letter from Judy Jennings of the GIA to Lou Sullivan. May 12, 1989. Online.
- Julian Gill-Peterson. Histories of the Trangender Child. University of Minnesota Press, 2018: 172-3, 249n11.
Find a Grave Professional Papers
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We don't know further about the Tennessee boy. I hope that life turned out well for him.
I worked with Dr Duschoff at Methodist hospital surgical dept. in 1978-79. Nice guy dedicated to helping the trans seeking his help. He did require 2 years of counseling before he would agree to surgery. He did nice work and probably the best example of this was his wife. He once showed me her picture when he married her, nothing like the knockout she was then.
ReplyDeleteDr Dushoff performed my sex reassignment surgery in Jan ,1975, when I was 19 yrs old at Methodist Hospital. He followed the Harry Benjamin standards, which meant potential candidates for surgery were required to live and work for 12 months as the gender they identified with before surgery was allowed. He was the only surgeon at that time in the US who would consider candidates for SRS before the age of 21. Because I was uncomfortable dating men preop , he agreed to grant my surgery after only 8 months of working and fully passing as a teenage girl. The surgery was very expensive at that time - $30,000 for bottom surgery, breast implants and tracheal shave. At the age of 19, before granting surgery, I had to sign extensive legal paperwork promising I or no one else would ever sue Dr Dushoff for any reason associated with the surgery he was going to perform, including death on the operating table. I and 2 other teenage patients I met while hospitalized had to return within a year of the original surgery for skin grafts to create greater vaginal depth, which cost another $3000. Dr Dushoff was charismatic and I had a crush on him. My initial hospitalization was around 3 weeks. If I remember correctly, after 7-10 days I was allowed to leave the hospital briefly during the day/early evening, but had to spend the night in my hospital room. I remember 1 night several of the young single nurses took me to a cocktail lounge for drinks and dancing. It was the mid 70's and my being too young to legally consume alcohol wasn't an issue. I remember there was a table near us with several very handsome Cuban men who were visiting from Miami, or at least that was the scoop from the young nurses with whom I seated. I had had 1 cocktail and was already feeling the effects when 1 of the tall, dark and handsome Cuban men approached our table. The nurses were all excited wondering who he was going to ask to dance. To their dismay, he went straight to me for a dance. It was the last time they invited me to go partying with them. This was before facial feminization surgery, but I and the 2 other teenage patients I met were very pretty and totally passable without ffs. I remember Dr Dushoff told me to never reveal my transgender status to anyone. He told me if men asked about my neovagina, which came with a large scar back then, to tell them I had been born with a birth defect. In all fairness to him, I suppose that was the truth. He also advised me to not associate with other trans women, because he said they would be jealous of my beauty and betray me. He opined trans women were the "cattiest" women on the planet and seemed genuinely repulsed by the jealous nature he perceived them uniquely to possess. The sex reassignment surgery was primitive. There was no attempt to create a clitoris or labia. It was basically just the creation of a hole large enough for the average man to penetrate enough to achieve an orgasm. My sexual pleasure wasn't a consideration. Cosmetically my neo"primitive"vagina was ugly and asymmetrical. In 1991, I had additional surgery performed by a surgeon in Philadelphia (Dr Dushoffo's hometown) just to make my vagina appear symmetrical. Also. I was never given hormone blockers while transitioning and the high dose oral estrogen and progesterone did little to change my body. Due to lack of healthcare and no financial resources, I stopped taking feminizing hormones in 1976. In 1977 I moved from Columbia, SC, to Philadelphia, where I met and had lunch with trans icon Rachel Harlowe. I asked her if she took hormones and she told me she had never taken hormones. So I decided to stop worrying about being unable to afford healthcare and further HRT.
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