Pioneering Trans Psychiatrist Dr. Jeanne Hoff Dies at 85
Dr. Jeanne Hoff, a transgender psychiatrist who came out publicly and shared her transition experience in a 1978 documentary, died at home on October 26 at the age of 85, The New York Times reported (story is behind a paywall).
"Becoming Jeanne: A Search for Sexual Identity" was the title of the "documentary about Dr. Hoff's experience," the Times recalled, and it "was shown... on NBC, with Lynn Redgrave and Frank Field as the hosts."
Remarkably for that time — and even now — "The documentary won an Ohio State Broadcasting Award in 1979, and was nominated for a New York Emmy in the category of Outstanding Documentary Program," Wikipedia notes.
The New York Times contextualized that "In those years, the transgender figures in the public eye were few but notable."
"In the early 1950s, the glamorous Christine Jorgensen's transition was fizzy tabloid news, though she was denied a marriage license a few years later because her birth certificate identified her as male," the article added. "In 1974, the travel writer Jan Morris published 'Conundrum,' a memoir of her own transition, to some acclaim."
"And in 1977, Renée Richards, the ophthalmologist and tennis player, won a court order to play in the women's division at the U.S. Open."
For Dr. Hoff, coming out publicly was a service to the patients in her care. "Since many were themselves transgender or gay, it didn't seem possible, as she put it, for her to encourage them to live openly, confidently and free of shame without doing so herself," the Times relayed.
Her courage and dedication inspire admiration. "The idea that in the 1970s a trans woman would be openly practicing as a psychiatrist is revolutionary by itself, when the profession was still struggling to depathologize homosexuality," Dr. Jules Gill-Peterson, associate professor at Johns Hopkins University and author of "Histories of the Transgender Child," marveled in comments to the Times. "But knowing that your psychiatrist understood what it was like to be in your shoes was a tidal shift."
Dr. Hoff spoke frankly in the documentary about being trans and about her gender affirmation procedures, the Times detailed, and she "talked about the reflexive... sexism of her own doctors, like the surgeon who thought her breast implants should be bigger; he was amazed, she said, that she didn't want look like a showgirl."
Wikipedia recalls that "Hoff was a member of the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association when it formed in 1979.
"Unlike some other psychiatrists at the time," Wikipedia adds, "Hoff recognized that sexual orientation and gender identity were independent of one another, and criticized psychiatrists who pressured transgender women to enter into relationships with cisgender men."
The Times backgrounded that Dr. Hoff "was born on Oct. 16, 1938, in St. Louis, the only child of James and Mary (Salih) Hoff. Her father was a laborer and, by the 1950s, was working as a bottler in a brewery."
"Dr. Hoff didn't speak very much about her upbringing, though she hinted that it was marked by privation and disapproval," according to longtime friend Carole Lucas, who told the Times that Dr. Hoff died of Parkinson's disease.
"Her father, she told Ms. Lucas, was an alcoholic," the article said.
"I got the sense that she raised herself," Lucas told the Times. "She was so smart, they didn't know what to do with her."
Dr. Hoff's obituary noted that although she had, at the time of her transition, "taken over the practice of Dr. Harry Benjamin, a German-born endocrinologist who has often been described as the father of transgender care in the United States... in the history of that care, Dr. Hoff is not well known, if she is known at all."
Late in her career, after moving to Oakland, Dr. Hoff worked with "the formerly incarcerated through a program with the California Department of Corrections," the Times detailed. "Her last job was at San Quentin, where she treated prisoners on death row. She retired in 1999, after a prisoner attacked her."
Speaking about that attack, Lucas told the newspaper, "She did not recover well from that trauma. She said she couldn't get mad, which would allow her to heal, because he was a patient."
Added Lucas: "She would joke about it, 'I thought it was going to happen today, but it only lasted a few seconds.' She was enormously compassionate."
The Times noted that Dr. Hoff had no living family at the time of her death, and though she had been in a relationship at the time of her transition, that relationship ended.
In the documentary, Dr. Hoff expressed a pragmatic view on the subject of love and marriage, telling Redgrave, "The marriage market for middle-aged spinsters is not a bull market."
Added Dr. Hoff: "I'm not going to die of grief if it doesn't happen to me. I have an interesting occupation. I have a full life with friends who are affectionate and caring."
Perhaps most importantly, having transitioned meant that her life was "very much better than life was before."