Jet
1953
In the late 1940’s, she starred in show business, both as Bobbie Minton the male impersonator, and as Gladys Bentley. She was once considered a sophisticated cabaret singer who specialized in risqué’ songs. In an interview, she admitted to receiving hormone injections three times a week to accelerate her return to womanhood.
It was once reported that Bobbie Minton wrote a book titled, “Twilight Zone of Sex”. This book was suppose to detail her life experience growing up as a hermaphrodite. She also revealed that following a Doctor visit, she was told that, “Your sex organs are infantile. They haven’t progressed past the stage of those of a fourteen-year-old-child”.
Prior to a sex change operation, she once wrote, “For many years, I lived in a personal hell. Like a great number of lost souls, I inhabited that half-shadow no-man’s land which exists between the boundaries of the two sexes”.
She also pointed out, “I violated the accepted code or morals that our world observes…I was a big, successful star – and a sad, lonely person – until the miracle happened and I became a woman again”.
Here's an insight into the life and times of Gladys Bentley (or Bobby Minton):
Replaceable you: engineering the body in postwar America
by David Harley Serlin
Limited preview - 2004
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