In December 1977, Dr. invited Jeanne Hoff, a 39-year-old psychiatrist, a television crew at her home in Manhattan. The next day, they accompany her to the operating room for her gender-affirming surgery.
“Becoming Jeanne: A Search for Sexual Identity,” the resulting documentary about the experience of Dr. Hoff, was shown the following spring on NBC, with Lynn Redgrave and Frank Field as hosts.
“It was a very sad moment,” said Dr. Hoff, a slight figure with shoulder-length brown hair, that night. She added, “The things we do to our bodies and our lives are very disturbing to the people around us, and I can see the fear and confusion written on their faces even though they’ve known me for a long time.”
Her choice to undergo surgery was years in the making. However, his choice to go public, which could have a significant cost to his livelihood and well-being, is easier.
She wanted to share her own difficulty finding care, her interactions with doctors who were not knowledgeable enough about transgender people. He hopes his experience will inform the medical profession.
During those years, transgender figures in the public eye were few but notable. In the early 1950s, the attractive Christian Jorgensen’s transition was tabloid headlines, although he was denied a marriage license a few years later because his birth certificate identified him as male. In 1974, travel writer Jan Morris published “Conundrum,” a memoir of her own migration, 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 US Open.
But the television show of Dr. Hoff was often held up as an example for his patients. Since many are transgender or gay themselves, it doesn’t seem possible, as he says, for him to encourage them to live openly, confidently and unashamedly without him doing so.
Dr. Hoff, perhaps the first openly transgender psychiatrist, died on October 26 at his home in San Francisco. He is 85.
The cause was Parkinson’s disease, said Carol Lucas, a friend. His death, which was not reported at the time, was announced this month by Gay City News.
Dr. Hoff had a private practice in Manhattan and, during his move, also took over the practice of Dr. Harry Benjamin, the German-born endocrinologist who is often described as the father of transgender care in the United States. But in the history of that care, Dr. Hoff is unknown, if he is known at all.
Jules Gill-Peterson, an associate professor at Johns Hopkins University who studies sexuality, and transgender history in particular, recalled being shocked when she saw the archives of Dr. Hoff, which he donated to the Kinsey Institutewhen he was working on his 2018 book, “Transgender Child Histories.”
“The idea that in the 1970s a trans woman would openly practice as a psychiatrist was revolutionary in itself, when the profession was still struggling to depathologize homosexuality,” said Dr. Gill-Peterson by phone. “But knowing that your psychiatrist understood what it was like to be in your shoes was a water changer.”
In his research, Dr. Gill-Peterson successfully argued that Dr. Hoff for the release of a Black transgender woman who was institutionalized from ages 15 to 30 because doctors diagnosed her assertion of her gender identity as “mental retardation,” “deception” and “sexual perversion.”
“In all the flowery language of the reports there is an unmistakable moralistic disapproval of his femininity and homosexuality,” wrote Dr. Hoff in his review of female care, “but there is not the slightest hint that a diagnosis of transsexualism is suspected, even though it is abundantly clear from the details given.”
In “Being Jeanne,” Dr. Hoff about the reflexive, though no less destructive, sexism of her own doctors, such as the surgeon who thought her breast implants should be bigger; she was surprised and said that she didn’t want to look like a showgirl.
At one point in the documentary, Ms. Redgrave to Dr. Hoff his thoughts on marriage. said Dr. Hoff said she was in a relationship with a man, but she didn’t think the relationship would survive the move. (As it turned out, no.)
“The marriage market for middle-aged spinsters is not a bull market,” he says. “I wouldn’t die of sadness if it hadn’t happened to me. I have an interesting job. My whole life is with friends who are loving and caring.” And that, he added, was “so much better than life was.”
Dr. was born Hoff on October 16, 1938, in St. Louis, the only child of James and Mary (Salih) Hoff. His father was a laborer and, in the 1950s, worked as a bottler in a brewery. Dr. did not speak much. Hoff about her upbringing, though she indicated it was harsh, marked by deprivation and disapproval, Ms. Lucas, a friend since the 1980s. His father, he told Ms. Lucas, is an alcoholic.
“I got the sense that he was raising himself,” said Ms. Lucas. “He’s so smart and they don’t know what to do with him.”
Dr. Hoff earned a half scholarship to Washington University in St. Louis, where he received a BA in 1960. He then earned a master’s in science from Yale, followed by an MD in surgery from the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia in 1963. He returned to Washington University from 1971 to 1976, first as an instructor in pathology and then as a resident in psychiatry.
In the 1980s, Dr. Hoff his practice and moved to Hudson, in upstate New York. He worked for a state outpatient clinic in nearby Kingston, treating severely disabled, long-term psychiatric patients, including schizophrenics. After half a decade or so, he moved to a group practice in Pittsburgh, and finally worked in Oakland, Calif., treating the formerly incarcerated through a California Department of Corrections program. His last job was at San Quentin, where he treated inmates on death row. He retired in 1999, after an inmate assaulted him.
“He never recovered well from that trauma,” Ms. Lucas. “He said that he could not be angry, which would allow him to recover, because he was a patient. She would joke about it, ‘I thought it would happen now, but it only took a few seconds.’ He is very compassionate”
No immediate family members are living.
At the end of “Being Jeanne,” Mr. Dr. Field Hoff how he wants to be treated. “What can we do, to welcome you?”
He didn’t think twice about his answer. “It might not be necessary for you to go to a lot of trouble to learn about the acceptance of transsexuals if you have one general principle and that is, ‘Mind your own business,’ I think. It comes down to that.”
