[The first gender-changing operation from female to male in The Netherlands, 1959/'60]

The first sex-change operation in a transsexual patient, i.e. the construction of a penis (so-called phalloplasty), took place in the Netherlands in Arnhem in 1959-1960. The operative technique had already been described in 1938 and was perfected after World War II. The discussion of this controversial procedure during a staff meeting in Arnhem Municipal Hospital was published at that time in the Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Geneeskunde [Dutch Journal of Medicine] and this resulted in a large number of protesting letters to the editor. Although the operation was carefully planned and proved to be a success, a judicial inquiry was started and questions were even raised in parliament. As a result of all the commotion, the plastic surgeon Woudstra who performed the first phalloplasty never again dared to perform this kind of surgery, but he had opened the way for the formation of the first gender teams to be established in Amsterdam, Groningen and Rotterdam during the 1970s, by which time sex-change operations were fully accepted.