Michael Dillon: Trans Pioneer

Michael Dillon was a lot of things - author, doctor, and most importantly, trans pioneer. Learn all about his story in today's episode. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of five
Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Josh Clark. And there's Charles Chuck. Brian over there,
look at all stern and serious with his glasses on.
Oh now he took him off. He's all good. And
then there's Jerry over there. He's not sure where she is.

(00:25):
Serie always sets her classes on. I know she looks
weird with her classes off. She is a four eyes
that's what they call him in sixth grade. That's right, Well,
that's what they used to. I don't know. Sixth grades
are probably way more mature than they were when we
were young, huh, or way more advanced in their digs
and insults. Yeah, just a lot smarter than four eyes. Right,

(00:48):
Like your mom gives you no screen time each tweet
to you on that. That's a good one, is it? Sure? So, Chuck,
I'm glad we're here in the hot box. This was
a really good pick on your part. Thanks. You basically
yanked an unsung or probably sung now, but for many years,

(01:12):
unsung hero of UM the trans community. Yeah, give all
the credit to me. You really did a great job here, Chuck.
You did a good job finding this one because I
hadn't heard of Michael Dillon yet. But that's who we're
talking about today, that's right. Uh, and it's just the
most macro view. So you know what we're talking about

(01:33):
is Michael Dillon very much overlooked over the years as
a trailblazer in the trans community. Period. Yeah, that's enough
of an overview. Okay, you're like one of the first
people to undergo surgery, one of the first people to
like write about it and write books, but not not
necessarily even just one of They believe that Michael Dillon

(01:55):
was the first female to male um gender confirmation surgery ever. Yeah,
and you know there are different terms in this article.
We should say they call that gender confirmation surgery now.
They used to call it sexual reassignment. Before that, it
was sex change. Yeah for sure. And uh, the pronouns

(02:18):
in this are going to shift too, because I think
we're just going to follow the timeline of the story
pronoun wise, right, Yeah, yeah, that kind of makes sense. Yeah,
because for significant Porsche, well the first several years now
I'm trying to think, I don't know how old he was,
but yeah, he spent like a lot of his formative
life as a girl. UM. And there's a the waters

(02:43):
are a bit muddied, but they were kind of purposefully
muddied historically. UM. And it's not entirely clear whether Michael
Dillon born Laura Dilon, Laura Maude Dilon, um, whether Laura
Maud Dillon was born intersex um, or if that was
just kind of draped over the public um presentation of

(03:06):
this gender confirmation journey um, in order to kind of
gain public sympathy, which is something you had to do
back then for sure. Yeah. I mean it's the waters
were very throughout history and still are very much muddied. Um.
I mean you can go back and look at examples
in history of people that we don't know because the

(03:27):
world wasn't set up for recognition or acceptance of any
kind of alternative lifestyle or anything on the gender spectrum.
And so we don't know about Joan of arc or
we don't know for sure about uh emperor what is
his name, Alla Elagabulus, Like he he tried to get well,
I guess I don't even know what they called that

(03:48):
surgery back then in like Roman times, who knows, But
he tried to have the surgery way back then. Even
oh I didn't find anything like that. Okay, yeah, all right, Um,
well we just don't know, like you said, because history
didn't acknowledge this kind of thing, so it's hard to
sort of, uh categorize it today. Yeah, absolutely right. Um.
It actually wasn't until about the early twentieth century, like

(04:12):
the first fifth of the twentieth century, that the medical establishment,
just tiny little pieces and dots here there of the
medical establishment, especially in the kind of newly burgeoning um
discipline of plastic surgery, began to see like, oh, wait

(04:32):
a minute, wait a minute, there are people out there
who feel like that they were born the wrong gender,
like their their their sense of self, their identity of
their gender doesn't match their biology, and we can do
something about that. Uh. And at first it was extremely
radical for the first several decades, Um, it was extremely radical.

(04:55):
I mean now even it's it's definitely gained much more acceptance,
this idea that some people are born, um they identify
with a different gender than what they were born with.
Um that at the at the in the like nineteen twenties,
it was very very radical, but it did exist in
some parts of the medical community. Yeah, And I also
get the feeling that plastic surgeons, especially like a some

(05:19):
of them were probably out to like assist people, but
I think a lot of them were just like it
was such a new discipline period. They were they liked
the challenge. They were like nip tucking it. You remember
those renegades on that show. I forgot about that show.
It was a good show at first, Yeah, but I
got I never saw it. Oh, it was a good
show first. It went off the rails, maybe even more

(05:42):
than Dexter did, but it was a good show at
first for the first several seasons. No, but I get
the feeling that plastic surgeons back then we're just like, oh, well,
this like is probably the ultimate challenge, right, Yeah, I
have I have that feeling too for sure. So this
is just a means of setting up the world that um.
Laura Mall Dillon found herself born into in Ireland in

(06:05):
nineteen fifteen as a h and I've never heard this term,
but his family um had a title of baronet, which
is apparently the lowest hereditary titled order. It's a teeny baron.
So you're a you're a commoner, but you are required
to be called sir really yeah, okay, um, And even

(06:26):
if it wasn't like kind of the teency version of
the baron the um, the Dylan's were not like wealthy.
They had an estate, but it was kind of an old,
kind of crumbling estate. They weren't poor or anything, but
they were certainly not well off right. And then by
Downton Abbey times shin Fain came along and burned the
place to the ground, the estate to the ground, because
it was kind of a reminder of English intrusion into Ireland,

(06:51):
like you know, landed and gentry kind of thing. Um.
I'm rewatching Downton Abbey by the way, are you? Yeah? Uh?
How is it? It's comfort food, which is what I
need right now, so that's why we're watching it. Is
it better the first time or the second time around?
Well the first I don't know. Right now. It's just
like kind of what the doctor ordered. So it's kind
of great, just like all my old pals. Plus the

(07:12):
movies coming out this fall that's so neat, So maybe
this is a primer. I don't know what they're they're
making a movie. Yeah, has there let me ask you this? Sorry, everybody,
has there ever been a movie version of a TV
show that was better than the TV show. I'll have
to get back to you on Okay, I can't think
of one. A movie version of a TV show. I

(07:33):
cannot think of one. I think the Fresh Prince movie
was pretty great what they did. No, I'm just kidding.
I was like, we have to stop for two hours
called Independence Day, right, Yeah, I guess it kind of
was alright. So, Um, Laura mau Dylan, Um, the family,
like you said, the state was burned down. He had
gotten or I guess she see there we go. Um

(07:57):
at the time, she had gotten a um, an inheritance
a little bit, not a ton, yeah, because she was
young when she would have gotten this inheritance. Yeah. But
her brother got the actual you know, estate, which, as
it turned out, wasn't that great of a yet. So
he was burned down. He Robert, her brother, became the
eighth Baronet of Liz Mullen. And I guess when he

(08:20):
was handed the title he was like thanks, Yeah, I guess.
But young Laura knew very early on that she was different. Um.
She especially when she got to puberty. Um, she didn't
like wearing girl's clothing. She never thought of herself as
a female. Yeah. I think that's a good point, Like
that comes through and everything I've read about her for

(08:43):
him that he never thought, he never identified as female,
like basically his entire life. Yeah, And apparently there was
even a incident when she was a teenager where like
a boy held open the door for her, and that
just sort of it was a symbol I think of
all the confusion that she was feeling and really kind

(09:04):
of wrecked her identity, you know, in a lot of ways. Yeah,
I think it was the first time she was really
confronted with what people saw her as and it was
a girl. And she was like, I don't feel like
a girl. That's not me. I'm I'm a man. Um
that's a that's I. I didn't grow up that way.
But I can't imagine how rough it is to to

(09:27):
feel out of sync like that, and especially at a
time where what do you do You don't even have
words for it, let alone procedures to follow or people
whose footsteps who pioneered the way, which is one reason
why Michael Dillon was a pioneer. So she gets that inheritance,
which allows her to go to Oxford and this sort

(09:49):
of begins a trend of going somewhere else to try
and find herself and figure herself out. She tried at Oxford,
she joined the rowing team. Um, she was an award
winner for the women's boat club and was successful and
then and it's hard, well, I guess it's not too
hard to believe. But there was a photo of her

(10:10):
in a tabloid as a student rower that was titled
man or woman because she had like a boyish haircut. Yeah.
I just can't imagine back then, Like I mean, now
it's awful too, but they were doing this kind of
thing back then. Yeah, like outing college students. Yeah. I
think it was more like, um, the commoners poking at

(10:30):
the the titled people. Oh any chance they got That's
the impression I have, correct me if I'm wrong. In
Great Britain. Uh, And this is about the time where
we should mention a novel UH publishing night by Marguerite
Radcliffe Hall called The Well of Loneliness, which was a radical,

(10:52):
radical book because it depicted a lesbian and there wasn't
even a name for that at the time. Like you said, Yeah,
I looked that up and I was like, like, there
really wasn't like the word lesbian wasn't in use it
and there was no word whatsoever. And from what I
saw on etymology online, it just says, with zero explanation lesbian. Yeah,

(11:17):
but I can't find any other thing. I find no
other data or whatever. So it's possible that it was
in use right around this time, but I hadn't spread.
But from what I saw, I think I think the
point is there wasn't a concept, not just a word.
There wasn't a concept for women who were interested or
who were who were sexually oriented towards other women. That

(11:41):
was that kind of fell under an umbrella term as
far as society went for women who were sexually uninhibited,
like they would do that, but then they would also
have sex with guys and they would like walk around
parties naked or whatever. Is that kind of like it
all it was all one big personality. There wasn't like
the idea that there were there was a sexual orientation
of women who were oriented towards women. That just that

(12:04):
it was I think what really didn't exist, and that
what the the well of loneliness really kind of put
out there like hey, this does exist, and um, you
could say that it wasn't well received by British society. Yeah,
and it was I mean a lot of ways. It
was a great thing because it gave people uh like
uh young Laura, the you know, it's something to look

(12:27):
at and identify with. But it also put forward ideas
about um lesbians being very mannish and like they want
to be men and look like men and dress like men,
which is of course not the case, but it was
also right. And so the the British the British government
decided that this book was obscene and had a huge

(12:48):
trial over it and banned the book, and it had
a complete streisand effect. Everybody's like, wait, what book is this?
What what are you talking about? Everybody right, right exactly,
and so everybody wanted to know about it, and it
like made this huge impact. It is totally backfired by
banning it and going to the trouble of of taking
it to trial and everything. It became kind of a

(13:09):
big deal and so it kind of informed um, how
a lot of British lesbians viewed themselves. It gave them like, Okay,
I'm not the only one. This is a real thing.
It was, it was, It was helpful in a lot
of ways to well I mean one way it was
helpful to young Laura Dylan was realizing, well, wait a minute,

(13:31):
I'm not a lesbian either, so uh there, I have
no idea how to think about myself other than the
fact that I was born into the wrong gendered body. Right,
Because at first she was like, okay, maybe this is it.
And I supposedly she fell in love as a teenager,
so Air quotes um with two women who were straight

(13:53):
and they rejected her and it had a big impact
on her. But from that experience, and I think having
been guided by this book, like you said, she realized like,
I'm not a lesbian. That's not that's not what this
is about. She was a man, and what superseded all
other desires and what drove her more than anything else,

(14:16):
was to be the man that she felt she was physically,
so that she could be accepted into male society. That
was her goal. It wasn't to have sex with women.
If she could have had a kid with a woman,
she would have loved that, but inasmuch as it would
confirm her identity as a man, and so that's what

(14:37):
drove her to undertake um hormone procedures, surgery and basically
everything that that pushed her toward confirming her identity as
a man. It was the desire to be accepted as
a man. Yeah, and and that process kind of started
at Oxford when she started dressing as a man. Uh,

(14:58):
kind of presenting outwardly as a man, going to evince
as a man. And it was sort of a double
edged sword. There was a little bit of freedom to that,
um and a little bit of you know, work towards
self realization. But um, you know, she graduated as a woman,
still had a female name on her birth certificates, still

(15:18):
still had to you know, got a job and had
to wear skirts and dresses a woman at work. So
it's sort of just still trapped between two worlds. Uh.
When she comes in contact with a man named Dr
George Fosse, I think we should take a break. I agree. Okay,
all right, Jim, sorry, all right, Chuck, you're setting everybody

(15:53):
up for the doctor Fosse bomb Drop. Let's hear about Fosse.
Not a bad band name, the doctor Boss bomb Drop.
That's like a doctor teeth in the electric what electric mayhem?
That's right, the right nice for work that foss was
speaking of, double edged swords. He was a doctor who

(16:14):
was experimenting with testosterone on patients, like the first yeah,
and injections. Uh. Then this was in like the nineteen thirties,
and what this was to help reduce unpleasant heavy periods
for women. But it had the side effect, the obvious
side effects that would happen when a woman takes testosterone.

(16:35):
And Laura Dillon gets word of this and volunteers and says,
I'm kind of interested in the side effects, if you
know what I mean. Right. He's like that, I don't know,
since this is I have no idea what you're talking about, right,
So he's like, oh, okay, all right, Well you would
be the absolute first as far as anybody knows, since
synthetic hormones were very, very new. Um, Laura Dillon was

(16:57):
the first to try to undergo hermone therapy UM for
gender confirmation. No one had ever tried that before. I
did even call it hormone therapy. But Foss was like,
all right, I'm not quite sure about this. How about
I've heard of people like you. You go see a
shrink and talk to a shrink first, and then come
back afterwards, and then I'll talk about treating you or whatever,

(17:19):
and so Laura UM went to a shrink and they
didn't call them shrinks back then either. No, they call
them psycho words for anything, psychotherapists. That guy over there,
I think that's what they said. Um and then came
back and said, Hey, the shrink said whatever, and how
about we do this hormone therapy. Fause said, you know what,

(17:40):
I've changed my mind. But here's a bottle of testosterone tablets.
Good luck. I'm just gonna leave them on this table
and walk out of the room. I was thinking we
should fully in the sound effect of a bottle of
pills being tossed from one person. Who I know, what
does that sound like? It's kind of a silent act,

(18:01):
A little yeah, Well these are really good mis thof
so um. And we should also point out that that's
uh psychiatrist or psychologists who spoke with Laura then gossiped
about this to other people, and that got back to
the research facility where Laura worked. So just one of
many betrayals in her life, and such a betrayal that

(18:22):
that she said I'm out of here. She had to
actually leave work this this research lab because the the
heat had been turned up on her, And yeah, that's
a There are a string of betrayals that that popped
up throughout his Michael Dillon's life. Um and and this
is one of the first significant ones. But also um,

(18:42):
he was also a very lonely person and just because
of his situation and because there there was no community
for him. And he had some like real friends here
and there, but they were kind of random, surprising people.
Like one of the big influences on his life was
the town vicar from him where he grew up as
a girl, really kind of connected and understood him. Um.

(19:06):
And he his family was not very supportive. His brother
Robert disowned him at one point. His aunt Toto. Have
you ever seen a picture of aunt Toto. If there's
ever been a woman named aunt Toto that looked like
an aunt Toto, it's this lady. Um. She was obviously
supportive because in the picture she's walking around with Michael Dillon,

(19:27):
full full dress, beard and everything. Um. But aunt Toto
was supportive. She was inasmuch as she would be out
in public pictured with him. But I don't have the
impression that she was like supportive supportive. I think maybe
she tolerated it. That's the impression that I have or
it probably chided him, who knows, but um, he he

(19:51):
didn't have a lot of friends, but the ones that
he did have really helped him in some profound ways
and helped kind of. He did have a the kind
of mountain mountain chain of support throughout his life, but
never a bunch of people at once, gotcha, you know
what I mean, So mediocre support dabbled here and there

(20:13):
throughout his life. He had to do it on his own,
I guess. So this is where, uh, you know, the
pronoun definitely shifts at this point because, um, Laura fully
starts using testosterone, fully starts living life as a man,
took on the name Michael, became Michael, grew a beard,

(20:34):
his voice, you know, because the hormone treatments worked, like
his voice dropped and became lower pitched. He got a
job as a mechanic. Of course, he got made fun
of their some, but um, it was working well enough
to where like customers started to um, he started to
kind of pass as a man among people that didn't

(20:55):
know who he was very much. So as long as
he was clothed, he was a man. It's just what
he looked like to everybody is, like you said, the
voice of the beard, UM, the demeanor. He was a
very he was a large man, UM, very well built
from all those years of rowing. UM. And then you know,
a decade of testosterone pills are coming, you know, half
a decade. By this point, UM had really taken effect.

(21:19):
And this is in Bristol. I don't think we mentioned
another like move to try and start over, right because
of that gossipy headshrinker who basically got him driven out
of his job at the research lab. Right. So, Um,
he's working at the garage and he's he's there is
a certain bitter suite UM confirmation or affirmation from interacting

(21:43):
with customers who leave thinking that they just interacted with
the man, making him feel like himself, the person he's
always wanting to be. UM. But like you said, he's
getting mocked by coworkers. UM. But one of the things
that he does is he takes on extra work as
a firewak. True because this is during the Second World
War and Um, Britain was getting bombed during the Blitz

(22:07):
by the Germans and Michael Dylan would sit up and
watch for fires that broke out and would you know,
call the fire brigade, you know, tell him where to
go because the bomb had just set some building on fire,
which meant very long hours awake in the dark, sitting
around doing nothing. And he took this time to write
a book called Self, and Self was a really interesting

(22:31):
tone from what I can tell, where there was kind
of a scientific treatise on endocrinology, psychological treatise on UM
basically what would come to later be known as trans identity,
well and everything, gender identity, homosexuality. Like he was kind
of tackling it all, except not saying like this is

(22:55):
who I am, right, He was approaching it like I'm
a scientist and this is this is what's what. Yeah,
And it got published in ninety six. It was obviously
not some huge bestseller because it was n UM. I
would say it was probably tucked away in certain corners
of certain bookstores, but not widely you know, acknowledged and

(23:17):
available at the time now looked upon as a landmark,
sure piece of work. But in and the people who
were in this you know UM scattered trans community at
the time who were lucky enough to find it, found
a lot of solace in it because it argued on
their behalf at the time, there was a the medical
community was like, if you're born intersex, where it's unclear

(23:41):
what your gender is, you are you're morally in the clear,
Like we can feel bad for you, there's things we
can do, We'll do surgeries. No one's going to really
judge you if you're If you're born biologically one gender
but you want to be the other gender, you're what
everybody considered back then, a freak like that was the

(24:02):
word they tossed around, was freak. And you deserve scorn
and plenty of it. Whatever anybody wanted to do to you,
that's what you deserved at the time. Um, And it
was up to the medical community to dole out judgment
of who deserved what. And Michael in this book self argued, no, No,
it's up to the person to decide. If that person

(24:24):
decides that it's their head that they want changed to
match their body, or their body they want changed to
match their head, it's up to them to decide. And
this was the complete opposite of what the medical community
held at the time. Well yeah, and also the point
was like there needs to be a physical change, like
we can't be quote unquote fixed right psychologically. Um, this

(24:45):
is real, so we need to be able to physically
change our bodies. Um that and that was radical at
the time. Well it was. And it was also a
time where, um, it's important to point out that transitioning
from male to female believe me, nothing was like super accepted,
but that was slightly more accepted in uh England and

(25:07):
in the West at least. Uh, And there were famous cases.
There was one transgender person named Christine Jorgenson who um,
and and ironically too, if you're transitioning male to female
and you transition into this beautiful woman, then uh, it's
more accepted and written about as like, well, you know,

(25:28):
but look what happened, Like the chrysalis turns into a butterfly, right,
Like everybody's like, why can't you be more like Caitlyn
Jenner exactly? But this is why can't you be more
like Christine Jorgensen. Yeah. So the whole point of all
that is Michael Dillon. Uh, it was sort of in
one of the roughest positions to be transitioning the other way,

(25:48):
which was not accepted at all, um and the least
sort of like understood even but ironically, at least legally
it was easier for Michael Dillon too undergo an actual
surgical transition going from female to male than it was
for somebody who wanted to go male the female, at

(26:09):
least in Great Britain, because in the UK at the
time there were laws against um surgical castration of healthy
male genitalia. It was illegal to do because uh, I
don't know if this is confirmed, but one of the
thoughts is to get out of the army, right, they
didn't want men having the surgery to get out of

(26:31):
the army. But also at the time homosexuality was outlawed
and have been since that little fact as well, which
we talked about. So here we are with Michael Dillon, um,
still very much in between worlds, still very much in
pain and not living like a full true life as

(26:52):
is true self, but much happier than say, uh, during
the time when he was working at the research lab.
At the very least the hormones have like given him
a certain amount or confirmed his male identity much more
than it had before. UM. So we should add here

(27:15):
that Dylan had diabetes, which turned out to be an
interesting sort of um good thing in some ways because
he's at the doctor because he has diabetes and really
loved his cake in Bristol, and uh, I couldn't tell
if it was type two or type one. I never
saw that either. So at the hospital in Bristol, Um

(27:36):
Dylan seen by a plastic surgeon who says, wait a minute,
here's a diabetic man from the doctor's point of view
who has breasts, and I bet you probably want those removes,
so let me put you in touch with this plastic surgeon.
His name is Dr Harold Gillies. I think that guy
actually performed him assectomy first. Yeah, so well he put

(27:56):
him in touch with Gillies because like this this guy
is the real deal. Like, if you want a penis,
this is your man. Do you remember you know that's
what it said on his card? Um, Are you do
you remember Gillies from the War Masks episode. Yeah? He
was like the hero surgeon from that episode. Yeah, so
that I mean his specialty was um helping physically repair

(28:20):
people who were mangled in a factory or burned or
blasted up at war. And he got a reputation. Like
I said, if you were in battle and you lost
your penis, go to Dr Gillies because he can make
you a new one. Do you remember that part in
Big Red One or I think Mark Camill gets his
penis blown off? How do you remember that? It's Mark

(28:41):
Camill right, Um, that was my first rate to movie.
And Lee Marvin we have had the same convers but
years ago, yeah, many years ago, so weird. Anyway, Gillies
could have helped him probably put it back on. So
uh al right, So that's where we are at. Dr
Gillies um and said, you know what I can. I

(29:04):
can make you a penis. It's an interesting procedure. What
I do is I cut a flap of skin, um,
allow that skin to grow, and I'm rolling this thing
and forming it into a tube shape the whole time.
And then effectively I can take that tube of skin
and we can talk about what you want out of it.
What do you wonder you got a tube of skin,

(29:25):
It's up to you go crazy with whatever you want
to do with it. Yeah, but I mean those are
some of the questions, like do you want to urinate
out of this? Do you want to have sex? And
have you know, uh, have sex that actually feels good?
And this was, believe it or not, all possible thanks
to Gillies at the time. I don't think it was
like like success rates, but for the time inventing fallow plasty,

(29:50):
it was some you know, at least there was a
glimmer of hope. So so yeah, I believe Gillies did
invent fallow plastic and Michael Dillon was the first rest
being of valoplastic in the world. So that's not to
say that there weren't UM gender confirmation surgeries that happened prior,
but by the time Gillies had come along, UM he

(30:11):
really managed to UM standardize these and figure out like
the best practices for him Before the first ones they
started to take place Back in I think nineteen nineteen
in Berlin, there was a guy named Dr Magnus Hirschfeldt
who were in the Institute for Sexual Weissenschaft or Sexual
Sciences and UM under under UM Dr Hirschfeld's watch, some

(30:37):
of the earliest gender confirmation surgeries took place, including UM
a radical surgery for the the Danish painter Lily Elbi. Yeah,
they made the movie in the book is that the
Dutch girl? The Danish Girl? Yeah? Okay, all right, I
gotta see that. Then is it saddle? But it's sad.

(30:58):
I never saw it. Well, I can tell you Lily
l Elbi's UM story is sad, but in a very
bittersweet way. Um, she she transitioned into a woman, and um,
all she wanted was to be able to have a baby,
and actually got a uterine transplant. Well that's how she died,
and a vaginal plastic right, But she didn't die for

(31:23):
like I think fourteen or eighteen months later. Yeah, it
was an infection that eventually led to cardiac arrest. But
she wrote like, you know, she knew she was she
was dying, and she wrote towards the end, she said,
you know, some people would say that fourteen months isn't
a very long life to live as the person you
you know, you were born to be, But to me,

(31:43):
it's it was a whole lifetime. So it was like
she got, she got what she wanted. Finally she got
to be the woman that she had always felt she
was and lived that way for fourteen months. I gotta
check that out. But that was, you know, the idea
that she died from the surgery. Like they were just
practicing basically at this point, but they were practicing on
live patients. And in their defense, UM, at the institute

(32:06):
they weren't doing this because they were man sciences. They
were doing this because they were These were people coming
to them saying like, if you don't do this, I'm
gonna do this myself, right, because that was kind of
your option, do it yourself or go totally nuts, um
banging your head against the wall, trying to find some
other alternative for it. So by the time Gillies came
along in the forties actually World War One, and then

(32:29):
onward into the fourties, he really figured out how to
do this, and he was the guy who laid the
groundwork for everything that came after. Yeah, and he was
actually um another like, he was not only a talented surgeon,
but he could provide a medical reason that would um
be acceptable to the bureaucrats, which was, uh, there's a

(32:49):
condition called hypospadia. That's when a man's urethra exists further
down the penis rather than at the tip of the penis,
and so a boy might be miss gendered at birth, mislabeled,
and so this surgery would I guess correct that. So
he had sort of a I guess, sort of a
I guess legal standing, no for sure to stand on. Remember,

(33:12):
like the surgeons and so the community at large. It said, Okay,
if you're born intersex, hypospadia um qualifies as intersex, right, um,
you deserve to be taken care of. Like it's fine,
legally you can do it all that stuff. So if
you have a surgeon who saying this patient has hypospadia,
you're in all right. Should we take a break? Oh yeah,

(33:34):
I think we should? All right? Sorry, Okay, So where

(33:54):
we left off was Dr Gillies has been introduced to
Michael Dillon. Michael Dillon and hormone therapy has worked. Michael
Dilon has been living pretty successfully for the time as
a man and said, all right, I'd like to have
this surgery. And Dr Gilly said, that's great, but get
in line, pal, because I got a lot of war masks. Now,

(34:16):
I got a lot of injured men in the war
that I have to treat that in my mind take
priority over you. And so it took a little while,
um to actually, you know, go under the knife for Dylan.
Uh yeah. And he and also like it wasn't like
this is just one surgery, you know, this was a
oh no series. Sure. So Gillies in his notes later

(34:37):
on said that he performed thirteen surgeries on Michael Dilon.
Dylan in his autobiography said that it was seventeen, but
it was a lot either way over like a three
year period during which time Michael Dillon goes to medical school, Yeah,
at Trinity in Dublin. Yeah, so he's kind of taking
his life into his own hands in a big way

(34:59):
by saying, like I want to go be a doctor
and potentially a surgeon even right. But he's going and
doing like his studies during the term, and then after
the term he's going to England to visit Gillies at
Gilly's Hospital, the one we talked about in the war
Masks episode. And you remember remember how we said like
this hospital was kind of like a refuge for people
who like had trouble existing in the outside world. Well,

(35:23):
Michael Dillon was finally for the first time in his life,
like he felt like accepted there and he could thrive.
And he did thrive in this hospital with all these
other patients. It was like a really happy time for him.
Actually when he would go spend time there, you know,
getting surgeries and recuperating while he was out of school,
he felt good, like he he called it the country

(35:45):
club is where he was going. Yeah, and then weirdly though,
it was also a time where Michael Dillon developed this um,
I guess, sort of a defense mechanism and survival technique
relationship wise, where he was sort of I mean in
the article here that it was labeled misogynistic. I don't know,

(36:06):
that's a tough word, but at the very least it
was sort of like, well, who needs women? Women belong
in the kitchen, which is all clearly a defense, you know,
of self preservation. Well even wrote later on that it
was it was to keep women at arms length. Then
it was purposeful. They didn't really actually mean it. Well, absolutely,
because if even if this surgery, and you know, we're

(36:26):
going to get to that in a second, even if
it went off without a hitch um when push comes
to shove, if he got in a relationship with a woman,
while he may have a functioning penis, it's still not
one that's like uh like they would be able to
tell and he would have to have some sort of
conversation which he did not want to have. Right. But
it's even more nuanced than that, chuck, because remember how

(36:49):
Laura Dillon was befriended by the town Vicar as a
young kid. Well that Vicar is credited by Michael Dillon
as really instilling like the set of ethics and values
into him. And one of the things that he said
is if I can't give a woman a baby, I
have no business leading or on. So it wasn't just
self defense. It was also in a very strange way,

(37:12):
looking out for other women. He didn't want anyone to
fall in love with him or expect something from him
that he couldn't give. And I can't get whether he
actually was okay with being denied love like that or
um if you know that in itself was a defense
mech and is not not talking about it. But from

(37:32):
what I gathered, what he was really interested in, he
would much prefer have just been hanging out with the guys.
He wasn't after love or a baby or a wife.
He was after hanging out with the guys. That's what
he wanted, and that's to him, is what what Gillies
gave him by creating this penis for him was that
was it, That was the key, that was the final

(37:53):
ticket into the male world. Now he could be anywhere
men were, including a dressing room or a locker, locker
room and still be accepted as a man. That was it.
And so finally, by nineteen fifty, after these years of surgery,
after more than a decade of testosterone therapy, Michael Dillon
was Michael Dillon, the man. He had been confirmed in

(38:15):
his in his gender identity. Yeah, so this is where
someone named Roberta Cowell comes into Dylan's life. Um, I
don't even think we talked about Roberta earlier on, did we? No,
we didn't mention her yet, because she really does just
kind of come in now. So I think it's okay,
So Roberta cow we should go back and started over.

(38:36):
ROBERTA cow was born male but began that hormone treatment
and when it was in that transition period that's so difficult.
When Roberta read Dylan's books self, which again not some
huge book, but got a copy of it and said
I would like to meet you and talk to you. Yeah,
because she wanted info on like how how to get

(38:58):
you know, how to get a surgeon to do this
that was might as well have been magic at the time. Well,
and he was a doctor at this point to Dylan
was so Roberta thinks like I'm meeting with this doctor,
which was true, UM, but it was all a ruse.
I'm no doctor, I'm a mechanic. Well he was all
those things. UM. So at the very first meeting, Dylan

(39:21):
just sort of spills it. And this was something that
Dylan didn't talk about openly with people, always kept it
very guarded and just basically says, here's my whole life history,
here's who I am. And at last I found someone
who understands me. And by all accounts, they they sort
of felt like they were meant to be together in

(39:43):
some way. He felt they were meant to be together.
She did not feel that, well, not in that way,
but she was very close to him. It's not like
she shunned him or anything like that. No, she didn't.
I have a feeling that he well, actually I know
he UM had a little more of a future in
mind for them than she did romantic future UM. And

(40:04):
he also, at the very least he he served as
her guide to UM transitioning. She he knew Gillies, he
knew how to do this UM and like just was
a really great resource for her as well well, and
not just emotionally helped with the transition. But literally with
a scalpel. That's a big one. Dylan as a doctor,

(40:29):
actually performed an orchidectomy on cowl, right, which is the
removal of the testicles, which was illegal at the time,
and so they found it was he even like and
then he went to medical school, but I don't even
it was he a I'm not sure graduated yet. He
had definitely performed an appendectomy by that point. He did

(40:49):
that in medical school for sure, and I could do
that though like tomorrow probably right, we actually are scheduled
for surgery tomorrow. Um. But he did it illegally, and
they found out about this because they meaning historians um
in there either Michael's letters or Roberta's letters, there is
a document that was found that said, I, ROBERTA. Cow

(41:11):
will understand that Michael Dillon is a doctor, but is
not an experienced surgeon. I also know that there are
a lot of risks involved in this and that it's illegal,
but I hereby remove any responsibility should I not survive
this orchidectomy that Michael Dillon's about to perform on me.
And so with ROBERTA. Cow's testicles removed, now all of

(41:32):
a sudden, she is a candidate for um gender confirmation
surgery because from gillis who can do it legally now
because there's no testicle removal, which again is illegal, And
so Gilly's who has been introduced to Roberta by Michael
Um performs a not not a um. Is it a penectomy?

(41:54):
I believe, not a penectomy, but a vaginal plastic the
very first one, the very first one in Great Britain.
Number um I think um uh was the first vegino
plastic recipient. Yeah. Yeah, but this is the first one
in Great Britain. It's not like they were a dime
a dozen by this time. It was. It was groundbreaking
surgery for sure, and it was successful too, that's right.

(42:17):
So um. He did get his medical degree, Dylan did,
didn't get a job for a little while, but eventually
got a job as a ship's doctor. And this is
in the Merchant Navy, so we didn't say um. He
asked Roberta to marry him, and remember was like he said, fine,
I'm done with relationships. I'm going to join the Merchant Marines.

(42:38):
That's right. And was a doctor and very much living
as doctor Michael Dillon on these ships, bearded pipe smoking doctor. Yeah. Oh, yeah.
I mean you can find pictures on Google Images and
all that stuff, like all kinds of good pictures. Look up,
Look up, Michael Dillon and aunt Toto. Seriously, aunt Toto
looks like aunt Toto. I don't even know. I can't.

(43:00):
You will know what it means when you see aunt Toto.
I can't stress this enough. So if you go back
to the beginning of the show, remember where we talked
about the inheritance and the lineage and all that. This
is where Michael Dylan says, you know what I want
to get my I want to get back in the
family lineage as a man uh for my birthright. And
there are two, um, two ways that this is done

(43:22):
in Britain, which this is also fascinating to me. Uh
de Brette's peerage and Burke's peerage. There are the two
books that track the Thoroughbreds that of British aristocracy. You
should have used air quotes. Um. So Dylan uh makes
this change in one of them in Debretts. Doesn't make
the change in Burke's because Debrett's assured him that if

(43:45):
the change was made into in Debrett's, Burks would follow
suit automatically. Just about to say that, So that didn't happen,
and uh, this is when things go really Uh this,
I mean, you think, what a journey this man has
been on to this point. This sends him to like
down the philosophical spiral where or maybe up the philosophical spiral?

(44:07):
Can you spiral up? Sure, it's like a cork screw,
all right, an inverted corkscrew. So uh starts getting into Buddhism. Uh,
specifically a book called The Third Eye, which is I think,
like about Tibetan Buddhism, but how they can like fly
around and do stuff. Yeah, I mean that book is
definitely one that's been taken issue with over the years.

(44:29):
So uh, he goes back to Britain. He's very much
in this mindset of Buddhism and philosophical introspection. Uh. This
is when it's he's basically exposed in the press as
this scandalous uh person who had a sex change and
is trying to like get the family fortune when he's

(44:51):
not even entitled or they probably used the she pronouns
I imagine again and uh, he basically finally comes out
does an interview, fully outing himself in the press, even
though he did say he suffered from hypospadia, which in
in order to gain sympathy, which was not true. No,
apparently it wasn't true. Yeah, that's what we were saying

(45:13):
at the beginning, Like the historical record has been muddied
by by stuff like that, like during that interview. But
it doesn't seem to be true. But he's exposed. He's
He's basically like, I can't go anywhere in England, I
can't go to America. All the press is gonna follow
me wherever I go, except probably to India. I want
to go meet some of these Tibetan monks. So he

(45:35):
headed off to India. Um after one of the voyages
in the Merchant Navy, and Um started studying Buddhism. He
found he sought out a guy another Britain who had
been um Uh transformed under uh Theravada Buddhism, the Thera
Veda tradition, who had become known as let me see

(46:00):
if I can get this right, chuck right out of
the gate Um sanghar Ak dah. Yeah, pretty good. Right,
So Sangharaka was a British guy. Um I can't remember
what his born name was, but he Um had become
like a pretty well respected renowned Theravada Buddhist teacher in India.

(46:22):
And so Michael Dillon sought him out and Um started
studying under him well and as but gave him his
whole story and said this is who I am. Right. So,
so at this point, like not only has he become
a man, now he's becoming a Buddhist. And so to
kind of undergo this further transition from Michael Dillon to

(46:44):
this new Buddhist practitioner, he takes a name sraman Era Javaca.
Javaca was Buddha's doctor. Um he throws his pipe off
the mountain, he shaves his beard, shaves his head, and
starts learning Buddhism, and Um sangharak Sheetah takes him on
and says, I will I will let you be a novice.

(47:06):
You can study under me. And so Michael had Um
or I should say, uh. Sraman Era at this point
had like this sudden idea that that he was going
to become a Buddhist monk, that this was, this was
in the cards firm in the future, and he dared,
he dared to dream. Yeah, this this was to me
maybe the saddest thing of all this, like at towards

(47:28):
the end of this man's journey finally says, you know
what is going to bring me peace is to become
a Buddhist monk, and they're accepting me in my story.
And that's when they said, actually, you can't really become
a monk. Yes, sorry about that, but you uh it
filed it's it falls under one of these bands and

(47:49):
you can't be ordained as a monk because only men
can be monks. And it was just like, I can't
imagine how crushing that was. There was also a prohibition
against the third sex becoming monks, and apparently nobody knew
exactly what third sex meant, but everybody was like, it's
probably you. You're there's probably referring to you. So if

(48:11):
you're if you're born a woman, you can't be uh
a monk. If you're third sex, you can't be a
monk either. So Michael had these things going against him,
but he still kept that, he still kept trying. He
left the Theravada tradition and he found acceptance with Tibetan monks,
and it was the Tibetan monks that he he felt
most at home with. He was accepted on as a novice.

(48:33):
And he was a novice who at age like forty five,
I think Um was at the same level as ten
year old boys living in this Buddhist monastery up in
the Himalayas, but was happier than he's ever been in
his life, just for this period of three months. And
so he's he's found where he thinks he belongs, but
he has to leave because his visa runs out. So

(48:55):
he goes back to India to wait the prescribed amount
of time, and Um fully leaves that he's going to
be able to go back to become a confirmed monk
what he would be ordained and and Um start to
become a monk under the Tibetan tradition, which probably would
have happened had sang har Akheda not intervened. Again. Yeah,
and at this point he had fully was living this

(49:18):
monastic lifestyle. He wrote home and said give away all
my possessions, and Aunt Toto was like, you know that, Um,
there's more money coming your way, like twenty pounds. He's like,
I don't want it, just give it away, give it away,
and I guess Aunt Toto did so said thanks, thanks
for the pounds. So, like I said, he thinks he's
going to be ordained because the Tibetan monks had had

(49:41):
said we're going to ordain you, um when you come back.
But saying har Akheda, the original guy from the Thera
Veda tradition found out about this and send a letter
in triple kate to Michael, to the Tibetan monks until
like the to the Buddhist Central Office. I gues us
and basically said, who doo doo do doo dude, Here's

(50:03):
here's everything that Michael Dillon told me about himself. He
was born a woman, he had he underwent surgery. Um,
he is in no way up a candidate for the
monastery for the monk could um and just shot down
is his chances. And I read a Tricycle magazine article.
It's like the Buddhist magazine UM where they interviewed saying

(50:27):
hark sheeted. Years later, this is like in two thousand seven,
and he said, I still stand by it. He's like,
I I don't think he had any business in my
mind being a Buddhist monk, which is pretty rough man,
even all these years later, as zero regrets over it.
It's sad. Yeah. Um. So the sad sad ending for
Michael Dillon is he died at a very young age.

(50:49):
He was had no money because he gave it all away.
I was traveling and malnutrition sets in and they're not
really sure what sickness originated, uh, sort of the downward slide.
But he ended up in a hospital in India and
died the age of forty seven in nineteen sixty two,
and had written an autobiography called Out of the Ordinary,

(51:13):
which did not get published until two years ago. Yeah.
He sent it off to his UM publisher, who he
had written a couple of other books for UM, like
just right before he died, and his brother found out
about it and wanted to get his hands on the
manuscript so he could burn it, and his publisher hired
lawyers to keep the family off of the manuscript and

(51:35):
was successful, and finally in two thousand and seventeen it
was published. And now the world knows about Michael Dillon
and his contribution. There's got to be a movie in
the works. It's coming. Yeah, it is coming, for sure.
So that's Michael Dillon. Chuck good Pick. Thanks, I'm glad
we know more about this guy. Because he deserves to
be known about UM And if you want to know
more about Michael Dillon, will go check him out. He

(51:58):
has an autobiography out there, and I'm sure he would
be very happy from Nirvana smiling down on you for
reading you. That's right, Okay, I said that. So it's
time for listener mail, Chuck. I'm gonna call this a rowboater. Hey, guys,
my name is Jacob writing from a rowboat on the
Pacific Ocean. Yah. I've been alone at c for two

(52:19):
hundred and seventy days on an attempted record setting journey.
My oars keep talking to me. You know it's funny?
Is I just watch that? There's a documentary about obituary
writers UM called oh Bit, and in it they kind
of um talk about some of their favorite obituaries over
the years, and one of them was about the initial

(52:39):
guy who rode the Atlantic and the Pacific um Ocean,
which I had never heard of. I was like, Man,
we gotta do one on this guy. And then we
get this email from Jacob all these years later. Who's
doing it again? Crazy? Did that set in everyone rowing
a boat across the ocean? That's big? No sales rowing
all right. I hadn't listen to your podcast are to departing,

(53:00):
but luckily he I guess he was just like Jeez,
who has a thousand episodes of something. We're the only ones.
I hope it's good. I hadn't listened to your podcast
prior to departing, but luckily chose your show um in
an audio entertainment download Frenzy before leaving. I've now been
through many episodes, though sometimes drift away staring at oncoming

(53:20):
waves and have to rewind, which is more difficult than
it should be since saltwater has destroyed most of my electronics.
About the way there, hoping to reach Australia from Washington State. Wow, man,
I just want to say thanks for all you guys.
DO appreciate your show and I value you. The next

(53:42):
for me are far from certain, but you'll be with
me all the way until the end, wherever that may be.
And that is from Jacob from somewhere over the Melanesian Basin. Okay, Jacob,
we need weekly dispatches from you, please, just at the
very least to say, hey, still live, still rowing toward Australia. Well,

(54:02):
he won't hear that. I don't think he's able to
download stuff from the meds, so maybe he'll hear this
at the end of his journey there satellite in or
not out there, so maybe Well, Jacob, if you hear
this in you're still on your journey. It doesn't even matter.
Whenever you hear this email is back. Okay. Yeah, if
it's in twenty years, everybody crushed your fingers in your

(54:23):
toes for Jacob, that's right. Okay. If you want to
be like Jacob and get in touch with us from
a robot somewhere and some ocean, you can do that.
You can go to our website Stuff you Should Know
dot com and look up our social links and you
can send us a good old fashioned email to stuff
podcast at i heeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should

(54:44):
Know is a production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works
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