Michael Dillon

Laurence Michael Dillon (1 May 1915 – 15 May 1962) was a British doctor, author, Buddhist monk and the first known transgender man to undergo phalloplasty. Born in Ladbroke Gardens, Kensington, he and his elder brother moved to Folkestone as children following the death of their mother and were subsequently looked after by their two aunts. Their father, heir to the Dillon baronetcy of Lismullen in Ireland, died in 1925. Although he had been assigned female at birth, Michael Dillon never thought of himself as a girl, and later wrote about his despair at being perceived as such. In 1934, he began studying at the Society of Oxford Home Students at the University of Oxford and became captain of the women's rowing team. After graduation, he started working in a laboratory near Bristol. Around this time, Dillon became aware of a doctor who had been studying the effects of testosterone on female patients, and started taking the hormone for personal use, driven by a desire to become a man. Dillon left his job at the laboratory after he was outed to his colleagues. He subsequently found a job as a petrol pump attendant in a garage in Bristol and worked there during World War II. Whilst at the garage, he began writing what would become his 1946 book Self: A Study in Ethics and Endocrinology, considered to be a pioneering work in the field of transgender medicine. He also received a gender-affirming double mastectomy whilst in hospital for hypoglycemia and heard of the work of surgeon Sir Harold Gillies, who agreed to perform a phalloplasty on Dillon after the war. In 1945, he enrolled at Trinity College Dublin to study medicine. During the holidays, Dillon travelled to Rooksdown House in Basingstoke to undergo a series of phalloplasty surgeries by Gillies. As a medical student, Dillon performed an orchiectomy on Roberta Cowell, the first British trans woman to receive male-to-female sex reassignment surgery. Dillon fell in love with Cowell and proposed to her, but she turned him down. After graduation, Dillon began working as a Merchant Navy doctor. His transition became the subject of public attention when it affected his listing as the heir presumptive for the baronetcy of Lismullen. Inspired by reading the works of George Gurdjieff, Peter Ouspensky and Tuesday Lobsang Rampa, he resigned from the Merchant Navy and moved to India and to devote his life to Buddhism. He changed his name to Lobzang Jivaka, named after the Buddha's own doctor. In 1960, he became the first Westerner to be ordained in the Rizong Monastery in Ladakh. Between 1960–1962, he wrote four books on Buddhism, including Imji Getsul: An English Buddhist in a Tibetan Monastery which recounted his three months at Rizong. He also wrote an autobiography titled Out of the Ordinary: A Life of Gender and Spiritual Transitions, which was completed in 1962 and published posthumously in 2016. Dillon died in May 1962, just two weeks after finishing his autobiography.