KNOWhomo

LGBTQ* Books To Keep On Your Radar

The First Man-Made Man — Pagan Kennedy

(The Story of Two Sex Changes, One Love Affair, and a Twentieth-Century Medical Revolution)

** From the jacket cover:

In The First Man-Made Man, critically acclaimed author Pagan Kennedy tells the remarkable story of Michael Dillon, the first person to undergo a sex change from female to male.

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Dillon started out as a baby girl named Laura in 1915. By the time she reached her twenties, Laura had tried every trick she could to pass as a man: dressing in trousers, cutting her hair, binding her breasts. Then she seized upon a brand-new technologies including testosterone pills and “impossible” surgeries to remake her body - and metamorphosed into Michael. Years before the term transexual had entered the popular lexicon, Michael Dillon was living as one. Bearded and broad shouldered, with a pipe tucked into his jacket pocket, he was a quintessential British gentleman.

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In the 1950’s, Michael Dillon met and fell in love with Roberta Cowell, a preoperative male-to-female, and the only woman he though would understand him.

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From upper-class orphan girl to Oxford lesbian and Trinity medical, from public pariah to post-surgery romance to self-imposed exile, Michael Dillon’s incredible story is full of heart-break and intrigue. Ultimately, Dillon’s courageous challenge to the strict biology of sex not only changed the idea of what gender really means but also helped usher in the common use of hormone therapy and plastic surgery, two twentieth-century treatments that have revolutionized modern medicine.