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Michael Dillon: Trans Pioneer · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of five
0:03
Speaker 1: Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
0:12
Speaker 1: I'm Josh Clark. And there's Charles Chuck. Brian over there,
0:15
Speaker 1: look at all stern and serious with his glasses on.
0:18
Speaker 1: Oh now he took him off. He's all good. And
0:20
Speaker 1: then there's Jerry over there. He's not sure where she is.
0:25
Speaker 1: Serie always sets her classes on. I know she looks
0:27
Speaker 1: weird with her classes off. She is a four eyes
0:31
Speaker 1: that's what they call him in sixth grade. That's right, Well,
0:34
Speaker 1: that's what they used to. I don't know. Sixth grades
0:35
Speaker 1: are probably way more mature than they were when we
0:39
Speaker 1: were young, huh, or way more advanced in their digs
0:43
Speaker 1: and insults. Yeah, just a lot smarter than four eyes. Right,
0:48
Speaker 1: Like your mom gives you no screen time each tweet
0:53
Speaker 1: to you on that. That's a good one, is it? Sure? So, Chuck,
1:00
Speaker 1: I'm glad we're here in the hot box. This was
1:04
Speaker 1: a really good pick on your part. Thanks. You basically
1:07
Speaker 1: yanked an unsung or probably sung now, but for many years,
1:12
Speaker 1: unsung hero of UM the trans community. Yeah, give all
1:18
Speaker 1: the credit to me. You really did a great job here, Chuck.
1:22
Speaker 1: You did a good job finding this one because I
1:24
Speaker 1: hadn't heard of Michael Dillon yet. But that's who we're
1:26
Speaker 1: talking about today, that's right. Uh, and it's just the
1:30
Speaker 1: most macro view. So you know what we're talking about
1:33
Speaker 1: is Michael Dillon very much overlooked over the years as
1:37
Speaker 1: a trailblazer in the trans community. Period. Yeah, that's enough
1:43
Speaker 1: of an overview. Okay, you're like one of the first
1:46
Speaker 1: people to undergo surgery, one of the first people to
1:49
Speaker 1: like write about it and write books, but not not
1:52
Speaker 1: necessarily even just one of They believe that Michael Dillon
1:55
Speaker 1: was the first female to male um gender confirmation surgery ever. Yeah,
2:03
Speaker 1: and you know there are different terms in this article.
2:06
Speaker 1: We should say they call that gender confirmation surgery now.
2:10
Speaker 1: They used to call it sexual reassignment. Before that, it
2:13
Speaker 1: was sex change. Yeah for sure. And uh, the pronouns
2:18
Speaker 1: in this are going to shift too, because I think
2:20
Speaker 1: we're just going to follow the timeline of the story
2:22
Speaker 1: pronoun wise, right, Yeah, yeah, that kind of makes sense. Yeah,
2:27
Speaker 1: because for significant Porsche, well the first several years now
2:32
Speaker 1: I'm trying to think, I don't know how old he was,
2:34
Speaker 1: but yeah, he spent like a lot of his formative
2:38
Speaker 1: life as a girl. UM. And there's a the waters
2:43
Speaker 1: are a bit muddied, but they were kind of purposefully
2:45
Speaker 1: muddied historically. UM. And it's not entirely clear whether Michael
2:51
Speaker 1: Dillon born Laura Dilon, Laura Maude Dilon, um, whether Laura
2:55
Speaker 1: Maud Dillon was born intersex um, or if that was
2:59
Speaker 1: just kind of draped over the public um presentation of
3:06
Speaker 1: this gender confirmation journey um, in order to kind of
3:10
Speaker 1: gain public sympathy, which is something you had to do
3:13
Speaker 1: back then for sure. Yeah. I mean it's the waters
3:16
Speaker 1: were very throughout history and still are very much muddied. Um.
3:20
Speaker 1: I mean you can go back and look at examples
3:23
Speaker 1: in history of people that we don't know because the
3:27
Speaker 1: world wasn't set up for recognition or acceptance of any
3:30
Speaker 1: kind of alternative lifestyle or anything on the gender spectrum.
3:35
Speaker 1: And so we don't know about Joan of arc or
3:38
Speaker 1: we don't know for sure about uh emperor what is
3:41
Speaker 1: his name, Alla Elagabulus, Like he he tried to get well,
3:46
Speaker 1: I guess I don't even know what they called that
3:48
Speaker 1: surgery back then in like Roman times, who knows, But
3:52
Speaker 1: he tried to have the surgery way back then. Even
3:54
Speaker 1: oh I didn't find anything like that. Okay, yeah, all right, Um,
3:57
Speaker 1: well we just don't know, like you said, because history
4:00
Speaker 1: didn't acknowledge this kind of thing, so it's hard to
4:02
Speaker 1: sort of, uh categorize it today. Yeah, absolutely right. Um.
4:07
Speaker 1: It actually wasn't until about the early twentieth century, like
4:12
Speaker 1: the first fifth of the twentieth century, that the medical establishment,
4:18
Speaker 1: just tiny little pieces and dots here there of the
4:21
Speaker 1: medical establishment, especially in the kind of newly burgeoning um
4:28
Speaker 1: discipline of plastic surgery, began to see like, oh, wait
4:32
Speaker 1: a minute, wait a minute, there are people out there
4:34
Speaker 1: who feel like that they were born the wrong gender,
4:39
Speaker 1: like their their their sense of self, their identity of
4:42
Speaker 1: their gender doesn't match their biology, and we can do
4:47
Speaker 1: something about that. Uh. And at first it was extremely
4:50
Speaker 1: radical for the first several decades, Um, it was extremely radical.
4:55
Speaker 1: I mean now even it's it's definitely gained much more acceptance,
5:00
Speaker 1: this idea that some people are born, um they identify
5:04
Speaker 1: with a different gender than what they were born with.
5:06
Speaker 1: Um that at the at the in the like nineteen twenties,
5:10
Speaker 1: it was very very radical, but it did exist in
5:13
Speaker 1: some parts of the medical community. Yeah, And I also
5:15
Speaker 1: get the feeling that plastic surgeons, especially like a some
5:19
Speaker 1: of them were probably out to like assist people, but
5:22
Speaker 1: I think a lot of them were just like it
5:25
Speaker 1: was such a new discipline period. They were they liked
5:28
Speaker 1: the challenge. They were like nip tucking it. You remember
5:32
Speaker 1: those renegades on that show. I forgot about that show.
5:35
Speaker 1: It was a good show at first, Yeah, but I
5:37
Speaker 1: got I never saw it. Oh, it was a good
5:39
Speaker 1: show first. It went off the rails, maybe even more
5:42
Speaker 1: than Dexter did, but it was a good show at
5:45
Speaker 1: first for the first several seasons. No, but I get
5:48
Speaker 1: the feeling that plastic surgeons back then we're just like, oh, well,
5:50
Speaker 1: this like is probably the ultimate challenge, right, Yeah, I
5:53
Speaker 1: have I have that feeling too for sure. So this
5:56
Speaker 1: is just a means of setting up the world that um.
6:01
Speaker 1: Laura Mall Dillon found herself born into in Ireland in
6:05
Speaker 1: nineteen fifteen as a h and I've never heard this term,
6:09
Speaker 1: but his family um had a title of baronet, which
6:14
Speaker 1: is apparently the lowest hereditary titled order. It's a teeny baron.
6:18
Speaker 1: So you're a you're a commoner, but you are required
6:22
Speaker 1: to be called sir really yeah, okay, um, And even
6:26
Speaker 1: if it wasn't like kind of the teency version of
6:29
Speaker 1: the baron the um, the Dylan's were not like wealthy.
6:32
Speaker 1: They had an estate, but it was kind of an old,
6:34
Speaker 1: kind of crumbling estate. They weren't poor or anything, but
6:37
Speaker 1: they were certainly not well off right. And then by
6:40
Speaker 1: Downton Abbey times shin Fain came along and burned the
6:43
Speaker 1: place to the ground, the estate to the ground, because
6:46
Speaker 1: it was kind of a reminder of English intrusion into Ireland,
6:51
Speaker 1: like you know, landed and gentry kind of thing. Um.
6:54
Speaker 1: I'm rewatching Downton Abbey by the way, are you? Yeah? Uh?
6:58
Speaker 1: How is it? It's comfort food, which is what I
7:01
Speaker 1: need right now, so that's why we're watching it. Is
7:02
Speaker 1: it better the first time or the second time around?
7:05
Speaker 1: Well the first I don't know. Right now. It's just
7:07
Speaker 1: like kind of what the doctor ordered. So it's kind
7:09
Speaker 1: of great, just like all my old pals. Plus the
7:12
Speaker 1: movies coming out this fall that's so neat, So maybe
7:14
Speaker 1: this is a primer. I don't know what they're they're
7:17
Speaker 1: making a movie. Yeah, has there let me ask you this? Sorry, everybody,
7:22
Speaker 1: has there ever been a movie version of a TV
7:24
Speaker 1: show that was better than the TV show. I'll have
7:28
Speaker 1: to get back to you on Okay, I can't think
7:31
Speaker 1: of one. A movie version of a TV show. I
7:33
Speaker 1: cannot think of one. I think the Fresh Prince movie
7:36
Speaker 1: was pretty great what they did. No, I'm just kidding.
7:39
Speaker 1: I was like, we have to stop for two hours
7:41
Speaker 1: called Independence Day, right, Yeah, I guess it kind of
7:46
Speaker 1: was alright. So, Um, Laura mau Dylan, Um, the family,
7:50
Speaker 1: like you said, the state was burned down. He had
7:53
Speaker 1: gotten or I guess she see there we go. Um
7:57
Speaker 1: at the time, she had gotten a um, an inheritance
8:01
Speaker 1: a little bit, not a ton, yeah, because she was
8:03
Speaker 1: young when she would have gotten this inheritance. Yeah. But
8:06
Speaker 1: her brother got the actual you know, estate, which, as
8:10
Speaker 1: it turned out, wasn't that great of a yet. So
8:12
Speaker 1: he was burned down. He Robert, her brother, became the
8:16
Speaker 1: eighth Baronet of Liz Mullen. And I guess when he
8:20
Speaker 1: was handed the title he was like thanks, Yeah, I guess.
8:24
Speaker 1: But young Laura knew very early on that she was different. Um.
8:31
Speaker 1: She especially when she got to puberty. Um, she didn't
8:34
Speaker 1: like wearing girl's clothing. She never thought of herself as
8:37
Speaker 1: a female. Yeah. I think that's a good point, Like
8:40
Speaker 1: that comes through and everything I've read about her for
8:43
Speaker 1: him that he never thought, he never identified as female,
8:47
Speaker 1: like basically his entire life. Yeah, And apparently there was
8:51
Speaker 1: even a incident when she was a teenager where like
8:54
Speaker 1: a boy held open the door for her, and that
8:58
Speaker 1: just sort of it was a symbol I think of
9:00
Speaker 1: all the confusion that she was feeling and really kind
9:04
Speaker 1: of wrecked her identity, you know, in a lot of ways. Yeah,
9:08
Speaker 1: I think it was the first time she was really
9:10
Speaker 1: confronted with what people saw her as and it was
9:14
Speaker 1: a girl. And she was like, I don't feel like
9:18
Speaker 1: a girl. That's not me. I'm I'm a man. Um
9:21
Speaker 1: that's a that's I. I didn't grow up that way.
9:24
Speaker 1: But I can't imagine how rough it is to to
9:27
Speaker 1: feel out of sync like that, and especially at a
9:31
Speaker 1: time where what do you do You don't even have
9:33
Speaker 1: words for it, let alone procedures to follow or people
9:37
Speaker 1: whose footsteps who pioneered the way, which is one reason
9:40
Speaker 1: why Michael Dillon was a pioneer. So she gets that inheritance,
9:46
Speaker 1: which allows her to go to Oxford and this sort
9:49
Speaker 1: of begins a trend of going somewhere else to try
9:54
Speaker 1: and find herself and figure herself out. She tried at Oxford,
9:57
Speaker 1: she joined the rowing team. Um, she was an award
10:01
Speaker 1: winner for the women's boat club and was successful and
10:04
Speaker 1: then and it's hard, well, I guess it's not too
10:06
Speaker 1: hard to believe. But there was a photo of her
10:10
Speaker 1: in a tabloid as a student rower that was titled
10:14
Speaker 1: man or woman because she had like a boyish haircut. Yeah.
10:18
Speaker 1: I just can't imagine back then, Like I mean, now
10:20
Speaker 1: it's awful too, but they were doing this kind of
10:23
Speaker 1: thing back then. Yeah, like outing college students. Yeah. I
10:26
Speaker 1: think it was more like, um, the commoners poking at
10:30
Speaker 1: the the titled people. Oh any chance they got That's
10:35
Speaker 1: the impression I have, correct me if I'm wrong. In
10:38
Speaker 1: Great Britain. Uh, And this is about the time where
10:43
Speaker 1: we should mention a novel UH publishing night by Marguerite
10:47
Speaker 1: Radcliffe Hall called The Well of Loneliness, which was a radical,
10:52
Speaker 1: radical book because it depicted a lesbian and there wasn't
10:57
Speaker 1: even a name for that at the time. Like you said, Yeah,
11:00
Speaker 1: I looked that up and I was like, like, there
11:03
Speaker 1: really wasn't like the word lesbian wasn't in use it
11:05
Speaker 1: and there was no word whatsoever. And from what I
11:08
Speaker 1: saw on etymology online, it just says, with zero explanation lesbian. Yeah,
11:17
Speaker 1: but I can't find any other thing. I find no
11:20
Speaker 1: other data or whatever. So it's possible that it was
11:22
Speaker 1: in use right around this time, but I hadn't spread.
11:26
Speaker 1: But from what I saw, I think I think the
11:29
Speaker 1: point is there wasn't a concept, not just a word.
11:32
Speaker 1: There wasn't a concept for women who were interested or
11:37
Speaker 1: who were who were sexually oriented towards other women. That
11:41
Speaker 1: was that kind of fell under an umbrella term as
11:43
Speaker 1: far as society went for women who were sexually uninhibited,
11:47
Speaker 1: like they would do that, but then they would also
11:49
Speaker 1: have sex with guys and they would like walk around
11:52
Speaker 1: parties naked or whatever. Is that kind of like it
11:54
Speaker 1: all it was all one big personality. There wasn't like
11:57
Speaker 1: the idea that there were there was a sexual orientation
12:00
Speaker 1: of women who were oriented towards women. That just that
12:04
Speaker 1: it was I think what really didn't exist, and that
12:07
Speaker 1: what the the well of loneliness really kind of put
12:09
Speaker 1: out there like hey, this does exist, and um, you
12:13
Speaker 1: could say that it wasn't well received by British society. Yeah,
12:18
Speaker 1: and it was I mean a lot of ways. It
12:19
Speaker 1: was a great thing because it gave people uh like
12:23
Speaker 1: uh young Laura, the you know, it's something to look
12:27
Speaker 1: at and identify with. But it also put forward ideas
12:30
Speaker 1: about um lesbians being very mannish and like they want
12:34
Speaker 1: to be men and look like men and dress like men,
12:36
Speaker 1: which is of course not the case, but it was
12:39
Speaker 1: also right. And so the the British the British government
12:44
Speaker 1: decided that this book was obscene and had a huge
12:48
Speaker 1: trial over it and banned the book, and it had
12:51
Speaker 1: a complete streisand effect. Everybody's like, wait, what book is this?
12:54
Speaker 1: What what are you talking about? Everybody right, right exactly,
12:58
Speaker 1: and so everybody wanted to know about it, and it
13:00
Speaker 1: like made this huge impact. It is totally backfired by
13:03
Speaker 1: banning it and going to the trouble of of taking
13:06
Speaker 1: it to trial and everything. It became kind of a
13:09
Speaker 1: big deal and so it kind of informed um, how
13:13
Speaker 1: a lot of British lesbians viewed themselves. It gave them like, Okay,
13:18
Speaker 1: I'm not the only one. This is a real thing.
13:20
Speaker 1: It was, it was, It was helpful in a lot
13:23
Speaker 1: of ways to well I mean one way it was
13:26
Speaker 1: helpful to young Laura Dylan was realizing, well, wait a minute,
13:31
Speaker 1: I'm not a lesbian either, so uh there, I have
13:35
Speaker 1: no idea how to think about myself other than the
13:37
Speaker 1: fact that I was born into the wrong gendered body. Right,
13:42
Speaker 1: Because at first she was like, okay, maybe this is it.
13:44
Speaker 1: And I supposedly she fell in love as a teenager,
13:49
Speaker 1: so Air quotes um with two women who were straight
13:53
Speaker 1: and they rejected her and it had a big impact
13:57
Speaker 1: on her. But from that experience, and I think having
14:00
Speaker 1: been guided by this book, like you said, she realized like,
14:03
Speaker 1: I'm not a lesbian. That's not that's not what this
14:05
Speaker 1: is about. She was a man, and what superseded all
14:11
Speaker 1: other desires and what drove her more than anything else,
14:16
Speaker 1: was to be the man that she felt she was physically,
14:21
Speaker 1: so that she could be accepted into male society. That
14:25
Speaker 1: was her goal. It wasn't to have sex with women.
14:28
Speaker 1: If she could have had a kid with a woman,
14:30
Speaker 1: she would have loved that, but inasmuch as it would
14:33
Speaker 1: confirm her identity as a man, and so that's what
14:37
Speaker 1: drove her to undertake um hormone procedures, surgery and basically
14:43
Speaker 1: everything that that pushed her toward confirming her identity as
14:48
Speaker 1: a man. It was the desire to be accepted as
14:50
Speaker 1: a man. Yeah, and and that process kind of started
14:54
Speaker 1: at Oxford when she started dressing as a man. Uh,
14:58
Speaker 1: kind of presenting outwardly as a man, going to evince
15:01
Speaker 1: as a man. And it was sort of a double
15:03
Speaker 1: edged sword. There was a little bit of freedom to that,
15:06
Speaker 1: um and a little bit of you know, work towards
15:10
Speaker 1: self realization. But um, you know, she graduated as a woman,
15:15
Speaker 1: still had a female name on her birth certificates, still
15:18
Speaker 1: still had to you know, got a job and had
15:20
Speaker 1: to wear skirts and dresses a woman at work. So
15:22
Speaker 1: it's sort of just still trapped between two worlds. Uh.
15:26
Speaker 1: When she comes in contact with a man named Dr
15:29
Speaker 1: George Fosse, I think we should take a break. I agree. Okay,
15:33
Speaker 1: all right, Jim, sorry, all right, Chuck, you're setting everybody
15:53
Speaker 1: up for the doctor Fosse bomb Drop. Let's hear about Fosse.
15:58
Speaker 1: Not a bad band name, the doctor Boss bomb Drop.
16:02
Speaker 1: That's like a doctor teeth in the electric what electric mayhem?
16:06
Speaker 1: That's right, the right nice for work that foss was
16:11
Speaker 1: speaking of, double edged swords. He was a doctor who
16:14
Speaker 1: was experimenting with testosterone on patients, like the first yeah,
16:19
Speaker 1: and injections. Uh. Then this was in like the nineteen thirties,
16:23
Speaker 1: and what this was to help reduce unpleasant heavy periods
16:29
Speaker 1: for women. But it had the side effect, the obvious
16:31
Speaker 1: side effects that would happen when a woman takes testosterone.
16:35
Speaker 1: And Laura Dillon gets word of this and volunteers and says,
16:39
Speaker 1: I'm kind of interested in the side effects, if you
16:42
Speaker 1: know what I mean. Right. He's like that, I don't know,
16:44
Speaker 1: since this is I have no idea what you're talking about, right,
16:47
Speaker 1: So he's like, oh, okay, all right, Well you would
16:50
Speaker 1: be the absolute first as far as anybody knows, since
16:53
Speaker 1: synthetic hormones were very, very new. Um, Laura Dillon was
16:57
Speaker 1: the first to try to undergo hermone therapy UM for
17:01
Speaker 1: gender confirmation. No one had ever tried that before. I
17:04
Speaker 1: did even call it hormone therapy. But Foss was like,
17:07
Speaker 1: all right, I'm not quite sure about this. How about
17:11
Speaker 1: I've heard of people like you. You go see a
17:13
Speaker 1: shrink and talk to a shrink first, and then come
17:16
Speaker 1: back afterwards, and then I'll talk about treating you or whatever,
17:19
Speaker 1: and so Laura UM went to a shrink and they
17:25
Speaker 1: didn't call them shrinks back then either. No, they call
17:27
Speaker 1: them psycho words for anything, psychotherapists. That guy over there,
17:30
Speaker 1: I think that's what they said. Um and then came
17:33
Speaker 1: back and said, Hey, the shrink said whatever, and how
17:37
Speaker 1: about we do this hormone therapy. Fause said, you know what,
17:40
Speaker 1: I've changed my mind. But here's a bottle of testosterone tablets.
17:46
Speaker 1: Good luck. I'm just gonna leave them on this table
17:49
Speaker 1: and walk out of the room. I was thinking we
17:51
Speaker 1: should fully in the sound effect of a bottle of
17:54
Speaker 1: pills being tossed from one person. Who I know, what
17:56
Speaker 1: does that sound like? It's kind of a silent act,
18:01
Speaker 1: A little yeah, Well these are really good mis thof
18:05
Speaker 1: so um. And we should also point out that that's
18:09
Speaker 1: uh psychiatrist or psychologists who spoke with Laura then gossiped
18:13
Speaker 1: about this to other people, and that got back to
18:16
Speaker 1: the research facility where Laura worked. So just one of
18:19
Speaker 1: many betrayals in her life, and such a betrayal that
18:22
Speaker 1: that she said I'm out of here. She had to
18:24
Speaker 1: actually leave work this this research lab because the the
18:29
Speaker 1: heat had been turned up on her, And yeah, that's
18:31
Speaker 1: a There are a string of betrayals that that popped
18:34
Speaker 1: up throughout his Michael Dillon's life. Um and and this
18:39
Speaker 1: is one of the first significant ones. But also um,
18:42
Speaker 1: he was also a very lonely person and just because
18:45
Speaker 1: of his situation and because there there was no community
18:48
Speaker 1: for him. And he had some like real friends here
18:51
Speaker 1: and there, but they were kind of random, surprising people.
18:55
Speaker 1: Like one of the big influences on his life was
18:58
Speaker 1: the town vicar from him where he grew up as
19:01
Speaker 1: a girl, really kind of connected and understood him. Um.
19:06
Speaker 1: And he his family was not very supportive. His brother
19:10
Speaker 1: Robert disowned him at one point. His aunt Toto. Have
19:14
Speaker 1: you ever seen a picture of aunt Toto. If there's
19:18
Speaker 1: ever been a woman named aunt Toto that looked like
19:20
Speaker 1: an aunt Toto, it's this lady. Um. She was obviously
19:24
Speaker 1: supportive because in the picture she's walking around with Michael Dillon,
19:27
Speaker 1: full full dress, beard and everything. Um. But aunt Toto
19:31
Speaker 1: was supportive. She was inasmuch as she would be out
19:36
Speaker 1: in public pictured with him. But I don't have the
19:39
Speaker 1: impression that she was like supportive supportive. I think maybe
19:43
Speaker 1: she tolerated it. That's the impression that I have or
19:46
Speaker 1: it probably chided him, who knows, but um, he he
19:51
Speaker 1: didn't have a lot of friends, but the ones that
19:53
Speaker 1: he did have really helped him in some profound ways
19:57
Speaker 1: and helped kind of. He did have a the kind
20:00
Speaker 1: of mountain mountain chain of support throughout his life, but
20:07
Speaker 1: never a bunch of people at once, gotcha, you know
20:10
Speaker 1: what I mean, So mediocre support dabbled here and there
20:13
Speaker 1: throughout his life. He had to do it on his own,
20:16
Speaker 1: I guess. So this is where, uh, you know, the
20:20
Speaker 1: pronoun definitely shifts at this point because, um, Laura fully
20:25
Speaker 1: starts using testosterone, fully starts living life as a man,
20:29
Speaker 1: took on the name Michael, became Michael, grew a beard,
20:34
Speaker 1: his voice, you know, because the hormone treatments worked, like
20:37
Speaker 1: his voice dropped and became lower pitched. He got a
20:40
Speaker 1: job as a mechanic. Of course, he got made fun
20:43
Speaker 1: of their some, but um, it was working well enough
20:48
Speaker 1: to where like customers started to um, he started to
20:52
Speaker 1: kind of pass as a man among people that didn't
20:55
Speaker 1: know who he was very much. So as long as
20:57
Speaker 1: he was clothed, he was a man. It's just what
21:00
Speaker 1: he looked like to everybody is, like you said, the
21:02
Speaker 1: voice of the beard, UM, the demeanor. He was a
21:05
Speaker 1: very he was a large man, UM, very well built
21:08
Speaker 1: from all those years of rowing. UM. And then you know,
21:11
Speaker 1: a decade of testosterone pills are coming, you know, half
21:14
Speaker 1: a decade. By this point, UM had really taken effect.
21:19
Speaker 1: And this is in Bristol. I don't think we mentioned
21:21
Speaker 1: another like move to try and start over, right because
21:25
Speaker 1: of that gossipy headshrinker who basically got him driven out
21:29
Speaker 1: of his job at the research lab. Right. So, Um,
21:34
Speaker 1: he's working at the garage and he's he's there is
21:37
Speaker 1: a certain bitter suite UM confirmation or affirmation from interacting
21:43
Speaker 1: with customers who leave thinking that they just interacted with
21:46
Speaker 1: the man, making him feel like himself, the person he's
21:50
Speaker 1: always wanting to be. UM. But like you said, he's
21:52
Speaker 1: getting mocked by coworkers. UM. But one of the things
21:55
Speaker 1: that he does is he takes on extra work as
21:59
Speaker 1: a firewak. True because this is during the Second World
22:03
Speaker 1: War and Um, Britain was getting bombed during the Blitz
22:07
Speaker 1: by the Germans and Michael Dylan would sit up and
22:11
Speaker 1: watch for fires that broke out and would you know,
22:14
Speaker 1: call the fire brigade, you know, tell him where to
22:17
Speaker 1: go because the bomb had just set some building on fire,
22:20
Speaker 1: which meant very long hours awake in the dark, sitting
22:22
Speaker 1: around doing nothing. And he took this time to write
22:25
Speaker 1: a book called Self, and Self was a really interesting
22:31
Speaker 1: tone from what I can tell, where there was kind
22:35
Speaker 1: of a scientific treatise on endocrinology, psychological treatise on UM
22:42
Speaker 1: basically what would come to later be known as trans identity,
22:47
Speaker 1: well and everything, gender identity, homosexuality. Like he was kind
22:51
Speaker 1: of tackling it all, except not saying like this is
22:55
Speaker 1: who I am, right, He was approaching it like I'm
22:57
Speaker 1: a scientist and this is this is what's what. Yeah,
23:02
Speaker 1: And it got published in ninety six. It was obviously
23:05
Speaker 1: not some huge bestseller because it was n UM. I
23:10
Speaker 1: would say it was probably tucked away in certain corners
23:13
Speaker 1: of certain bookstores, but not widely you know, acknowledged and
23:17
Speaker 1: available at the time now looked upon as a landmark,
23:20
Speaker 1: sure piece of work. But in and the people who
23:24
Speaker 1: were in this you know UM scattered trans community at
23:28
Speaker 1: the time who were lucky enough to find it, found
23:31
Speaker 1: a lot of solace in it because it argued on
23:33
Speaker 1: their behalf at the time, there was a the medical
23:37
Speaker 1: community was like, if you're born intersex, where it's unclear
23:41
Speaker 1: what your gender is, you are you're morally in the clear,
23:46
Speaker 1: Like we can feel bad for you, there's things we
23:49
Speaker 1: can do, We'll do surgeries. No one's going to really
23:52
Speaker 1: judge you if you're If you're born biologically one gender
23:57
Speaker 1: but you want to be the other gender, you're what
24:00
Speaker 1: everybody considered back then, a freak like that was the
24:02
Speaker 1: word they tossed around, was freak. And you deserve scorn
24:06
Speaker 1: and plenty of it. Whatever anybody wanted to do to you,
24:09
Speaker 1: that's what you deserved at the time. Um, And it
24:12
Speaker 1: was up to the medical community to dole out judgment
24:16
Speaker 1: of who deserved what. And Michael in this book self argued, no, No,
24:21
Speaker 1: it's up to the person to decide. If that person
24:24
Speaker 1: decides that it's their head that they want changed to
24:27
Speaker 1: match their body, or their body they want changed to
24:29
Speaker 1: match their head, it's up to them to decide. And
24:32
Speaker 1: this was the complete opposite of what the medical community
24:35
Speaker 1: held at the time. Well yeah, and also the point
24:38
Speaker 1: was like there needs to be a physical change, like
24:41
Speaker 1: we can't be quote unquote fixed right psychologically. Um, this
24:45
Speaker 1: is real, so we need to be able to physically
24:48
Speaker 1: change our bodies. Um that and that was radical at
24:51
Speaker 1: the time. Well it was. And it was also a
24:53
Speaker 1: time where, um, it's important to point out that transitioning
24:57
Speaker 1: from male to female believe me, nothing was like super accepted,
25:02
Speaker 1: but that was slightly more accepted in uh England and
25:07
Speaker 1: in the West at least. Uh, And there were famous cases.
25:11
Speaker 1: There was one transgender person named Christine Jorgenson who um,
25:16
Speaker 1: and and ironically too, if you're transitioning male to female
25:20
Speaker 1: and you transition into this beautiful woman, then uh, it's
25:25
Speaker 1: more accepted and written about as like, well, you know,
25:28
Speaker 1: but look what happened, Like the chrysalis turns into a butterfly, right,
25:31
Speaker 1: Like everybody's like, why can't you be more like Caitlyn
25:34
Speaker 1: Jenner exactly? But this is why can't you be more
25:38
Speaker 1: like Christine Jorgensen. Yeah. So the whole point of all
25:41
Speaker 1: that is Michael Dillon. Uh, it was sort of in
25:44
Speaker 1: one of the roughest positions to be transitioning the other way,
25:48
Speaker 1: which was not accepted at all, um and the least
25:51
Speaker 1: sort of like understood even but ironically, at least legally
25:56
Speaker 1: it was easier for Michael Dillon too undergo an actual
26:01
Speaker 1: surgical transition going from female to male than it was
26:06
Speaker 1: for somebody who wanted to go male the female, at
26:09
Speaker 1: least in Great Britain, because in the UK at the
26:11
Speaker 1: time there were laws against um surgical castration of healthy
26:18
Speaker 1: male genitalia. It was illegal to do because uh, I
26:23
Speaker 1: don't know if this is confirmed, but one of the
26:25
Speaker 1: thoughts is to get out of the army, right, they
26:28
Speaker 1: didn't want men having the surgery to get out of
26:31
Speaker 1: the army. But also at the time homosexuality was outlawed
26:35
Speaker 1: and have been since that little fact as well, which
26:39
Speaker 1: we talked about. So here we are with Michael Dillon, um,
26:44
Speaker 1: still very much in between worlds, still very much in
26:48
Speaker 1: pain and not living like a full true life as
26:52
Speaker 1: is true self, but much happier than say, uh, during
26:58
Speaker 1: the time when he was working at the research lab.
27:02
Speaker 1: At the very least the hormones have like given him
27:06
Speaker 1: a certain amount or confirmed his male identity much more
27:10
Speaker 1: than it had before. UM. So we should add here
27:15
Speaker 1: that Dylan had diabetes, which turned out to be an
27:18
Speaker 1: interesting sort of um good thing in some ways because
27:23
Speaker 1: he's at the doctor because he has diabetes and really
27:27
Speaker 1: loved his cake in Bristol, and uh, I couldn't tell
27:31
Speaker 1: if it was type two or type one. I never
27:32
Speaker 1: saw that either. So at the hospital in Bristol, Um
27:36
Speaker 1: Dylan seen by a plastic surgeon who says, wait a minute,
27:39
Speaker 1: here's a diabetic man from the doctor's point of view
27:42
Speaker 1: who has breasts, and I bet you probably want those removes,
27:45
Speaker 1: so let me put you in touch with this plastic surgeon.
27:48
Speaker 1: His name is Dr Harold Gillies. I think that guy
27:51
Speaker 1: actually performed him assectomy first. Yeah, so well he put
27:56
Speaker 1: him in touch with Gillies because like this this guy
27:59
Speaker 1: is the real deal. Like, if you want a penis,
28:02
Speaker 1: this is your man. Do you remember you know that's
28:04
Speaker 1: what it said on his card? Um, Are you do
28:08
Speaker 1: you remember Gillies from the War Masks episode. Yeah? He
28:12
Speaker 1: was like the hero surgeon from that episode. Yeah, so
28:15
Speaker 1: that I mean his specialty was um helping physically repair
28:20
Speaker 1: people who were mangled in a factory or burned or
28:24
Speaker 1: blasted up at war. And he got a reputation. Like
28:28
Speaker 1: I said, if you were in battle and you lost
28:31
Speaker 1: your penis, go to Dr Gillies because he can make
28:34
Speaker 1: you a new one. Do you remember that part in
28:35
Speaker 1: Big Red One or I think Mark Camill gets his
28:38
Speaker 1: penis blown off? How do you remember that? It's Mark
28:41
Speaker 1: Camill right, Um, that was my first rate to movie.
28:44
Speaker 1: And Lee Marvin we have had the same convers but
28:47
Speaker 1: years ago, yeah, many years ago, so weird. Anyway, Gillies
28:53
Speaker 1: could have helped him probably put it back on. So
28:57
Speaker 1: uh al right, So that's where we are at. Dr
29:00
Speaker 1: Gillies um and said, you know what I can. I
29:04
Speaker 1: can make you a penis. It's an interesting procedure. What
29:08
Speaker 1: I do is I cut a flap of skin, um,
29:11
Speaker 1: allow that skin to grow, and I'm rolling this thing
29:13
Speaker 1: and forming it into a tube shape the whole time.
29:16
Speaker 1: And then effectively I can take that tube of skin
29:21
Speaker 1: and we can talk about what you want out of it.
29:23
Speaker 1: What do you wonder you got a tube of skin,
29:25
Speaker 1: It's up to you go crazy with whatever you want
29:27
Speaker 1: to do with it. Yeah, but I mean those are
29:28
Speaker 1: some of the questions, like do you want to urinate
29:30
Speaker 1: out of this? Do you want to have sex? And
29:33
Speaker 1: have you know, uh, have sex that actually feels good?
29:38
Speaker 1: And this was, believe it or not, all possible thanks
29:42
Speaker 1: to Gillies at the time. I don't think it was
29:44
Speaker 1: like like success rates, but for the time inventing fallow plasty,
29:50
Speaker 1: it was some you know, at least there was a
29:52
Speaker 1: glimmer of hope. So so yeah, I believe Gillies did
29:56
Speaker 1: invent fallow plastic and Michael Dillon was the first rest
30:00
Speaker 1: being of valoplastic in the world. So that's not to
30:03
Speaker 1: say that there weren't UM gender confirmation surgeries that happened prior,
30:08
Speaker 1: but by the time Gillies had come along, UM he
30:11
Speaker 1: really managed to UM standardize these and figure out like
30:16
Speaker 1: the best practices for him Before the first ones they
30:19
Speaker 1: started to take place Back in I think nineteen nineteen
30:22
Speaker 1: in Berlin, there was a guy named Dr Magnus Hirschfeldt
30:26
Speaker 1: who were in the Institute for Sexual Weissenschaft or Sexual
30:31
Speaker 1: Sciences and UM under under UM Dr Hirschfeld's watch, some
30:37
Speaker 1: of the earliest gender confirmation surgeries took place, including UM
30:42
Speaker 1: a radical surgery for the the Danish painter Lily Elbi. Yeah,
30:49
Speaker 1: they made the movie in the book is that the
30:52
Speaker 1: Dutch girl? The Danish Girl? Yeah? Okay, all right, I
30:55
Speaker 1: gotta see that. Then is it saddle? But it's sad.
30:58
Speaker 1: I never saw it. Well, I can tell you Lily
31:01
Speaker 1: l Elbi's UM story is sad, but in a very
31:04
Speaker 1: bittersweet way. Um, she she transitioned into a woman, and um,
31:12
Speaker 1: all she wanted was to be able to have a baby,
31:14
Speaker 1: and actually got a uterine transplant. Well that's how she died,
31:17
Speaker 1: and a vaginal plastic right, But she didn't die for
31:23
Speaker 1: like I think fourteen or eighteen months later. Yeah, it
31:26
Speaker 1: was an infection that eventually led to cardiac arrest. But
31:29
Speaker 1: she wrote like, you know, she knew she was she
31:32
Speaker 1: was dying, and she wrote towards the end, she said,
31:34
Speaker 1: you know, some people would say that fourteen months isn't
31:37
Speaker 1: a very long life to live as the person you
31:40
Speaker 1: you know, you were born to be, But to me,
31:43
Speaker 1: it's it was a whole lifetime. So it was like
31:47
Speaker 1: she got, she got what she wanted. Finally she got
31:49
Speaker 1: to be the woman that she had always felt she
31:52
Speaker 1: was and lived that way for fourteen months. I gotta
31:54
Speaker 1: check that out. But that was, you know, the idea
31:57
Speaker 1: that she died from the surgery. Like they were just
32:00
Speaker 1: practicing basically at this point, but they were practicing on
32:03
Speaker 1: live patients. And in their defense, UM, at the institute
32:06
Speaker 1: they weren't doing this because they were man sciences. They
32:09
Speaker 1: were doing this because they were These were people coming
32:12
Speaker 1: to them saying like, if you don't do this, I'm
32:13
Speaker 1: gonna do this myself, right, because that was kind of
32:16
Speaker 1: your option, do it yourself or go totally nuts, um
32:21
Speaker 1: banging your head against the wall, trying to find some
32:23
Speaker 1: other alternative for it. So by the time Gillies came
32:25
Speaker 1: along in the forties actually World War One, and then
32:29
Speaker 1: onward into the fourties, he really figured out how to
32:31
Speaker 1: do this, and he was the guy who laid the
32:33
Speaker 1: groundwork for everything that came after. Yeah, and he was
32:36
Speaker 1: actually um another like, he was not only a talented surgeon,
32:41
Speaker 1: but he could provide a medical reason that would um
32:45
Speaker 1: be acceptable to the bureaucrats, which was, uh, there's a
32:49
Speaker 1: condition called hypospadia. That's when a man's urethra exists further
32:54
Speaker 1: down the penis rather than at the tip of the penis,
32:57
Speaker 1: and so a boy might be miss gendered at birth, mislabeled,
33:03
Speaker 1: and so this surgery would I guess correct that. So
33:06
Speaker 1: he had sort of a I guess, sort of a
33:09
Speaker 1: I guess legal standing, no for sure to stand on. Remember,
33:12
Speaker 1: like the surgeons and so the community at large. It said, Okay,
33:16
Speaker 1: if you're born intersex, hypospadia um qualifies as intersex, right, um,
33:23
Speaker 1: you deserve to be taken care of. Like it's fine,
33:26
Speaker 1: legally you can do it all that stuff. So if
33:27
Speaker 1: you have a surgeon who saying this patient has hypospadia,
33:31
Speaker 1: you're in all right. Should we take a break? Oh yeah,
33:34
Speaker 1: I think we should? All right? Sorry, Okay, So where
33:54
Speaker 1: we left off was Dr Gillies has been introduced to
33:58
Speaker 1: Michael Dillon. Michael Dillon and hormone therapy has worked. Michael
34:02
Speaker 1: Dilon has been living pretty successfully for the time as
34:06
Speaker 1: a man and said, all right, I'd like to have
34:09
Speaker 1: this surgery. And Dr Gilly said, that's great, but get
34:12
Speaker 1: in line, pal, because I got a lot of war masks. Now,
34:16
Speaker 1: I got a lot of injured men in the war
34:18
Speaker 1: that I have to treat that in my mind take
34:21
Speaker 1: priority over you. And so it took a little while,
34:24
Speaker 1: um to actually, you know, go under the knife for Dylan.
34:28
Speaker 1: Uh yeah. And he and also like it wasn't like
34:32
Speaker 1: this is just one surgery, you know, this was a
34:34
Speaker 1: oh no series. Sure. So Gillies in his notes later
34:37
Speaker 1: on said that he performed thirteen surgeries on Michael Dilon.
34:42
Speaker 1: Dylan in his autobiography said that it was seventeen, but
34:47
Speaker 1: it was a lot either way over like a three
34:50
Speaker 1: year period during which time Michael Dillon goes to medical school, Yeah,
34:53
Speaker 1: at Trinity in Dublin. Yeah, so he's kind of taking
34:57
Speaker 1: his life into his own hands in a big way
34:59
Speaker 1: by saying, like I want to go be a doctor
35:01
Speaker 1: and potentially a surgeon even right. But he's going and
35:04
Speaker 1: doing like his studies during the term, and then after
35:07
Speaker 1: the term he's going to England to visit Gillies at
35:10
Speaker 1: Gilly's Hospital, the one we talked about in the war
35:12
Speaker 1: Masks episode. And you remember remember how we said like
35:16
Speaker 1: this hospital was kind of like a refuge for people
35:19
Speaker 1: who like had trouble existing in the outside world. Well,
35:23
Speaker 1: Michael Dillon was finally for the first time in his life,
35:26
Speaker 1: like he felt like accepted there and he could thrive.
35:30
Speaker 1: And he did thrive in this hospital with all these
35:33
Speaker 1: other patients. It was like a really happy time for him.
35:36
Speaker 1: Actually when he would go spend time there, you know,
35:39
Speaker 1: getting surgeries and recuperating while he was out of school,
35:42
Speaker 1: he felt good, like he he called it the country
35:45
Speaker 1: club is where he was going. Yeah, and then weirdly though,
35:48
Speaker 1: it was also a time where Michael Dillon developed this um,
35:52
Speaker 1: I guess, sort of a defense mechanism and survival technique
35:57
Speaker 1: relationship wise, where he was sort of I mean in
36:01
Speaker 1: the article here that it was labeled misogynistic. I don't know,
36:06
Speaker 1: that's a tough word, but at the very least it
36:07
Speaker 1: was sort of like, well, who needs women? Women belong
36:11
Speaker 1: in the kitchen, which is all clearly a defense, you know,
36:15
Speaker 1: of self preservation. Well even wrote later on that it
36:17
Speaker 1: was it was to keep women at arms length. Then
36:21
Speaker 1: it was purposeful. They didn't really actually mean it. Well, absolutely,
36:24
Speaker 1: because if even if this surgery, and you know, we're
36:26
Speaker 1: going to get to that in a second, even if
36:28
Speaker 1: it went off without a hitch um when push comes
36:31
Speaker 1: to shove, if he got in a relationship with a woman,
36:34
Speaker 1: while he may have a functioning penis, it's still not
36:38
Speaker 1: one that's like uh like they would be able to
36:40
Speaker 1: tell and he would have to have some sort of
36:42
Speaker 1: conversation which he did not want to have. Right. But
36:45
Speaker 1: it's even more nuanced than that, chuck, because remember how
36:49
Speaker 1: Laura Dillon was befriended by the town Vicar as a
36:52
Speaker 1: young kid. Well that Vicar is credited by Michael Dillon
36:56
Speaker 1: as really instilling like the set of ethics and values
36:59
Speaker 1: into him. And one of the things that he said
37:02
Speaker 1: is if I can't give a woman a baby, I
37:06
Speaker 1: have no business leading or on. So it wasn't just
37:09
Speaker 1: self defense. It was also in a very strange way,
37:12
Speaker 1: looking out for other women. He didn't want anyone to
37:15
Speaker 1: fall in love with him or expect something from him
37:17
Speaker 1: that he couldn't give. And I can't get whether he
37:20
Speaker 1: actually was okay with being denied love like that or
37:26
Speaker 1: um if you know that in itself was a defense
37:29
Speaker 1: mech and is not not talking about it. But from
37:32
Speaker 1: what I gathered, what he was really interested in, he
37:34
Speaker 1: would much prefer have just been hanging out with the guys.
37:38
Speaker 1: He wasn't after love or a baby or a wife.
37:42
Speaker 1: He was after hanging out with the guys. That's what
37:44
Speaker 1: he wanted, and that's to him, is what what Gillies
37:48
Speaker 1: gave him by creating this penis for him was that
37:51
Speaker 1: was it, That was the key, that was the final
37:53
Speaker 1: ticket into the male world. Now he could be anywhere
37:57
Speaker 1: men were, including a dressing room or a locker, locker
37:59
Speaker 1: room and still be accepted as a man. That was it.
38:03
Speaker 1: And so finally, by nineteen fifty, after these years of surgery,
38:07
Speaker 1: after more than a decade of testosterone therapy, Michael Dillon
38:12
Speaker 1: was Michael Dillon, the man. He had been confirmed in
38:15
Speaker 1: his in his gender identity. Yeah, so this is where
38:19
Speaker 1: someone named Roberta Cowell comes into Dylan's life. Um, I
38:23
Speaker 1: don't even think we talked about Roberta earlier on, did we? No,
38:27
Speaker 1: we didn't mention her yet, because she really does just
38:29
Speaker 1: kind of come in now. So I think it's okay,
38:32
Speaker 1: So Roberta cow we should go back and started over.
38:36
Speaker 1: ROBERTA cow was born male but began that hormone treatment
38:40
Speaker 1: and when it was in that transition period that's so difficult.
38:44
Speaker 1: When Roberta read Dylan's books self, which again not some
38:49
Speaker 1: huge book, but got a copy of it and said
38:53
Speaker 1: I would like to meet you and talk to you. Yeah,
38:55
Speaker 1: because she wanted info on like how how to get
38:58
Speaker 1: you know, how to get a surgeon to do this
39:00
Speaker 1: that was might as well have been magic at the time. Well,
39:02
Speaker 1: and he was a doctor at this point to Dylan
39:05
Speaker 1: was so Roberta thinks like I'm meeting with this doctor,
39:09
Speaker 1: which was true, UM, but it was all a ruse.
39:13
Speaker 1: I'm no doctor, I'm a mechanic. Well he was all
39:17
Speaker 1: those things. UM. So at the very first meeting, Dylan
39:21
Speaker 1: just sort of spills it. And this was something that
39:24
Speaker 1: Dylan didn't talk about openly with people, always kept it
39:27
Speaker 1: very guarded and just basically says, here's my whole life history,
39:32
Speaker 1: here's who I am. And at last I found someone
39:36
Speaker 1: who understands me. And by all accounts, they they sort
39:41
Speaker 1: of felt like they were meant to be together in
39:43
Speaker 1: some way. He felt they were meant to be together.
39:46
Speaker 1: She did not feel that, well, not in that way,
39:48
Speaker 1: but she was very close to him. It's not like
39:50
Speaker 1: she shunned him or anything like that. No, she didn't.
39:52
Speaker 1: I have a feeling that he well, actually I know
39:55
Speaker 1: he UM had a little more of a future in
40:00
Speaker 1: mind for them than she did romantic future UM. And
40:04
Speaker 1: he also, at the very least he he served as
40:07
Speaker 1: her guide to UM transitioning. She he knew Gillies, he
40:13
Speaker 1: knew how to do this UM and like just was
40:16
Speaker 1: a really great resource for her as well well, and
40:19
Speaker 1: not just emotionally helped with the transition. But literally with
40:23
Speaker 1: a scalpel. That's a big one. Dylan as a doctor,
40:29
Speaker 1: actually performed an orchidectomy on cowl, right, which is the
40:33
Speaker 1: removal of the testicles, which was illegal at the time,
40:38
Speaker 1: and so they found it was he even like and
40:40
Speaker 1: then he went to medical school, but I don't even
40:42
Speaker 1: it was he a I'm not sure graduated yet. He
40:46
Speaker 1: had definitely performed an appendectomy by that point. He did
40:49
Speaker 1: that in medical school for sure, and I could do
40:51
Speaker 1: that though like tomorrow probably right, we actually are scheduled
40:56
Speaker 1: for surgery tomorrow. Um. But he did it illegally, and
41:00
Speaker 1: they found out about this because they meaning historians um
41:04
Speaker 1: in there either Michael's letters or Roberta's letters, there is
41:08
Speaker 1: a document that was found that said, I, ROBERTA. Cow
41:11
Speaker 1: will understand that Michael Dillon is a doctor, but is
41:14
Speaker 1: not an experienced surgeon. I also know that there are
41:17
Speaker 1: a lot of risks involved in this and that it's illegal,
41:19
Speaker 1: but I hereby remove any responsibility should I not survive
41:24
Speaker 1: this orchidectomy that Michael Dillon's about to perform on me.
41:27
Speaker 1: And so with ROBERTA. Cow's testicles removed, now all of
41:32
Speaker 1: a sudden, she is a candidate for um gender confirmation
41:37
Speaker 1: surgery because from gillis who can do it legally now
41:41
Speaker 1: because there's no testicle removal, which again is illegal, And
41:45
Speaker 1: so Gilly's who has been introduced to Roberta by Michael
41:49
Speaker 1: Um performs a not not a um. Is it a penectomy?
41:54
Speaker 1: I believe, not a penectomy, but a vaginal plastic the
41:58
Speaker 1: very first one, the very first one in Great Britain.
42:01
Speaker 1: Number um I think um uh was the first vegino
42:06
Speaker 1: plastic recipient. Yeah. Yeah, but this is the first one
42:09
Speaker 1: in Great Britain. It's not like they were a dime
42:11
Speaker 1: a dozen by this time. It was. It was groundbreaking
42:13
Speaker 1: surgery for sure, and it was successful too, that's right.
42:17
Speaker 1: So um. He did get his medical degree, Dylan did,
42:21
Speaker 1: didn't get a job for a little while, but eventually
42:23
Speaker 1: got a job as a ship's doctor. And this is
42:26
Speaker 1: in the Merchant Navy, so we didn't say um. He
42:29
Speaker 1: asked Roberta to marry him, and remember was like he said, fine,
42:33
Speaker 1: I'm done with relationships. I'm going to join the Merchant Marines.
42:38
Speaker 1: That's right. And was a doctor and very much living
42:41
Speaker 1: as doctor Michael Dillon on these ships, bearded pipe smoking doctor. Yeah. Oh, yeah.
42:48
Speaker 1: I mean you can find pictures on Google Images and
42:50
Speaker 1: all that stuff, like all kinds of good pictures. Look up,
42:53
Speaker 1: Look up, Michael Dillon and aunt Toto. Seriously, aunt Toto
42:57
Speaker 1: looks like aunt Toto. I don't even know. I can't.
43:00
Speaker 1: You will know what it means when you see aunt Toto.
43:03
Speaker 1: I can't stress this enough. So if you go back
43:05
Speaker 1: to the beginning of the show, remember where we talked
43:07
Speaker 1: about the inheritance and the lineage and all that. This
43:10
Speaker 1: is where Michael Dylan says, you know what I want
43:12
Speaker 1: to get my I want to get back in the
43:14
Speaker 1: family lineage as a man uh for my birthright. And
43:19
Speaker 1: there are two, um, two ways that this is done
43:22
Speaker 1: in Britain, which this is also fascinating to me. Uh
43:26
Speaker 1: de Brette's peerage and Burke's peerage. There are the two
43:28
Speaker 1: books that track the Thoroughbreds that of British aristocracy. You
43:33
Speaker 1: should have used air quotes. Um. So Dylan uh makes
43:38
Speaker 1: this change in one of them in Debretts. Doesn't make
43:41
Speaker 1: the change in Burke's because Debrett's assured him that if
43:45
Speaker 1: the change was made into in Debrett's, Burks would follow
43:48
Speaker 1: suit automatically. Just about to say that, So that didn't happen,
43:52
Speaker 1: and uh, this is when things go really Uh this,
43:56
Speaker 1: I mean, you think, what a journey this man has
43:58
Speaker 1: been on to this point. This sends him to like
44:02
Speaker 1: down the philosophical spiral where or maybe up the philosophical spiral?
44:07
Speaker 1: Can you spiral up? Sure, it's like a cork screw,
44:10
Speaker 1: all right, an inverted corkscrew. So uh starts getting into Buddhism. Uh,
44:16
Speaker 1: specifically a book called The Third Eye, which is I think,
44:18
Speaker 1: like about Tibetan Buddhism, but how they can like fly
44:22
Speaker 1: around and do stuff. Yeah, I mean that book is
44:25
Speaker 1: definitely one that's been taken issue with over the years.
44:29
Speaker 1: So uh, he goes back to Britain. He's very much
44:32
Speaker 1: in this mindset of Buddhism and philosophical introspection. Uh. This
44:39
Speaker 1: is when it's he's basically exposed in the press as
44:43
Speaker 1: this scandalous uh person who had a sex change and
44:47
Speaker 1: is trying to like get the family fortune when he's
44:51
Speaker 1: not even entitled or they probably used the she pronouns
44:55
Speaker 1: I imagine again and uh, he basically finally comes out
45:00
Speaker 1: does an interview, fully outing himself in the press, even
45:03
Speaker 1: though he did say he suffered from hypospadia, which in
45:07
Speaker 1: in order to gain sympathy, which was not true. No,
45:10
Speaker 1: apparently it wasn't true. Yeah, that's what we were saying
45:13
Speaker 1: at the beginning, Like the historical record has been muddied
45:16
Speaker 1: by by stuff like that, like during that interview. But
45:18
Speaker 1: it doesn't seem to be true. But he's exposed. He's
45:23
Speaker 1: He's basically like, I can't go anywhere in England, I
45:26
Speaker 1: can't go to America. All the press is gonna follow
45:28
Speaker 1: me wherever I go, except probably to India. I want
45:32
Speaker 1: to go meet some of these Tibetan monks. So he
45:35
Speaker 1: headed off to India. Um after one of the voyages
45:39
Speaker 1: in the Merchant Navy, and Um started studying Buddhism. He
45:44
Speaker 1: found he sought out a guy another Britain who had
45:48
Speaker 1: been um Uh transformed under uh Theravada Buddhism, the Thera
45:54
Speaker 1: Veda tradition, who had become known as let me see
46:00
Speaker 1: if I can get this right, chuck right out of
46:02
Speaker 1: the gate Um sanghar Ak dah. Yeah, pretty good. Right,
46:07
Speaker 1: So Sangharaka was a British guy. Um I can't remember
46:12
Speaker 1: what his born name was, but he Um had become
46:16
Speaker 1: like a pretty well respected renowned Theravada Buddhist teacher in India.
46:22
Speaker 1: And so Michael Dillon sought him out and Um started
46:26
Speaker 1: studying under him well and as but gave him his
46:29
Speaker 1: whole story and said this is who I am. Right. So,
46:32
Speaker 1: so at this point, like not only has he become
46:36
Speaker 1: a man, now he's becoming a Buddhist. And so to
46:39
Speaker 1: kind of undergo this further transition from Michael Dillon to
46:44
Speaker 1: this new Buddhist practitioner, he takes a name sraman Era Javaca.
46:50
Speaker 1: Javaca was Buddha's doctor. Um he throws his pipe off
46:53
Speaker 1: the mountain, he shaves his beard, shaves his head, and
46:56
Speaker 1: starts learning Buddhism, and Um sangharak Sheetah takes him on
47:03
Speaker 1: and says, I will I will let you be a novice.
47:06
Speaker 1: You can study under me. And so Michael had Um
47:10
Speaker 1: or I should say, uh. Sraman Era at this point
47:14
Speaker 1: had like this sudden idea that that he was going
47:17
Speaker 1: to become a Buddhist monk, that this was, this was
47:20
Speaker 1: in the cards firm in the future, and he dared,
47:23
Speaker 1: he dared to dream. Yeah, this this was to me
47:25
Speaker 1: maybe the saddest thing of all this, like at towards
47:28
Speaker 1: the end of this man's journey finally says, you know
47:32
Speaker 1: what is going to bring me peace is to become
47:33
Speaker 1: a Buddhist monk, and they're accepting me in my story.
47:37
Speaker 1: And that's when they said, actually, you can't really become
47:41
Speaker 1: a monk. Yes, sorry about that, but you uh it
47:46
Speaker 1: filed it's it falls under one of these bands and
47:49
Speaker 1: you can't be ordained as a monk because only men
47:52
Speaker 1: can be monks. And it was just like, I can't
47:55
Speaker 1: imagine how crushing that was. There was also a prohibition
47:58
Speaker 1: against the third sex becoming monks, and apparently nobody knew
48:04
Speaker 1: exactly what third sex meant, but everybody was like, it's
48:07
Speaker 1: probably you. You're there's probably referring to you. So if
48:11
Speaker 1: you're if you're born a woman, you can't be uh
48:14
Speaker 1: a monk. If you're third sex, you can't be a
48:16
Speaker 1: monk either. So Michael had these things going against him,
48:20
Speaker 1: but he still kept that, he still kept trying. He
48:22
Speaker 1: left the Theravada tradition and he found acceptance with Tibetan monks,
48:27
Speaker 1: and it was the Tibetan monks that he he felt
48:30
Speaker 1: most at home with. He was accepted on as a novice.
48:33
Speaker 1: And he was a novice who at age like forty five,
48:37
Speaker 1: I think Um was at the same level as ten
48:40
Speaker 1: year old boys living in this Buddhist monastery up in
48:43
Speaker 1: the Himalayas, but was happier than he's ever been in
48:46
Speaker 1: his life, just for this period of three months. And
48:49
Speaker 1: so he's he's found where he thinks he belongs, but
48:52
Speaker 1: he has to leave because his visa runs out. So
48:55
Speaker 1: he goes back to India to wait the prescribed amount
48:57
Speaker 1: of time, and Um fully leaves that he's going to
49:00
Speaker 1: be able to go back to become a confirmed monk
49:04
Speaker 1: what he would be ordained and and Um start to
49:07
Speaker 1: become a monk under the Tibetan tradition, which probably would
49:10
Speaker 1: have happened had sang har Akheda not intervened. Again. Yeah,
49:14
Speaker 1: and at this point he had fully was living this
49:18
Speaker 1: monastic lifestyle. He wrote home and said give away all
49:20
Speaker 1: my possessions, and Aunt Toto was like, you know that, Um,
49:25
Speaker 1: there's more money coming your way, like twenty pounds. He's like,
49:28
Speaker 1: I don't want it, just give it away, give it away,
49:30
Speaker 1: and I guess Aunt Toto did so said thanks, thanks
49:34
Speaker 1: for the pounds. So, like I said, he thinks he's
49:37
Speaker 1: going to be ordained because the Tibetan monks had had
49:41
Speaker 1: said we're going to ordain you, um when you come back.
49:44
Speaker 1: But saying har Akheda, the original guy from the Thera
49:49
Speaker 1: Veda tradition found out about this and send a letter
49:53
Speaker 1: in triple kate to Michael, to the Tibetan monks until
49:56
Speaker 1: like the to the Buddhist Central Office. I gues us
50:00
Speaker 1: and basically said, who doo doo do doo dude, Here's
50:03
Speaker 1: here's everything that Michael Dillon told me about himself. He
50:07
Speaker 1: was born a woman, he had he underwent surgery. Um,
50:11
Speaker 1: he is in no way up a candidate for the
50:16
Speaker 1: monastery for the monk could um and just shot down
50:19
Speaker 1: is his chances. And I read a Tricycle magazine article.
50:23
Speaker 1: It's like the Buddhist magazine UM where they interviewed saying
50:27
Speaker 1: hark sheeted. Years later, this is like in two thousand seven,
50:30
Speaker 1: and he said, I still stand by it. He's like,
50:32
Speaker 1: I I don't think he had any business in my
50:36
Speaker 1: mind being a Buddhist monk, which is pretty rough man,
50:38
Speaker 1: even all these years later, as zero regrets over it.
50:41
Speaker 1: It's sad. Yeah. Um. So the sad sad ending for
50:46
Speaker 1: Michael Dillon is he died at a very young age.
50:49
Speaker 1: He was had no money because he gave it all away.
50:52
Speaker 1: I was traveling and malnutrition sets in and they're not
50:57
Speaker 1: really sure what sickness originated, uh, sort of the downward slide.
51:02
Speaker 1: But he ended up in a hospital in India and
51:04
Speaker 1: died the age of forty seven in nineteen sixty two,
51:08
Speaker 1: and had written an autobiography called Out of the Ordinary,
51:13
Speaker 1: which did not get published until two years ago. Yeah.
51:17
Speaker 1: He sent it off to his UM publisher, who he
51:20
Speaker 1: had written a couple of other books for UM, like
51:24
Speaker 1: just right before he died, and his brother found out
51:27
Speaker 1: about it and wanted to get his hands on the
51:29
Speaker 1: manuscript so he could burn it, and his publisher hired
51:32
Speaker 1: lawyers to keep the family off of the manuscript and
51:35
Speaker 1: was successful, and finally in two thousand and seventeen it
51:39
Speaker 1: was published. And now the world knows about Michael Dillon
51:42
Speaker 1: and his contribution. There's got to be a movie in
51:44
Speaker 1: the works. It's coming. Yeah, it is coming, for sure.
51:48
Speaker 1: So that's Michael Dillon. Chuck good Pick. Thanks, I'm glad
51:51
Speaker 1: we know more about this guy. Because he deserves to
51:52
Speaker 1: be known about UM And if you want to know
51:55
Speaker 1: more about Michael Dillon, will go check him out. He
51:58
Speaker 1: has an autobiography out there, and I'm sure he would
52:01
Speaker 1: be very happy from Nirvana smiling down on you for
52:04
Speaker 1: reading you. That's right, Okay, I said that. So it's
52:07
Speaker 1: time for listener mail, Chuck. I'm gonna call this a rowboater. Hey, guys,
52:13
Speaker 1: my name is Jacob writing from a rowboat on the
52:15
Speaker 1: Pacific Ocean. Yah. I've been alone at c for two
52:19
Speaker 1: hundred and seventy days on an attempted record setting journey.
52:22
Speaker 1: My oars keep talking to me. You know it's funny?
52:25
Speaker 1: Is I just watch that? There's a documentary about obituary
52:29
Speaker 1: writers UM called oh Bit, and in it they kind
52:34
Speaker 1: of um talk about some of their favorite obituaries over
52:37
Speaker 1: the years, and one of them was about the initial
52:39
Speaker 1: guy who rode the Atlantic and the Pacific um Ocean,
52:44
Speaker 1: which I had never heard of. I was like, Man,
52:45
Speaker 1: we gotta do one on this guy. And then we
52:47
Speaker 1: get this email from Jacob all these years later. Who's
52:49
Speaker 1: doing it again? Crazy? Did that set in everyone rowing
52:53
Speaker 1: a boat across the ocean? That's big? No sales rowing
52:58
Speaker 1: all right. I hadn't listen to your podcast are to departing,
53:00
Speaker 1: but luckily he I guess he was just like Jeez,
53:03
Speaker 1: who has a thousand episodes of something. We're the only ones.
53:07
Speaker 1: I hope it's good. I hadn't listened to your podcast
53:09
Speaker 1: prior to departing, but luckily chose your show um in
53:12
Speaker 1: an audio entertainment download Frenzy before leaving. I've now been
53:16
Speaker 1: through many episodes, though sometimes drift away staring at oncoming
53:20
Speaker 1: waves and have to rewind, which is more difficult than
53:23
Speaker 1: it should be since saltwater has destroyed most of my electronics.
53:27
Speaker 1: About the way there, hoping to reach Australia from Washington State. Wow, man,
53:36
Speaker 1: I just want to say thanks for all you guys.
53:37
Speaker 1: DO appreciate your show and I value you. The next
53:42
Speaker 1: for me are far from certain, but you'll be with
53:45
Speaker 1: me all the way until the end, wherever that may be.
53:48
Speaker 1: And that is from Jacob from somewhere over the Melanesian Basin. Okay, Jacob,
53:54
Speaker 1: we need weekly dispatches from you, please, just at the
53:58
Speaker 1: very least to say, hey, still live, still rowing toward Australia. Well,
54:02
Speaker 1: he won't hear that. I don't think he's able to
54:04
Speaker 1: download stuff from the meds, so maybe he'll hear this
54:09
Speaker 1: at the end of his journey there satellite in or
54:11
Speaker 1: not out there, so maybe Well, Jacob, if you hear
54:14
Speaker 1: this in you're still on your journey. It doesn't even matter.
54:18
Speaker 1: Whenever you hear this email is back. Okay. Yeah, if
54:20
Speaker 1: it's in twenty years, everybody crushed your fingers in your
54:23
Speaker 1: toes for Jacob, that's right. Okay. If you want to
54:26
Speaker 1: be like Jacob and get in touch with us from
54:28
Speaker 1: a robot somewhere and some ocean, you can do that.
54:31
Speaker 1: You can go to our website Stuff you Should Know
54:33
Speaker 1: dot com and look up our social links and you
54:36
Speaker 1: can send us a good old fashioned email to stuff
54:38
Speaker 1: podcast at i heeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should
54:44
Speaker 1: Know is a production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works
54:46
Speaker 1: from more Podcasts for my Heart Radio because at the
54:48
Speaker 1: iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever he listened to
54:51
Speaker 1: your favorite shows.